Give It Only Water, And The Sand
Will Combine With The Richer Soil Beneath, And Become Productive.
England Would Become
A desert, could it be deprived of rain for
three or four years; the vegetation would wither and be carried
Away by the wind, together with the lighter and more friable
portions of the soil, which, reduced to dust, would leave the
coarser and more sandy particles exposed upon the surface; but
the renewal of rain would revivify the country. The deserts of
Egypt have never known rain, except in the form of an unexpected
shower, that has passed away as suddenly as it arrived; even that
slight blessing awakens ever-ready Nature, and green things
appear upon the yellow surface of the ground, that cause the
traveller to wonder how their seeds could germinate after the
exposure for so many months in the burning sand. Give water to
these thirsty deserts, and they will reply with gratitude.
* The great deserts of Northern Africa, to about
the 170 N. lat., are supposed to have formed the
bottom of the Mediterranean, but to have been
upheaved to their present level. The volcanic bombs
discovered in the Nubian Desert suggest, by their
spherical form, that the molten lava ejected by
active volcanoes had fallen from a great height
into water, that had rapidly cooled them, in the
same manner that lead shot is manufactured at the
present day. It is therefore highly probable that
the extinct craters now in existence in the Nubian
Desert were active at a period when they formed
volcanic islands in a sea--similar to Stromboli,
&c. &c.
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