And This
Enormous Waterway, Lost As It Was In The Sands, By-And-By Regulated
Its Course:
It became the Nile, and with untiring patience set itself
to the proper task of river, which in this accursed zone might well
have seemed an impossible one.
First it had to round all the blocks of
granite scattered in its way in the high plains of Nubia; and then,
and more especially, to deposit, little by little, successive layers
of mud, to form a living artery, to create, as it were, a long green
ribbon in the midst of this infinite domain of death.
How long ago is it since the work of the great river began? There is
something fearful in the thought. During the 5000 years of which we
have any knowledge the incessant deposit of mud has scarcely widened
this strip of inhabited Egypt, which at the most ancient period of
history was almost as it is to-day. And as for the granite blocks on
the plains of Nubia, how many thousands of years did it need to roll
them and to polish them thus? In the times of the Pharaohs they
already had their present rounded forms, worn smooth by the friction
of the water, and the hieroglyphic inscriptions on their surfaces are
not perceptibly effaced, though they have suffered the periodical
inundation of the summer for some forty or fifty centuries!
It was an exceptional country, this valley of the Nile; marvellous and
unique; fertile without rain, watered according to its need by the
great river, without the help of any cloud.
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