hich is carried away by the above-named channels to
inundate Lower Egypt.

I thoroughly explored the beautiful country of the Salaam and Angrab,
and on the 14th of April we pushed on for Gallabat, the frontier
market-town of Abyssinia.

We arrived at our old friend, the Atbara River, at the sharp angle as
it issues from the mountains. At this place it was in its infancy. The
noble Atbara, whose course we had tracked for hundreds of weary
miles, and whose tributaries we had so carefully examined, was here a
second-class mountain torrent, about equal to the Royan, and not to be
named in comparison with the Salaam or Angrab. The power of the Atbara
depended entirely upon the western drainage of the Abyssinian Alps; of
itself it was insignificant until aided by the great arteries of
the mountain-chain. The junction of the Salaam at once changed its
character, and the Settite or Taccazzy completed its importance as the
great river of Abyssinia, that has washed down the fertile soil of those
regions to create the Delta of Lower Egypt, and to perpetuate that Delta
by annual deposits, that ARE NOW FORMING A NEW EGYPT BENEATH THE WATERS
OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. We had seen the Atbara a bed of glaring
sand--a mere continuation of the burning desert that surrounded its
course--fringed by a belt of withered trees, like a monument sacred to
the memory of a dead river. We had seen the sudden rush of waters when,
in the still night, the mysterious stream had invaded the dry bed and
swept all before it like an awakened giant; we knew at that moment "the
rains were falling in Abyssinia," although the sky above us was without
a cloud. We had subsequently witnessed that tremendous rainfall, and
seen the Atbara at its grandest flood. We had traced each river
and crossed each tiny stream that fed the mighty Atbara from the
mountain-chain, and we now, after our long journey, forded the Atbara in
its infancy, hardly knee-deep, over its rocky bed of about sixty yards'
width, and camped in the little village of Toganai, on the rising ground
upon the opposite side. It was evening, and we sat upon an angarep among
the lovely hills that surrounded us, and looked down upon the Atbara for
the last time, as the sun sank behind the rugged mountain of Ras el Feel
(the elephant's head). Once more I thought of that wonderful river Nile,
that could flow forever through the exhausting deserts of sand, while
the Atbara, during the summer months, shrank to a d