s and from Cornwall; or they could start from Heroopolis, or Myos
Hormus, or some port further to the southward, and pass by way of the
Red Sea to the spice-region of "Araby the Blest," or to the Abyssinian
timber-region, or to the shores of Zanzibar and Mozambique, or round
Arabia to Teredon on the Persian Gulf, or possibly to Ceylon or India.
The products of the distant east, even of "far Cathay," certainly flowed
into the land, for they have been dug out of the ancient tombs; but
whether they were obtained by direct or by indirect commerce must be
admitted to be doubtful.

The possession of the Nile was of extraordinary advantage to Egypt, not
merely as the source of fertility, but as a means of rapid
communication. One of the greatest impediments to progress and
civilization which Nature offers to man in regions which he has not yet
subdued to his will, is the difficulty of locomotion and of transport.
Mountains, forests, torrents, marshes, jungles, are the curses of "new
countries," forming, until they have been cut through, bridged over, or
tunnelled under, insurmountable barriers, hindering commerce and causing
hatreds through isolation. Egypt had from the first a broad road driven
through it from end to end--a road seven hundred miles long, and seldom
much less than a mile wide--which allowed of ready and rapid
communication between the remotest parts of the kingdom. Rivers, indeed,
are of no use as arteries of commerce or vehicles for locomotion until
men have invented ships or boats, or at least rafts, to descend and
ascend them; but the Egyptians were acquainted with the use of boats and
rafts from a very remote period, and took to the water like a brood of
ducks or a parcel of South Sea Islanders. Thirty-two centuries ago an
Egyptian king built a temple on the confines of the Mediterranean
entirely of stone which he floated down the Nile for six hundred and
fifty miles from the quarries of Assouan (Syene); and the passage up the
river is for a considerable portion of the year as easy as the passage
down. Northerly winds--the famous "Etesian gales"--prevail in Egypt
during the whole of the summer and autumn, and by hoisting a sail it is
almost always possible to ascend the stream at a good pace. If the sail
be dropped, the current will at all times take a vessel down-stream; and
thus boats, and even vessels of a large size, pass up and down the
water-way with equal facility.

Egypt is at all seasons a strang