Ages before man could have existed in that inhospitable
land, that thread of water was at its silent work: through countless
years it flooded and fell, depositing a rich legacy of soil upon the
barren sand until the delta was created; and man, at so remote a period
that we have no clue to an approximate date, occupied the fertile soil
thus born of the river Nile, and that corner of savage Africa, rescued
from its barrenness, became Egypt, and took the first rank in the
earth's history.
For that extraordinary land the world has ever contended, and will yet
contend.
From the Persian conquest to the present day, although the scene of
continual strife, Egypt has been an example of almost uninterrupted
productiveness. Its geographical position afforded peculiar advantages
for commercial enterprise. Bounded on the east by the Red Sea, on the
north by the Mediterranean, while the fertilizing Nile afforded inland
communication, Egypt became the most prosperous and civilized country of
the earth. Egypt was not only created by the Nile, but the very
existence of its inhabitants depended upon the annual inundation of that
river: thus all that related to the Nile was of vital importance to the
people; it was the hand that fed them.
Egypt depending so entirely upon the river, it was natural that the
origin of those mysterious waters should have absorbed the attention of
thinking men. It was unlike all other rivers. In July and August, when
European streams were at their lowest in the summer heat, the Nile was
at the flood! In Egypt there was no rainfall - not even a drop of dew in
those parched deserts through which, for 860 miles of latitude, the
glorious river flowed without a tributary. Licked up by the burning sun,
and gulped by the exhausting sand of Nubian deserts, supporting all
losses by evaporation and absorption, the noble flood shed its annual
blessings upon Egypt. An anomaly among rivers; flooding in the driest
season; everlasting in sandy deserts; where was its hidden origin? where
were the sources of the Nile?
This was from the earliest period the great geographical question to be
solved.
In the advanced stage of civilization of the present era, we look with
regret at the possession by the Moslem of the fairest portions of the
world, - of countries so favoured by climate and by geographical
position, that, in the early days of the earth's history, they were the
spots most coveted; and that such favoured places should, through the
Moslem rule, be barred from the advancement that has attended lands less
adapted by nature for development. There are no countries of the earth
so valuable, or that would occupy so important a position in the family
of nations, as Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, and Egypt, under a
civilized and Christian government.
