ed to
be soulless. From infancy employed in the most menial occupations,
they are not even permitted to enter the mosques at prayer-time, and
until recently the scanty education which the boys enjoyed was denied
to their sisters. It is no wonder, therefore, that these often
beautiful girls grow up much like graceful animals, ignorant of the
higher duties of life, and exercising none of that refining and
ennobling influence which have made the Western races what they are.

CHAPTER X

THE DESERT

When so much of geographical Egypt consists of desert, it would be
interesting if I were to tell you something about it before closing
this little book. Probably the first question my readers would ask
would be, "What use is it?" Why does Nature create such vast wastes of
land and rock which can be of little or no use to anybody?

We cannot always follow the intentions of Nature, or see what may
ultimately result, but so far as the desert is concerned we know of at
least _one_ useful purpose it serves, and that is the making of
_climate_.

Edinburgh and Moscow are in precisely the same latitudes, yet the one
is equable in temperature while the other endures the rigours of an
arctic winter. The South of Iceland also suffers less from cold than
do the great central plains of Europe. And why? Simply because their
different climates are the result of special conditions or influences
of Nature, and what the Gulf Stream does for the British Isles the
deserts of Africa effect not only for Egypt, but for the whole of
Southern Europe, whose genial climate is mainly caused by the warm air
generated on these sun-baked barren lands.

Now let us see what the desert is like in appearance. It is a very
common impression that the desert is simply a flat expanse of sand,
colourless and unbroken; in reality it is quite different, being full
of variations, which give it much the same diversity of interest as
the ocean.

The colour of the sand varies infinitely, according to its situation.
Thus the desert which surrounds Assuan, which is composed of decimated
granite and Nile silt, is generally grey; in Nubia the sand is formed
of powdered sandstone of a curiously golden tint, while the desert of
Suez, which abuts on Cairo and the Delta provinces, is generally white
in tone, due to the admixture of limestone dust of which it is largely
composed. The great Sahara also is no monotonous stretch of sand, but
is to a great extent covere