“And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave.”
Its length, from Cairo to Assouan, is 450 miles. Its breadth does not exceed nine to twelve miles, except at Cairo, where it measures about eighty miles along the sea-coast, which forms the base of a triangular district known as the Delta (Δ) of the Nile. The two other angles are marked by the cities of Pelusium and Alexandria. This long strip of fertility is narrowly shut in between deserts of almost incredible sterility.
A peculiarity worthy of attention, because it is the unique cause of the fertility of Egypt, is, that the valley of the Nile, instead of sloping down on either side to the river-bank, assumes a gently convex form. It is owing to this slight convexity that, at the epoch of the inundation—beginning in June and ending in October—the Nile waters overflow to the right and to the left, rest upon the soil, and there deposit their precious mud. How different the aspects of the country at different seasons of the year! First, the bright sparkling sheets of far-spreading and fertilising water; then the emerald green of the growing crops; lastly, the ripe warm yellow hues of the full harvest. Well might Amrou, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, remark to the Caliph Omar, that, “according to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep gold of an abundant harvest.”
The soil of Egypt is, then, simply an alluvium mixed with the sand which the winds bring from the Desert. Its aspect is that of a rich, well-cultivated land, but bears the impress of a wearisome monotony. You see there neither the dark dense forest, the rolling prairie, nor the undulating woodland; from the shore of the Mediterranean to the tropics you meet everywhere with the same cultivation; the same mud-built villages, with their dirty and winding streets; and ever the same clumps of palms, which would end by becoming tedious if it were not that their elegance of form invests them with an eternal beauty—if a glorious radiance did not gild with “refined gold” everything it touches—if, finally, an after-glow of wondrous loveliness, of which the eye and soul can never weary, which whenever seen suggests some new and subtle emotions, did not terminate every day by a crepuscular pomp of indescribable magnificence.
The Palm-tree is, in Egypt, as in all the oases, the principal element of the arborescent vegetation. But you also meet there with the banana, the gum-tree, the orange, the jujube, the mulberry, the sycamore, and other tall trees, which were planted by command of Mehemet Ali, and have perfectly succeeded. The green banks of the river are diversified by coppices of acacias and tamarisks. In the Fayoum district bloom impervious hedges of cactus, and plantations of roses for the production of rosewater. Cereals yield four crops a-year; flax, hemp, indigo, cotton, the sugar-cane, prosper admirably; and under a climate where ice, snow, and hail are unknown, not a month but has its burden of flowers and fruits. Abundant crops of vegetables are raised, even as in those days when the Israelites in the wilderness bewailed “the cucumbers and the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlics” of Egypt.
M. Charles Martins classes the Oases of the Sahara under three heads, corresponding to his three sub-regions.[69]
The oasis of the Table Lands is watered by a stream or a copious spring. That of the valleys of Erosion, by natural or artificial Artesian wells. That of the Sandy Desert wants water. In the latter the palm-trees are planted in conical cavities hollowed by the hand of man, that their roots may strike down to the subterranean reservoir which is to nourish them.
Every oasis is composed, in the main, of date-palms, which seem to form a continuous forest; but in reality they are planted in rows, and in gardens separated from one another by walls of earth, which are pierced with an aperture to admit of the entrance of the irrigating rill into the enclosed square. The soil employed in the construction of the walls is removed from the paths, which are consequently below the surface, and can be employed for a double purpose; they facilitate circulation in the oases, and the waters, after having refreshed the gardens and revived the soil, discharge themselves into these hollow ways, whence they flow towards the chotts, or stagnate in swamps, which the lethargic Moslem never thinks of draining. From such hotbeds of infection issues the monster Fever every year, and slays its hundreds.