gypt by the famous Alexandrian corn-ships; and you remember how,
in the Bible story, Joseph's brethren came down from Palestine because,
though there was famine there, there was "corn in Egypt." And yet Egypt
is a land where rain is almost unknown. Sometimes there will come a
heavy thunder-shower; but for month after month, year in and year out,
there may be no rain at all.

How can a rainless country grow anything? The secret is the Nile. Every
year, when the rains fall in the great lake-basin of Central Africa,
from which one branch of the great river comes, and on the Abyssinian
hills, where the other branch rises, the Nile comes down in flood. All
the lower lands are covered, and a fresh deposit of Nile mud is left
upon them; and, though the river does not rise to the higher grounds,
the water is led into big canals, and these, again, are divided up into
little ones, till it circulates through the whole land, as the blood
circulates through your arteries and veins. This keeps the land fertile,
and makes up for the lack of rain.

Apart from its wonderful river, the country itself has no very striking
features. It is rather a monotonous land--a long ribbon of green running
through a great waste of yellow desert and barren hills. But the great
charm that draws people's minds to Egypt, and gives the old land a
never-failing interest, is its great story of the past, and all the
relics of that story which are still to be seen.

In no other land can you see the real people and things of the days of
long ago as you can see them in Egypt. Think how we should prize an
actual building that had been connected with the story of King Arthur,
if such a thing could be found in our country, and what wonderful
romance would belong to the weapons, the actual shields and helmets,
swords and lances, of the Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot and
Tristram and Galahad--if only we could find them. Out there in Egypt you
can see buildings compared with which King Arthur's Camelot would be
only a thing of yesterday; and you can look, not only on the weapons,
but on the actual faces and forms of great Kings and soldiers who lived,
and fought bravely for their country, hundreds of years before Saul and
Jonathan and David began to fight the battles of Israel. You can see the
pictures of how people lived in those far-away days, how their houses
were built, how they traded and toiled, how they amused themselves, how
they behaved in time of sor