Nile Sentence Examples

A tribe living on the banks of the Nile between Wadi Halfa and Assuan are called Barabra.

The area devoted to cotton in Egypt is about 1,800,000 acres, and nine-tenths of it is in the Nile Delta.

But the contents of early tombs and dwellings and indications supplied by such objects as stone vases and seal-stones show that the Cretans had already attained to a considerable degree of culture, and had opened out communication with the Nile valley in the time of the earliest Egyptian dynasties.

Cavendish (1896-1897) followed somewhat in Donaldson Smith's steps, and the last named traveller again crossed Somaliland in his journey from Berbera via Lake Rudolf to the Upper Nile (1899-Igoo).

Beyond the south-east corner of the lake is a depression known as the Bahr-el-Ghazal (not to be confounded with the Nile affluent of the same name).

The so-called Esna barrage across the Nile (built 1906-1908) is 30 m.

They occupy the country west of the White Nile between the Shilluk territory and Dar Nuba, being found principally in Kordofan.

Schweinfurth declares them the best-looking of the Nile nomads, and the men are types of physical beauty, with fine heads, erect athletic bodies and sinewy limbs.

The two first explain themselves; Nili is the season in which the Nile overflows its banks.

Its final fall was due to the rise of the Arabic city of Fostat on the right bank of the Nile almost opposite the northern end of the old capital; and its ruins, so far as they still lay above ground, gradually disappeared, being used as a quarry for the new city, and afterwards for Cairo.

Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a Northwest Passage around this continent, that we would find?

From a geological standpoint, the Great Australian Plain and the fertile valley of the Nile have had a similar origin.

A Russo-Turkish fleet wrested Corfu from the French; and the Neapolitan Bourbons, emboldened by the news of the battle of the Nile, began hostilities with France which preluded the war of the Second Coalition.

Moreover, it is hardly probable that a great leader like Moses remained unaffected by the higher conceptions tending towards monotheism which prevailed in the great empires on the Nile and on the Euphrates.

It owed its fertility to the Nile, which, inundating the land near its banks, was distributed by means of canals over more distant portions of its valley.

Burlus is noted for its water-melons, which are yellow within and come into season after those grown on the banks of the Nile.

Since the pacification of the Sudan by the British (1886-1889) there has been some revival of trade between Gondar and the regions of the Blue Nile.

The fresh-water fish seem in their affinities to be nearly allied to those of the Niger and the Nile.

The chief towns are on the banks of the Blue Nile.

The capital of Aloa, which appears to have been at one time a powerful Christian state, was at Soba on .the Blue Nile.

The most noteworthy, however, of the earlier travellers was James Bruce, the explorer of the Blue Nile.

To this list should be added the names of those who, like Sir Samuel Baker, explored the Blue Nile.

In company with Germanus he visited Egypt, and dwelt for several years among the ascetics of the desert near the banks of the Nile.

When the other branches and the Alexandria canal silted up, Rosetta prospered like its sister port of Damietta on the eastern branch; the main trade of the overland route to India passed through it until Mehemet Ali cut a new canal joining Alexandria to the Nile.

Among the travellers of whose information he was thus able to avail himself were Pytheas of Massilia, Patroclus, who had visited the Caspian (285-282 B.C.), Megasthenes, who visited Palibothra on the Ganges, as ambassador of Seleucus Nicator (302-291 B.C.), Timosthenus of Rhodes, the commander of the fleet of Ptolemy Philadelphus (284-246 B.C.) who wrote a treatise " On harbours," and Philo, who visited Meroe on the upper Nile.

The ancient Canopic mouth of the Nile (now dry) was 12 m.

If such a city was to be on the Egyptian coast, there was only one possible site, behind the screen of the Pharos island and removed from the silt thrown out by Nile mouths.

As native influences, however, began to reassert themselves in the Nile valley, Alexandria gradually became an alien city, more and more detached from Egypt; and, losing much of its commerce as the peace of the empire broke up during the 3rd century A.D., it declined fast in population and splendour.

The building of Cairo in 969, and, above all, the discovery of the route to the East by the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, nearly ruined its commerce; the canal, which supplied it with Nile water, became blocked; and although it remained a principal Egyptian port, at which most European visitors in the Mameluke and Ottoman periods landed, we hear little of it until about the beginning of the 19th century.

He restored its water communication with the Nile by making the Mahmudiya canal, finished in 1820; and he established at Ras et-Tin his favourite residence.

Since the restoration of tranquillity and the establishment of sound political and economic conditions in the Nile valley, Alexandria has greatly expanded.

The plant is now extinct in Lower Egypt, but is found in the Upper Nile regions and in Abyssinia.

The two layers thus " woven " - Pliny uses the word texere in describing this part of the process - formed a sheet (plagula or net), which was then soaked in water of the Nile.

On the 10th the force left the Nile at Duem and struck inland across the almost waterless wastes of Kordofan for Obeid.

Suez is supplied with water by the fresh-water canal, which starts from the Nile at Cairo and is terminated at Suez by a lock which, north of the town, joins it to the gulf.

In the 7th century a town called Kolzum stood, on a site adjacent to that of Suez, at the southern end of the canal which then joined the Red Sea to the Nile.

Nelson's destruction of the French fleet at the battle of the Nile disconcerted Bonaparte's plans; he hoped to pursue his designs through Syria, and laid siege to Acre, which, however, successfully held out.

In February "Soo, the " Genereux " (74), one of the few ships which escaped from the Nile, sailed from Toulon with three corvettes, under Rear-admiral Puree, to relieve Malta.

Three other survivors of the Nile were at anchor in Malta - the " Guillaume Tell " (80), and two frigates, the " Diane " and the " Justice."

The frigates made an attempt to get off on the 24th of August, but only the " Justice," a solitary survivor of the squadron which fought at the Nile, reached Toulon.

The plan which he laid to attack it in the Golfe Jouan in June may possibly have served to some extent as an inspiration, if not as a model, to Nelson for the battle of the Nile, but the wind was unfavourable, and the attack could not be carried out.

The lake has become the Bahr-el-Jebel, or Mountain river, as this section of the Nile is called.

Its waters, as stated above, mingle with those of the Victoria Nile, their united volume flowing north towards the Mediterranean.

Albert Nyanza, on the other hand, is threatened in the distant future with destruction from another cause - the filling of its bed by the alluvium poured into it by the Semliki, the Victoria Nile and, in a lesser degree, by other streams. The Semliki receives directly or indirectly the whole of the drainage of Ruwenzori, and also that of the eastern face of the Congo mountains as well as the drainage basin of Albert Edward Nyanza.

At the northern end of the lake the sediment brought down by the Victoria Nile is producing a similar effect.

It seems probable that, in a period geologically not very remote, the " Albertine " system will consist of one great river, extending from the northern slopes of the Kivu range, where the Ruchuru has its rise, to the existing junction of the Victoria Nile with Albert Nyanza.

Of the water received by Albert Nyanza annually (omitting the Victoria Nile from the calculation) between 50 and 60% is lost by evaporation, whilst 24,265,000,000 cubic metres are annually withdrawn by the Bahr-el-Jebel.

The " Albertine " system plays a comparatively insignificant part in the annual flood rise of the White Nile, but to its waters are due the maintenance of a constant supply to this river throughout the year.

Lyons' The Physiography of the River Nile and its Basin (Cairo, 1906), and the authorities quoted in those works.

One is an inscription in the rocky valley of Hammamat, through which the desert road from the Red Sea to the valley of Egypt opens on the green fields and palm groves of the river Nile near Coptos..

Baird landed at Kosseir, conducted his army across the desert to Kena on the Nile, and thence to Cairo.

The Nile supplied a waterway for the conveyance of fuel and for the distribution of the finished wares.

Between the Jur and the Nile, and following a course generally parallel with these rivers, several streams run north from the Congo-Nile watershed and join the Bahr-el-Ghazal.

From the confluence of the Lol with the Jur, above which point none of the rivers is called Bahr-el-Ghazal, to the junction with the Nile at Lake No, is a distance of about 200 m.

The exploration of the river followed the ascent of the White Nile by the Egyptian expeditions of 1839-1842.

In 1859 a Venetian, Giovanni Miani, penetrated the southern regions of the Ghazal basin and was the first to bring back reports of a great river (the Welle) flowing west beyond the Nile watershed.

In 1862 a Frenchman named Lejean surveyed the main river, of which he published a map. In 1863 Miss Alexandrine Tinne (q.v.) with a large party of friends and scientists ascended the Ghazal with the intention of seeing how far west the basin of the Nile extended.

See NILE and the authorities there quoted, especially Sir William Garstin's Report upon the Basin of the Upper Nile, Egypt, No.

A high wall runs behind these buildings parallel with the Nile.

They claim to rule the Kasu'or Meroitic Ethiopians; and the fifth inscription records an expedition along the Atbara and the Nile to punish the Nuba and Kasu, and a fragment of a Greek inscription from Meroe was recognized by Sayce as commemorating a king of Axum.

It stands at the centre of the great S-shaped bend of the Nile, and from it the railway to Wadi Halfa strikes straight across the Nubian desert, a little west of the old caravan route to Korosko.

It may be taken to include the Nile valley from Assuan near the First Cataract southwards to the confluence of the White and Blue Niles, stretching in this direction for about 560 m.

Within the limits indicated the country consists mainly of sandy desert and rugged and arid steppes and plateaus through which the Nile forces its way to Upper Egypt.

Between those places the river makes a great S-shaped bend, the region west of the Nile within the lower bend being called the Bayuda Desert, and that east of the Nile the Nubian.

Except along the narrow valley of the Nile only the southernmost portion of Nubia contains arable land.

According to Homer, his resting-place was the island of Pharos, near the mouth of the Nile; in Virgil his home is the .island of Carpathus, between Crete and Rhodes.

Paez, who is said to have been the first European to visit the source of the Blue Nile, died of fever in 1622.

He visited Spain in 1866, Egypt in 1868, when he went up the Nile with Ferdinand de Lesseps in a steamer lent by the Khedive.

It is the headquarters of the mudiria (province) of the Upper Nile.

In front of the station is a long low island, and when the Nile is at its lowest this channel becomes dry.

Several roads from Kordofan converge on the Nile at this point, and near the station is the residence of the mek, or king, of the Shilluk tribe, whose designation of the post was adopted when it was decided to abandon the use of Fashoda.

Among other laws Bonaparte enacted that French should at once be the official language, that 30 young men should every year be sent to France for their education; that all foreign monks be expelled, that no new priests be ordained before employment could be found for those existing; that ecclesiastical jurisdiction should cease; that neither the bishop nor the priests could charge fees for sacramental ministrations, &c. Stoppage of trade, absence of work (in a population of which more than half had been living on foreign revenues of the knights), and famine, followed the defeat of Bonaparte at the Nile, and the failure of his plans to make Malta a centre of French trade.

Although numerous reinforcements arrived, he would have found it very difficult to storm the place previous to the inundation of the Nile but for treachery within the citadel; the Greeks who remained there were either made prisoners or put to the sword.

His administration of Egypt was moderate and statesmanlike, and under his rule the produce of the Nile Valley was a constant source of supply to the cities of Arabia.

It is true that the Florentine Simone Sigoli, who visited Cairo in 1384, in his Viaggio al Monte Sinai still speaks of "Presto Giovanni" as a monarch dwelling in India; but it is the India which is conterminous with the dominions of the soldan of Egypt, and whose lord is master of the Nile, to close or open its discharge upon Egypt.

The Northern (formerly called the Nile) province is perhaps the hottest part of Uganda.

Like the districts round Lake Rudolf, the average altitude (near the Nile) is not more than 2000 ft., but the rainfall is more abundant than in the terrible Rudolf region, being an average of 30 in.

The mass of Elgon can be seen from the northeast coast of Victoria Nyanza, from near the main Nile stream, from the heights overlooking Lake Rudolf and from the Kikuyu escarpment.

The Eastern province consists of well-forested, undulating land (Busoga) on the coast of the lake, a vast extent of marsh round the lake-like backwaters of the Victoria Nile (Lakes Ibrahim or Kioga, Kwania, &c.) and a more stony, open, grain-growing country (Bukedi, Lobor, Karamojo).

But much of the lower ground is stony and poor in vegetation, while the lowland near the main Nile is exceedingly marshy.

The Ripon Falls, in the centre of the northern coast of the Victoria Nyanza, at the head of the exquisitely beautiful Napoleon Gulf, mark the exit of the fully born Nile from the great lake.

The Victoria Nile tumbles over 50 m.

Here it broadens into Lake Ibrahim (Kioga) (in reality a vast backwater of the Nile discovered by Colonel Chaille Long in 1874), and continues navigable (save for sudd obstacles at times) right through Lake Ibrahim and thence northwards for loo m.

Between Karuma and Murchison Falls the Victoria Nile is unnavigable.

Archean rocks - gneiss, schist and granite - cover large areas through which the Nile cuts its way in alternate narrow gorges and open reaches.

The Nile at the Ripon Falls leaps over a basalt dike.

The swampy regions of the Nile and of the Eastern province are characterized by an extravagant growth of papyrus and other rushes, of reeds and coarse grass.

Kakindu, Mruli, Fowera and Fajao are government stations and trading posts on the Victoria Nile; Wadelai, Nimule and Gondokoro (q.v.) are similar stations on the Mountain Nile.

Government boats also ply on the Victoria Nile and Lake Kioga (Ibrahim) and on Albert Nyanza and the Mountain Nile.

The protectorate is divided into five provinces - Rudolf, Eastern (formerly central), kingdom of Buganda, Western, and Northern (formerly Nile) - and these again into a number of administrative districts.

There was probably no direct intercourse with Egypt by way of the Nile, owing to the lake-like marshes between Bor and Fashoda, but instead an overland traffic with Ethiopia (the Land of Punt) via Mt Elgon and the Rudolf regions.

In the 'forties and 'fifties Egyptian officials, Austrian missionaries, and British, Dutch, Italian, and German explorers had carried our knowledge of the Nile beyond Khartum as far south as Gondokoro.

In the early 'seventies Sir Samuel Baker (who had discovered Albert Nyanza) extended the rule of the Egyptian Sudan as far south as the Victoria Nile.

But owing to the indirect influence of the British government, exercised through Sir John Kirk at Zanzibar, the Egyptian dominions were prevented from coming south of the Victoria Nile.

Meanwhile the Sudanese at Luba's (numbering 600, with 200 Mahommedan Baganda) escaped, proceeded up the east bank of the Nile and crossed the river, making their way to Mruli.

Colonel Martyr at the close of the year (1899) undertook an expedition up the Nile, and extended the limits of the protectorate in that direction.

Wollaston, From Ruwenzori to the Congo (2908); Seymour Vandeleur, Campaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger (1898).

He reached Pelusium, but failed to cross the Nile.

From it a road, provided with watering stations, leads north-west across the desert to the Nile at Coptos.

There are, however, extensive oak, pine and beech forests in the highlands, and many beautiful oases in the deeply sunk valleys, and along the rivers, especially beside the Ebro, which is, therefore, often called the "Nile of Aragon."

He was the author of the De mensura orbis terrae, finished in 825, which contains the earliest clear notice of a European discovery of and settlement in Iceland and the most definite Western reference to the old freshwater canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, finally blocked up in 767.

Of the old Egyptian freshwater canal Dicuil learnt from one "brother Fidelis," probably another Irish monk, who, on his way to Jerusalem, sailed along the "Nile" into the Red Sea-passing on his way the "Barns of Joseph" or Pyramids of Giza, which are well described.

The town is on the right bank of the Nile, 1140 ft.

It remains the centre and market-place for the produce of the Nile valley for a considerable distance.

It was the capital of the mudiria until 1905, in which year the headquarters of the province were transferred to Ed Darner, a town near the confluence of the Nile and Atbara.

That his early outdoor life furnished a definite training for his after career is indicated by the fact that when he was about fourteen years of age he went with his father on a tour up the Nile as far as Luxor, and on this journey he made a collection of Egyptian birds found in the Nile valley, which is now in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. Mr Roosevelt was educated at Harvard University, where he graduated in the class of 1880; 2 his record for scholarship was creditable, and his interest in sports and athletics was especially manifest in his skill as a boxer.

His last great engineering work was the construction of the steel bridges for the Nile.

Assiut stands near the west bank of the Nile across which, just below the town, is a barrage, completed in 1902, consisting of an open weir, 2733 ft.

It was known to Ptolemy and the Arabian geographers, and was at one time supposed to be a mouth of the Nile, and, later (18th century), a branch of the Niger.

Smith Woodward has observed that the decline of many groups of fishes is heralded by the tendency to assume elongate and finally eel-shaped forms, as seen independently, for example, among the declining Acanthodians or palaeozoic sharks, among the modern crossopterygian Polypterus and Calamoichthys of the Nile, in the modern dipneustan Lepidosiren and Protopterus, in the Triassic chondrostean Belonorhynchus, as well as in the bow-fin (A7nia) and the garpike (Lepidosteus).

In 1909 it was connected by railway with Khartum, and thus the hindrance to trade through the Blue Nile being scarcely navigable between January and June was overcome.

Similar observances are found in our own day on the Upper Nile; the Nuba and Nuer worship the bull; the Angoni of Central Africa and the Sakalava of Madagascar keep sacred bulls.

The other variety is met with along the White Nile, in Lower Egypt, and at various points on the African coast of the Mediterranean.

He compares it also to the change of Moses' rod into a snake, of the Nile into blood, to the virtue inherent in Elijah's mantle or in the wood of the cross or in the clay mixt of dust and the Lord's spittle, or in Elisha's relics which raised a corpse to life, or in the burning bush.

The first community established by him was at Tabennae, an island of the Nile in Upper Egypt.

The barrage at the head of the Nile delta, and the regulating sluices across the Nile at Assiut and Esna in Upper Egypt below Assuan, are examples of draw-door weirs, with their numerous openings closed by sluice-gates sliding on free rollers, which control the discharge of water from the river for irrigation.

The next year, in circumstances curiously like those which were repeated when the French expedition under Marchand menaced Britain in Egypt by seeking to establish a post on the Upper Nile, George Washington, a young Virginian officer, was sent to drive the French from their Fort Duquesne on the Ohio river, where now stands Pittsburgh.

Alluvial soils are almost invariably of great fertility; it is due to the alluvial mud annually deposited by the Nile that the dwellers in Egypt have been able to grow their crops for over 4000 years without artificial fertilization.

The part played by the "Zealous" at the battle of the Nile was brilliant.

The Sea of the Great Bend would seem to be the sea fed by the north-to-south waters of Naharin, just as the Mediterranean, fed by the south-to-north waters of the Nile, is called the Great Circle (šn wr).

Grant, who spent part of 1862 there, the king, Kamurasi, putting many obstacles in the way of the travellers continuing their journey down the Nile.

At this time ivory and slave traders, nominally Egyptian subjects, penetrated as far south as Unyoro, and a few years later (1870-74) Baker, as governorgeneral of the Equatorial Provinces, extended Egyptian influence over the country and placed a garrison at Foweira on the Victoria Nile.

The ibis is chiefly an inhabitant of the Nile basin from Dongola southward, as well as of Kordofan and Sennar; whence about midsummer it moves northwards to Egypt.

Northward, Central and East African organizations, following the Cape to Cairo route, are in touch with North African agencies working up the Nile.

To the Greeks Amasis assigned the commercial colony of Naucratis on the Canopic branch of the Nile, and when the temple of Delphi was burnt he contributed I 000 talents to the rebuilding.

To the east of this is a large space, now open, but once very possibly roofed, and forming a basilica in two storeys, built against the rock on the north side, and there decorated with pilasters also; and to the east again is an apsidal hall, often identified with the temple itself, in which the famous mosaic with scenes from the Nile, now in the Palazzo Barberini on the uppermost terrace, was found.

The Caledonian Railway bridge at Glasgow, the reconstructed Tay bridge (1882-7), Forth bridge (1882-9), the Tower bridge, London, and the Nile lgridge at Cairo were amongst his principal achievements.

On it converge various trade routes, notably from Darfur and from Dueim, a town on the White Nile 125 m.

But the railway from Khartum to El Obeid, via Sennar, built in 1909-1911, crosses the Nile some 60 m.

Taiara, on the route between El Obeid and the Nile, was destroyed by the dervishes but has been rebuilt and is a thriving mart for the gum trade.

Although rivers rising in more favoured regions may traverse deserts on their way to the sea, as in the case of the Nile and the Colorado, the fundamental physical condition of an arid area is that it contributes nothing to the waters of the ocean.

Where a river crosses a desert at a level near that of the general surface, irrigation can be carried on with extremely profitable results, as has been done in the valley of the Nile and in parts of the Great Basin of North America; in cases, however, where the river has cut deeply and flows far below the general surface, irrigation is too expensive.

This was the manner of life which St Anthony (q.v.) began to lead, c. 270; but after fifteen years he withdrew to a deserted fort on the east bank of the Nile, opposite the Fayum.

The party of travellers whose journey in 394 is narrated in the Historia monachorum found at the chief towns along the Nile from Lycopolis (Assiut or Siut) to Alexandria, and in the deserts that fringed the river, monastic habitations, sometimes of hermits, sometimes of several monks living together but rather the life of hermits than of cenobites.

Haifa is the northern terminus of the Sudan railway and the southern terminus of a steamboat service on the Nile, which, running to Shellal (Assuan), connects there with the Egyptian railways.

It is certain that, until the cultivator availed himself of the natural overflow of the Nile to saturate the soil, Egypt must have been a desert, and it is a very small step from that to baling up the water from the river and pouring it over lands which the natural flood has not touched.

All along the Nile banks from morning to night may be seen brown-skinned peasants working these shadi fs, tier above tier, so as to raise the water 15 or 16 ft.

It is not improbable that Assyria and Babylon, with their splendid rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, may have taken the idea from the Nile, and that Carthage and Phoenicia as well as Greece and Italy may have followed the same example.

The great lakes of Central Africa, Victoria and Albert Nyanza, and the vast swamp tract of the Sudan, do for the Nile on a gigantic scale what Lakes Maggiore and Como do for the rivers Ticino and Adda.

But for these great reservoirs the Nile would decrease in summer to quite an insignificant stream.

Similar in character was the ancient irrigation of Egypt practised merely during the Nile flood - a system which still prevails in part of Upper Egypt.

But to keep sugar-cane, or indigo, or cotton alive in summer before the monsoon sets in in India or the Nile rises in Egypt the field should be watered every ten days or fortnight, while rice requires a constant supply of water passing over it.

Character- As every one knows, the valley of the Nile outside of Istics of the tropics is practically devoid of rainfall.

This wealth and prosperity are due to two very remarkable properties of the Nile.

The season of its rise and its fall, and the height attained by its waters during the highest flood and at lowest Nile vary to a comparatively small extent.

Year after year the Nile rises at the same period, it attains its maximum in September and begins to diminish first rapidly till about the end of December, and then more slowly and more steadily until the following June.

This regularity of flow is the first exceptional excellence of the river Nile.

It is the possession of these two properties that imparts to the Nile a value quite unique among rivers, and gives to the farmers of the Nile Valley advantages over those of any rain-watered land in the world.

Until the r9th century irrigation in Egypt on a large scale was practised merely during the Nile flood.

Throughout all Egypt the Nile is deltaic in character; that is, the slope of the country in the valley is away from the river and not towards it.

It is easy, then, when the Nile is low, to cut short, deep canals in the river banks, which fill as the flood rises, and carry the precious mud-charged water into these great flats.

No other was known in the Nile Valley until the country fell, early in the r9th century, under the vigorous rule of Mehemet Ali Pasha.

Cotton and sugar-cane would fetch far higher prices, but they could only be grown while the Nile was low, and they required water at all seasons.

It has already been said that the rise of the Nile is about 251 ft., so that a canal constructed to draw water out of the river while at its lowest must be 251 ft.

As the river daily fell, of course the water in the canals fell too, and since they were never dug deep enough to draw water from the very bottom of the river, they occasionally ran dry altogether in the month of June, when the river was at its lowest, and when, being the month of greatest heat, water was more than ever necessary for the cotton crop. Thus large tracts which had been sown, irrigated, weeded and nurtured for perhaps three months perished in the fourth, while all the time the precious Nile water was flowing useless to the sea.

The task of constructing this great work was committed to Mougel Bey, a French engineer of ability, who designed and constructed the great barrage across the two branches of the Nile at the apex of the delta, about 1 2 m.

Each barrage was provided with locks to pass Nile boats 160 by 28 ft.

Considering his want of experience of such rivers as the Nile, and the great difficulties he had to contend with under a succession of ignorant Turkish rulers, it would be unfair to blame him because, until it fell into the hands of British engineers in 1884, the work was condemned as a hopeless failure.

The eastern canal was never dug at all until Nile.

The barrage rests entirely on the alluvial bed of the Nile.

The working season lasted only from the end of November to the end of June, while the Nile was low; and the difficulty of getting in the foundations was increased, as, in the interests of irrigation and to supply the Menufia canal, water was held up every season while the work was in progress to as much as Io ft.

Numerous regulating bridges and locks have been built to give absolute control of the water and facilities for navigation; and since 1901 a second weir has been constructed opposite Zilta, across the Damietta branch of the Nile, to improve the irrigation of the Dakhilia province.

The ancient system seems simple enough; but in order really to flood the whole Nile Valley during seasons of defective as well as favourable floods, a system of regulating sluices, culverts and syphons is necessary; and for want of such a system it was found, in the feeble flood of 1888, that there was an area of 260,000 acres over which the water never flowed.

When the surface-water of a river is higher than the fields right and left, there is nothing easier than to breach the embankments and flood the fields - in fact, it may be more difficult to prevent their being flooded than to flood them - but in ordinary floods the Nile is never higher than all the bordering lands, and in years of feeble flood it is higher than none of them.

Owing to the deltaic nature of the Nile Valley, the fields on the banks are 3 ft.

The result has been, as already stated, that with a complete failure of the Nile flood the loss to the country has been trifling compared with that of 1877.

The khedive, having acquired vast estates in the provinces of Assiut, Miniah, BeniSuef and the Fayum, resolved to grow sugar-cane on a very large scale, and with this object constructed a very important perennial canal, named the Ibrahimia, taking out of the left bank of the Nile at the town of Assiut, and flowing parallel to the river for about 200 m., with an important branch which irrigates the Fayum.

There being at its head no weir across the Nile, the water in the Ibrahimia canal used to rise and fall with that of the river, and so the supply was apt to run short during the hottest months, as was the case with the canals of Lower Egypt before the barrage was built.

To supply the Ibrahimia canal at all during low Nile, it had been necessary to carry on dredging operations at an annual cost of about £12,000.

This has now been rectified, in the same way as in Lower Egypt, by the construction of a weir across the Nile, intended to Assiut give complete control over the river and to raise the Weir water-surface 8.2 ft.

The Assiut weir across the Nile is just about half a mile long.

The work was begun at the end of 1898 and finished early in 1902 - in time to avert over a large area the disastrous effects which would otherwise have resulted from the low Nile of that year.

To render the basin lands of the Kena province independent of the flood being bad or good, another barrage was built across the Nile at Esna at a cost of £i,000,000.

The idea of ponding up the superfluous flood discharge of the river is not a new one, and if Herodotus is to be believed, it was a system actually pursued at a very early period of Egyptian history, when Lake Moeris in the Fayum was filled at each Nile flood, and drawn upon as the river ran down.

When British engineers first undertook the management of Egyptian irrigation many representations were made to them of the advantage of storing the Nile water; but they consistently maintained that before entering on that subject it was their duty to utilize every drop of the water at their disposal.

This seemed all the more evident, as at that time financial reasons made the construction of a costly Nile dam out of the question.

Every year, however, between 1890 and 1902 the supply of the Nile during May and June was actually exhausted, no water at all flowing then out into the sea.

The first difficulty that presented itself in carrying this out, was that during the months of highest flood the Nile is so charged with alluvial matter that to pond it up then would inevitably lead to a deposit of silt in the reservoir, which would in no great number of years fill it up. It was found, however, that the flood water was comparatively free from deposit by the middle of November, while the river was still so high that, without injuring the irrigation, water might go on being stored up until March.

The site selected for the great Nile dam was at the head of the First Cataract above Assuan.

These, when fully open, are capable of discharging the ordinary maximum Nile flood of 350,000 cub.

No assessment can be levied on lands which have not been watered, and the law of Egypt requires that in order to render land liable to taxation the water during the Nile flood must have flowed naturally over it.

This increase was not due to famine in Sind, for that rainless province depends always on the Indus, as Egypt does on the Nile, and where there is no rainfall there can be no drought.

He built also a great fortress at Avaris, in the Sethroite nome, east of the Bubastite branch of the Nile.

Besides a valuable account of the principal sacred sites of Judaea, Samaria and Galilee as they existed in the 7th century, he also gives important information as to Alexandria and Constantinople, briefly describes Damascus and Tyre, the Nile and the Lipari volcanoes, and refers to the caliph Moawiya I .

On the opposite (west) bank of the Nile is the village of Metemma, whence there is a caravan route across the Bayuda Desert to the Merawi (Merowe) by Jebel Barkal; this was the route followed by the desert column under Sir Herbert Stewart in 1884 in the Gordon relief expedition.

In 1772 James Bruce stayed some time at Shendi - then governed by a woman - on his way to Egypt after visiting the source of the Blue Nile.

There is a considerable area of fertile land on either side of the Nile in the neighbourhood.

The proud old civilizations of the Euphrates and the Nile might ignore it, but the ruder barbarian peoples in East and West, on whose coasts the Greek colonies had been planted, came in various degrees under its spell.

At the same time Greek merchants had begun to find their way up the Nile and even to the Oases.

A Greek city Naucratis was allowed to arise at the Bolbitinic mouth of the Nile.

They seem to have suffered no other community in the Nile Valley with the independent life of a Greek city, for the Greek and Macedonian soldier-colonies settled in the Fayum or elsewhere had no political self-existence.

From the Ptolemaic kingdom Hellenism early travelled up the Nile into Ethiopia.

It is built partly on the alluvial plain of the Nile valley and partly on the rocky slopes of the Mokattam hills, which rise 550 ft.

Below lies the city with its ancient walls and lofty towers, its gardens and squares, its palaces and its mosques, with their delicately-carved domes and minarets covered with fantastic tracery, the port of Bulak, the gardens and palace of Shubra, the broad river studded with islands, the valley of the Nile dotted with groups of trees, with the pyramids on the north horizon, and on the east the barren cliffs, backed by a waste of sand.

The narrow canal, El Khalig, which branched from the Nile at Old Cairo and traversed the city from S.W.

Facing the river immediately north of the Great Nile bridge are the large barracks, called Kasr-en-Nil, and the new museum of Egyptian antiquities (opened in 1902).

In the centre is a well called Joseph's Well, sunk in the solid rock to the level of the Nile.

On the west bank of the Nile, opposite the southern end of Roda Island, is the small town of Giza or Gizeh, a fortified place of considerable importance in the times of the Mamelukes.

Though rain seldom falls, exhalations from the river, especially when the flood has begun to subside, render the districts near the Nile damp during September, October and November, and in winter early morning fogs are not uncommon.

The Nile crocodile makes a hole in white sand, which is then filled up and smoothed over; the mother sleeps upon the nest, and keeps watch over her eggs, and when these are near hatching - af ter about twelve weeks - she removes the 18 in.

General Character.The distinguishing features of Egypt are the Nile and the desert.

The Nile, however, has transformed the land through which it passes.

Beyond the Nile valley east and west stretch great deserts, containing here and there fertile oases.

Groves of palm-trees are occasionally seen besides those around the villages, but other trees are rare., In Upper Egypt the Nile valley is very narrow and is bounded by mountains of no great height.

The Delta coast-line, composed of sandhills and, occasionally, limestone rocks, is low, with cape-like projections at the Nile mouths formed by the river silt.

The Fayum.The fertile province of the Fayum, West of the Nile and separated from it by some 6 m.

The Delta.About 30 N., where the city of Cairo stands, the hills which have hitherto run parallel with the Nile turn W.N.W.

This area is watered by the Damietta and the Rosetta branches of the Nile, and by a network of canals.

These sand-beds are sharply distinguished by their color from the overlying Nile deposit, and are of considerable thickness.

Its limits east and west are determined bi the higher ground of the deserts, to which the silt-laden waters 0 the Nile in flood time cannot reach.

East of the Damietta mouth of the Nile this strip is in place not more than 200 yds.

Mareotis has no outlet, and the water is kept at a uniform level by means of powerful pumps which neutralize the effect of the Nile flood.

Canal and opening indicate the course of the ancient Sebennytic branch of the Nile.

It extends from very near the Damietta branch of the Nile to PortSaid.

That part of the lake east of where the canal was excavated is now marshy plain and the Tanitic and Pelusiac mouths of the Nile are dry.

In the Fayum province farther south is the Birket-el-Kerun, a lake, lying below the level of the Nile, some 30 m.

From this it will be seen that the desert in Egypt is mainly a rock desert, where the surface is formed of disintegrated rock, the finer particles of which have been carried away by the wind; and east of the Nile this is almost exclusively the case.

East of the oases of Baharia and Farafra is a very striking line of these sand dunes; rarely more than 3 miles wide, it extends almost continuously from Moghara in the north, passing along the west side of Kharga Oasis to a point near the Nile in the neighborhood of Abu Siinbelhaving thus a length of nearly 550 m.

Oases.In the western desert lie the five large oases of Egypt, namely, Siwa, Baharia, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga or Great Oasis, occupying depressions in the plateau or, in the case of the last three, large indentations in the face of limestone escarpments which form the western versant of the Nile valley hills.

Between Thebes and Khartum the western banks of the Nile are composed of Nubian Sandstone, which extends westward from the river to the edge of the great Libyan Desert, where it forms the bed rock.

The Nile deposits its mud over the valley before reaching the sea, and consequently the Delta receives little additional material.

The cliffs bordering the Nile are largely quarried for limestone and sandstone.

A white fog, dense and cold, sometimes rises from the Nile in the morning, but it is of short duration and rare occurrence.

It is this Etesian wind which enables sailing boats constantly to ascend the Nile, against its strong and rapid current.

The lotus, greatly prized for its flowers by the ancient inhabitants, is still found in the Delta, though never in the Nile itself.

The ibex is found in the Sinaitic peninsula and the hills between the Nile and the Red Sea, and the mouflon, or maned sheep, is occasionally seen in the same regions.

Fish are plentiful in the Nile, both scaled and without scales.

The Tetrodon, or ball fish, is found in the Red Sea, as well as in the Nile.

Some 300 species of birds are found in Egypt, and one of the most striking features of a journey up the Nile is the abundance of bird life.

The flamingo, common in the lakes of Lower Egypt, is not found on the Nile.

Chief Towns.Cairo (q.v.) the capital,a city of Arab foundation, is built on the east bank of the Nile, about 12 m.

Damanhur (38,752) lies on the railway between Tanta and Alexandria; Mansura (40,279) is on, the Damietta branch of the Nile, to the N.E.

In Upper Egypt the chief towns are nearly all in the narrow valley of the Nile.

The chief towns on the Nile, taking them in their order in ascending the river from Cairo, are Beni Suef, Minia, Assiut, Akhmim, Suhag, Girga, Kena, Luxor, Esna, Edfu, Assuan and Korosko.

A few miles above Suhag, on the opposite (east) side of the Nile is Akhmim (q.v.) or Ekhmim (23,795), where silk and cotton goods are made.

Kena (qv.), pop. 20,069, is on the east bank of the Nile, 45 m.

It is on the west bank of the Nile, 36 m.

Memphis, the Pharaonic capital, was on the west bank of the Nile, some 14 m.

Syene stood near to where the town of Assuan now is; opposite, on an island in the Nile, are scanty ruins of the city of Elephantine, and a little above, on another island, is the temple of Pbilae.

The ruined temples of Abu Simbel are on the west side of the Nile, 56 m.

Tombs of Mahommedan saints are also numerous, and are often placed on the summit of the cliffs overlooking the Nile.

The traveller in Egypt thus views, side by side with the activities of the present day, where occident and orient meet and clash, memorials of every race and civilization which has flourished in the valley of the Nile.

From Cairo the railway is continued south up the valley of the Nile and close to the river.

This main line service is supplemented by a steamer service on the Nile from Sheila!

Above Cairo the Nile is the favorite tourist route, while between Sheila!

From the Nile, caravan routes lead westward to the various oases and eastward to the Red Sea, the shortest (120 to.) and most used of the eastern routes being that from Kena to Kosseir.

This again depends upon the fertilizing sediment brought down by the Nile and the measure in which lands beyond the natural reach of the flood water can be rendered productive by irrigation.

All tenants are under obligation to guard or repair the banks of the Nile in times of flood, or in any case of sudden emergency.

Perennial irrigation is possible where there are canals which can be supplied with water all the year round from the Nile.

Into these basinswhich vary in area from 600 to 5o,ooo acreswater is led by shallow canals when the Nile is in flood.

High land near the banks of the Nile which cannot be reached by canals is irrigated by raising water from the Nile by steam-pumps, water-wheels (sakias) worked by buffalo s, or water-lifts (skadufs) worked by hand.

Fishing.The chief fishing-ground is Lake Menzala, where some 4000 persons are engaged in the industry, but fish abound in the Nile also, and are caught in large quantities along the coast of the Delta.

The Rayya Behera, known in its lower courses first as the Khatatba and afterwards as the Rosetta canal, follows the west bank of the Rosetta branch of the Nile and has numerous offshoots.

The Rayya Menufia, or Menuf canal, connects the two branches of the Nile and supplies water to the large number of canals in the central part of the Delta.

The Ismailia or Fresh-water canal branches from the Nile at Cairo and follows, in the main, the course of the canal which anciently joined the Nile and the Red Sea.

They are both on the west side of the Nile.

The Ibrahimia takes its water from the Nile at Assiut, and runs south to below Beni Suef.

It leaves the Ibrahimia at Derut near its original point of departure from the Nile.

The rise of the Nile is naturally the occasion of annual customs, some of which are doubtless relics of antiquity; these are observed according to the Coptic calendar.

When the river has risen 20 or 21 ft., he proclaims the Wefa en-Nil, Completion or Abundance of the Nile.

A pillar of earth before the dam is called the Bride of the Nile, and Arab historians relate that this was substituted, at the Moslem conquest, for a virgin whom it was the custom annually to sacrifice, to ensure a plentiful inundation.

The crier continues his daily rounds, with his former chant, excepting on the Coptic New Years Day, when the cry of the Wefh is repeated, until the Salib, or Discovery of the Cross, the 26th or 27th of September, at which period, the river having attained its greatest height, he concludes his annual employment with another chant, and presents to each house some limes and other fruit, and dry lumps of Nile mud.

Tombs of saints abound, one or more being found in every town and village; and no traveller up the Nile can fail to remark how every prominent hill has the sepulchre of its patron saint.

Continuing to rise with ever-increasing rapidity, a revenue of close on 12 millions was collected in 1901 and 1902, in spite of the fact that during the latter of these two years the Nile flood was one of the lowest on record.

He sent 10,000 men to help to suppress a rebellion in Crete, and conquered the greater part of the (Nile) Sudan; but an expedition of 11,000 men, sent to Abyssinia under Prince Hasan and Rateb Pasha, well equipped with guns and all essentials, was, in two successive disasters (1875 and 1876), practically destroyed.

In the autumn of 1884, when a British expedition went up the Nile to endeavour to relieve the heroic Gordon, besieged in Khartum, the Egyptians did remarkably good work on the line of communication from Assiut to Korti, a distance of 800 m., and the training and experience thus gained were of great value in all subsequent operations.

This was observed by British officers, from the time of the preliminary operations about Kosha and at the action near Ginnis in December 1885 down to the brilliant operations in the pursuit of the Mahdists on the Blue Nile after the action of Gedaref (subsequent to the battle of Omdurman), and the fighting in Kordofan in 1899, which resulted in the death of the khalifa and his amirs.

Prior to the death of the khalifa, many of his soldiers deserted to join their brethren who had been captured by the sirdars troops, during the gradual advance up the Nile.

There are seven gunboats on the Nile.

The khalifas army, reduced to an insignificant number, after several unsuccessful engagements withdrew to the west of the Nile, where it was attacked, on the 24th of November 1899, after a forced march by Colonel Wingate, and annihilated.

Moreover, in many places equally good material could be obtained without much difficulty from the cliffs on both sides of the Nile.

Egypt normally included the whole of the Nile valley from the First Cataract to the sea; pure Egyptians, however, formed the population of Lower Nubia above the Cataract in prehistori.c times; at some periods also the land was divided into separate kingdoms, while at others Egypt stretched southward into Nubia, and it generally claimed the neighboring Libyan deserts and oases on the west and the Arabian deserts on the east to the shore of the Red Sea, with Sinai and the Mediterranean coast as far as Rhinocorura (El Arish).

The desert was full of wild life, the balance of nature being preserved by the carnivorous animals preying on the herbivorous; trees watered by soakage from the Nile protected the undergrowth and encouraged occasional rainfall.

The rich alluvial deposits of the Nile which respond so readily to the efforts of the cultivator ensured the wealth of the country.

For more lasting and ambitious work in temples and tombs the materials could be obtained from the rocks and deserts of the Nile valley.

The Nile valley afforded a passage by ship or on foot into Nubia, where, however, little wealth was to be sought, though gold and rarities from the Sudan, such as ivory and ebony, came that way and an armed raid could yield a good spoil in slaves and cattle.

The normal rise of the Nile was sixteen cubits at the island of Roda, and two cubits more or less caused a failure of the harvest.

That great nim ural feature of Egypt, the Nile, was of course one of the gods; mer name was Hapi, and as a sign of his fecundity he had long and dulous breasts like a woman.

Successive theories interpreted him as the god of the earth, as the god of the Nile, as a god of vegetation, as a moon-god and as a sun-god; and nearly every one of these theories has been claimed to be the primitive truth by some scholar or another.

In many cases the mummy had to be conveyed across the Nile, and boats were gaily decked out for this purpose.

In Egypt the agricultural seasons depend more immediately on the Nile than on the solar movements; the first clay of the first month of inundation, i.e.

Corroboration has been sought by Mahler, Sethe and Petrie in the dates of new moons, of warlike and other expeditions, and of high Nile, but their evidence so far is too vague and uncertain to affect the question seriously.

Until 1895 there seemed little hope of reaching the records of those remote times, although it was plain that the civilization had developed in the Nile valley for many centuries before the IVth Dynasty, beyond which the earliest known monuments scarcely reached.

It is probable that certain rudely chipped flints, so-called eoliths, in the alluvial gravels (formed generally at the mouth of wadis opening on to the Nile) at Thebes and elsewhere, are the work of primitive man; but it has been shown that such are produced also by natural forces in the rush of torrents.

In the Fayum region, about the borders of the ancient Lake of Moeris and beyond, they are particularly abundant and interesting in their forms. But their age is uncertain; some may be contemporary with the advanced culture of the XIIth Dynasty in the Nile valley.

He built a temple far up the Nile at Wadi Haifa and there set up a stela commemorating his victories over the tribes of Nubia.

Great as it was, it created no empire outside the Nile valley, and its most imposing monument, which according to the testimony of the ancients rivalled the pyramids, is now represented by a vast stratum of chips.

We read in a papyrus of a strike of starving laborers in the Theban necropolis who would not work until corn was given to them, and apparently the government storehouse was empty at the time, perhaps in consequence of a bad Nile.

But in 661 (?) Assur-bani-pal drove the Ethiopian out of Lower Egypt, pursued him up the Nile and sacked Thebes.

Nechos reign a Phoenician ship despatched from Egypt actually circumnavigated Africa, and the attempt was made to complete a canal through the Wadi Tumilat, which connected the Mediterranean and Red Seas by way of the Lower Egyptian Nile.

The canal from the Nile to the Red Sea was completed or repaired, and commerce flourished.

The third prefect, Gaius Petronius, cleared the neglected canals for irrigation; he also repelled an invasion of the Ethiopians and pursued them far up the Nile, finally storming the capital of Napata.

The commander marched from Syria through El- Arish, easily took Farama or Pelusitim, and thence proceeded to Bilbeis, where he was delayed for a month; having captured this place, he proceeded to a point on the Nile called Umm Dunain, the siege of which also occasioned him some difficulty.

After taking it, he crossed the Nile to the Fayum.

Rather more than two years later Shirguh persuaded Nureddin to put him at the head of another expedition to Egypt, which left Syria in January 1167, and, entering Egypt by the land route, crossed the Nile at Itfib (Atfih), and encamped at Giza; a Frankish army hastened to Shgwars aid.

With these allies, and availing himself of the advantages offered by the inundation of the Nile, al-Kamil was able to cut off both the advance and the retreat of the invaders, and on the 31st of August 1221 a peace was concluded, by which the Franks evacuated Egypt.

He made large purchases of slaves (Mamelukes) for his army, and when the inhabitants of Cairo complained of their lawlessness, he built barracks for them on the island of Roda (Raula), whence they were called Bahri or Nile Mamelukes, which became the name of the first dynasty that originated from them.

He gained the eastern branch of the Nile, but the river had become dangerous, and he fled to the desert.

The old canal had long fallen into decay, and the necessity of a safe channel between Alexandria and the Nile was much felt.

Public order was rendered perfect; the Nile and the highways were secure to all travellers, Christian or Moslem; the Bedoumn.

In 1847 Mehemet Ali laid the foundation stone of the great barrage across the Nile at the beginning of the Delta.

The efforts made to extricate the garrisons, including the mission of General Gordon, the fall of Khartum, and the Nile Expedition under Lord Wolseley, are described below separately in the section of this article dealing with the military operations.

The practical result was that the khedives authority was limited to the Nile valley north of Wadi Haifa.

Taking advantage of the temporary weakness of Egypt, the French government formed the project of seizing the Upper Nile valley and uniting her possessions in West Africa with those at the entrance to the Red Sea.

With this object a small force under Major Marchand was sent from the French Congo into the Bahr-elGhazal, with orders to occupy Fashoda on the Nile; whilst a Franco-Abyssinian Expedition was despatched from the eastward, to join hands with Major Marchand.

The natural irritation in France standing arising from the British occupation of the Nile valley, and the non-fulfilment of the pledge to withdraw the British garrison from Egypt, which had grown less acute with the passing of years, flamed out afresh at the time of the Fashoda crisis, while the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902 led to another access of irritation against England.

Moreover, to restore tranquillity in the Sudan, the first step necessary was the construction of a railway from Suakin to Berber, or what, perhaps, would be more advisable, to Shendi, on the Nile.

In 1865 Suakin and Massawa were assigned to Egyptian rule by the sultan, and in 1870 Sir Samuel Baker proceeded up the Nile to the conquest of the Equatorial provinces, of which General Gordon was appointed governorgeneral in 1874.

Malet, telegraphed that if Colonel Hickss army is destroyed, the Egyptian government will lose the whole of the Sudan, unless some assistance from the outside is given, and advised the withdrawal to some post on the Nile.

Practically the choice lay between the Nile and the Suakin-Berber road.

So great was this obstruction that the Nile had never been a regular trade route to the Sudan.

From Berber the Nile is followed (210 m.) to Khartum.

This most inconclusive report, and the baseless idea that the adoption of the Nile route would involve rio chance of bloodshed, which the government was anxious to avoid, seem to Wolseley have decided the question.

On the 8th of August the sent out; secretary of state for war informed General Stephen- Nile route son that the time had arrived when some further adopted.

The square was again heavily attacked, but the Arabs could not get to close quarters and in the evening a bivouac was formed on the Nile.

Before reaching the Nile the Desert Column had lost 300 men and was unable to take Metemma, while its transport had completely broken down.

He considered it necessary to hold Dongola, and he reported that he was distributing this army along the left bank of the Nile, on the open reach of water between the Hannek cataract and Abu Dom, opposite Merawi.

In April 1886 the frontier was drawn back to Wadi Haifa, a fortified camp at the northern end of the desolate defile, Batn-el-Hagar, through which the Nile tumbles amid black, rocky hills in a succession of rapids, and debouches on a wide plain.

At the end of May an Indian brigade arrived for garrison duty, and the Egyptian troops were released for service on the Nile.