ADVERTISEMENTS
Though thus useful, essential, and indeed beneficent to the existence of Egypt (or the gift of the Nile), the River Nile can scarcely be said to add much to the beauty of the scenery or to the variety of the landscape. No doubt, it is something, to have the sight of water in a land where, all day, the sun beats down long with unremitting force till the earth is like a furnace of iron metal beneath a sky of molten brass. But the River Nile is never clear. It is deeply stained with the red argillaceous soil, during the inundation, brought down from the Abyssinian highlands which spread around the valley. At other seasons it is always less or more tinged with the vegetable matter which it absorbs on its passage from Lake Victoria to the city of Khartoum, and this vegetable matter, combined with its depth and volume, gives it a dull deep hue, which stopping it from having the attractiveness of purer and more translucent streams.
The Nile Name:
(Neilos) its named by The Greek name, and (Sichor) its name by the Hebrew, are thought to embody this attribute of the mighty river, and to mean "dark blue" terms sufficiently expressive of the stream's ordinary colour. Also, the Nile is very wide to be picturesque. It is seldom less than one mile broad from the point where it enters Egypt land, and running between flat shores it scarcely reflects anything, unless it be the grey blue sky overhead, or the sails of a passing pleasure ship.
Cruise Through the River:
The possession of the River Nile was of extraordinary advantage to Egyptians not merely as the source of fertility, but as a means of quick communication. One of the greatest impediments to progress and civilization which Nature offers to man in regions is the difficulty of transport and of locomotion, which he has not yet subdued to his will. Torrents, mountains, marshes, jungles, forests, are the curses of [new countries] forming, until they have been cut through, hindering, or bridged over, commerce, tunnelled under, insurmountable barriers, and through isolation it causing hatreds. The first a broad road driven had been formed by Egypt through it from end to end, a road 700 miles long, and seldom much less than one mile wide, which allowed of ready andfast communication between the remotest parts of the whole kingdom.
Indeed, rivers are of no use as arteries of commerce or vehicles for locomotion until men have invented the ships or the boats, or rafts, to descend and ascend them. But from a very remote period the Egyptians were acquainted with the use of rafts and boats, and took to the water like a brood of ducks or a parcel of Islanders of South Sea.
About 32 centuries ago an Egyptian pharaoh built a temple on the confines of the Mediterranean sea entirely of stone which he floated down the Nile for 650 miles from the quarries of Aswan city; and the passage up the Nile is for a considerable portion of the year as easy as the passage down. North winds prevail in Egypt throughout the whole of the autumn and summer, and it is always possible to ascend the stream at a good pace by hoisting a sail. The current will at all times take a vessel down stream, If the sail be dropped; and thus boats and the vessels of a large size pass up and down the water way with equal facility.
The Nile Name:
(Neilos) its named by The Greek name, and (Sichor) its name by the Hebrew, are thought to embody this attribute of the mighty river, and to mean "dark blue" terms sufficiently expressive of the stream's ordinary colour. Also, the Nile is very wide to be picturesque. It is seldom less than one mile broad from the point where it enters Egypt land, and running between flat shores it scarcely reflects anything, unless it be the grey blue sky overhead, or the sails of a passing pleasure ship.
Cruise Through the River:
The possession of the River Nile was of extraordinary advantage to Egyptians not merely as the source of fertility, but as a means of quick communication. One of the greatest impediments to progress and civilization which Nature offers to man in regions is the difficulty of transport and of locomotion, which he has not yet subdued to his will. Torrents, mountains, marshes, jungles, forests, are the curses of [new countries] forming, until they have been cut through, hindering, or bridged over, commerce, tunnelled under, insurmountable barriers, and through isolation it causing hatreds. The first a broad road driven had been formed by Egypt through it from end to end, a road 700 miles long, and seldom much less than one mile wide, which allowed of ready andfast communication between the remotest parts of the whole kingdom.
Indeed, rivers are of no use as arteries of commerce or vehicles for locomotion until men have invented the ships or the boats, or rafts, to descend and ascend them. But from a very remote period the Egyptians were acquainted with the use of rafts and boats, and took to the water like a brood of ducks or a parcel of Islanders of South Sea.
About 32 centuries ago an Egyptian pharaoh built a temple on the confines of the Mediterranean sea entirely of stone which he floated down the Nile for 650 miles from the quarries of Aswan city; and the passage up the Nile is for a considerable portion of the year as easy as the passage down. North winds prevail in Egypt throughout the whole of the autumn and summer, and it is always possible to ascend the stream at a good pace by hoisting a sail. The current will at all times take a vessel down stream, If the sail be dropped; and thus boats and the vessels of a large size pass up and down the water way with equal facility.
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