ost energetic one."
Here, in this last expression, he is thoroughly right, though the method
of the Nile's energy has been other than he supposed. The Nile, working
from its immense reservoirs in the equatorial regions, has gradually
scooped itself out a deep bed in the sand and rock of the desert, which
must have originally extended across the whole of northern Africa from
the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Having scooped itself out this bed to a
depth, in places, of three hundred feet from the desert level, it has
then proceeded partially to fill it up with its own deposits. Occupying,
when it is at its height, the entire bed, and presenting at that time
the appearance of a vast lake, or succession of lakes, it deposes every
day a portion of sediment over the whole space which it covers: then,
contracting gradually, it leaves at the base of the hills, on both
sides, or at any rate on one, a strip of land fresh dressed with mud,
which gets wider daily as the waters still recede, until yards grow into
furlongs, and furlongs into miles, and at last the shrunk stream is
content with a narrow channel a few hundred yards in width, and leaves
the rest of its bed to the embraces of sun and air, and, if he so wills,
to the industry of man. The land thus left exposed is Egypt--Egypt is
the temporarily uncovered bed of the Nile, which it reclaims and
recovers during a portion of each year, when Egypt disappears from view,
save where human labour has by mounds and embankments formed artificial
islands that raise their heads above the waste of waters, for the most
part crowned with buildings.

There is one exception to this broad and sweeping statement. The Fayoum
is no part of the natural bed of the Nile, and has not been scooped out
by its energy. It is a natural depression in the western desert,
separated off from the Nile valley by a range of limestone hills from
two hundred to five hundred feet in height, and, apart from the activity
of man, would have been arid, treeless, and waterless. Still, it derives
from the Nile all its value, all its richness, all its fertility. Human
energy at some remote period introduced into the depressed tract through
an artificial channel from the Nile, cut in some places through the
rock, the life-giving fluid; and this fluid, bearing the precious Nile
sediment, has sufficed to spread fertility over the entire region, and
to make the desert blossom like a garden.

The Egyptians were not unaware of t