d the
Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a lively and not unfaithful
picture of that singular country. "O commander of the faithful, Egypt
is a compound of black earth and green plants, between a pulverized
mountain and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea is a month's
journey for a horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the
blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and morning, and
which rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and moon. When the
annual dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs and fountains
that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and sounding waters
through the realm of Egypt: the fields are overspread by the salutary
flood; and the villages communicate with each other in their painted
barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the
reception of the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who blacken the
land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their native
indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master, and the promise
of the flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. Their hope is seldom
deceived; but the riches which they extract from the wheat, the
barley, and the rice, the legumes, the fruit-trees, and the cattle,
are unequally shared between those who labor and those who possess.
According to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is
adorned with a _silver_ wave, a verdant _emerald_, and the deep
yellow of a _golden_ harvest." Yet this beneficial order is sometimes
interrupted; and the long delay and sudden swell of the river in the
first year of the conquest might afford some color to an edifying fable.
It is said, that the annual sacrifice of a virgin had been interdicted
by the piety of Omar; and that the Nile lay sullen and inactive in his
shallow bed, till the mandate of the caliph was cast into the obedient
stream, which rose in a single night to the height of sixteen cubits.
The admiration of the Arabs for their new conquest encouraged the
license of their romantic spirit. We may read, in the gravest authors,
that Egypt was crowded with twenty thousand cities or villages: _that_,
exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on the
assessment, six millions of tributary subjects, or twenty millions of
either sex, and of every age: _that_ three hundred millions of gold or
silver were annually paid to the treasury of the caliphs. Our reason