t, as mud
undisguised; when dry, as dust-storm.

Egypt, says Herodotus, is a gift of the Nile. A truer or more pregnant
word was never spoken. Of course it is just equally true, in a way,
that Bengal is a gift of the Ganges, and that Louisiana and Arkansas
are gifts of the Mississippi; but with this difference, that in the
case of the Nile the dependence is far more obvious, far freer from
disturbing or distracting details. For that reason, and also because
the Nile is so much more familiar to most English-speaking folk than
the American rivers, I choose Egypt first as my type of a regular
mud-land. But in order to understand it fully you mustn't stop all your
time in Cairo and the Delta; you mustn't view it only from the terrace
of Shepheard's Hotel or the rocky platform of the Great Pyramid at
Ghizeh: you must push up country early, under Mr. Cook's care, to Luxor
and the First Cataract. It is up country that Egypt unrolls itself
visibly before your eyes in the very process of making: it is there
that the full importance of good, rich black mud first forces itself
upon you by undeniable evidence.

For remember that, from a point above Berber to the sea, the dwindling
Nile never receives a single tributary, a single drop of fresh water.
For more than fifteen hundred miles the ever-lessening river rolls on
between bare desert hills and spreads fertility over the deep valley in
their midst--just as far as its own mud sheet can cover the barren
rocky bottom, and no farther. For the most part the line of demarcation
between the grey bare desert and the cultivable plain is as clear and
as well-defined as the margin of sea and land: you can stand with one
foot on the barren rock and one on the green soil of the tilled and
irrigated mud-land. For the water rises up to a certain level, and to
that level accordingly it distributes both mud and moisture: above it
comes the arid rock, as destitute of life, as dead and bare and lonely
as the centre of Sahara. In and out, in waving line, up to the base of
the hills, cultivation and greenery follow, with absolute accuracy, the
line of highest flood-level; beyond it the hot rock stretches dreary
and desolate. Here and there islands of sandstone stand out above the
green sea of doura or cotton; here and there a bay of fertility runs
away up some lateral valley, following the course of the mud; but one
inch above the inundation-mark vegetation and life stop short all at
once with abs