The reader will not expect, in these enlightened times, that I should use arguments to convince him, that this rising of the Nile had nothing to do with the extinction of the race of the Ptolemies, though popular preachers and prophets have always made use of these fortuitous events to confirm the vulgar in their prejudices.
The rains, that cease in Abyssinia about the 8th of September, leave generally a sickly season in the low country; but other rains begin towards the end of October, in the last days of the Ethiopic month Tekemt, which continue moderately about three weeks, and end the 8th of November, or the 12th of the Ethiopic month Hedar. All sickness and epidemical diseases then disappear, and the 8th of that month is the feast of St Michael, the day the king marches, and his army begins their campaign; but the effect of these second rains seldom make any, or a very short appearance in Egypt, all the canals being open. But these are the rains upon which depend their latter crops, and for which the Agows, at the source of the Nile, pray to the river, or to the genius residing in the river. We had plentiful showers both in going and coming to that province, especially in our journey out. Whenever these rains prove excessive, as in some particular years it seems they do, though but very rarely, the land-floods, and those from the marshes, falling upon the ground, already much hardened and broken into chasms, by two months intense heat of the sun, run violently into the Nile without sinking into the earth. The consequence is this temporary rising of the Nile in December, which is as unconnected with the good and bad crops of Egypt, as it is on those of Palestine or Syria.
The quantity of rain that falls in Ethiopia varies greatly from year to year, as do the months in which it falls. The quantity that fell, during 1770, in Gondar, between the vernal equinox and the 8th of September, through a funnel of one foot English in diameter, was 35.555 inches; and, in 1771, the quantity that fell in the same circumference was 41.355 inches in the same space[173].
In 1770, August was the rainy month; in 1771 July. Both these years the people paid the meery, and the Wafaa Ullah was in August. When July is the rainy month, the rains generally cease for some days in the beginning of August, and then a prodigious deal falls in the latter end of that month and the first week of September. In other years, July and August are the violent rainy months, whilst June is fair. And lastly, in others, May, June, July, August and the first week of September. Now we shall suppose (which is the most common case of all) that every month from June doubles its rain. The Wafaa Ullah generally takes place about the 9th of August, the tribute being then due, and all attention to the Mikeas is abandoned at 14 real peeks, the Calish is then cut, and the water let down to the Delta.
Now these 14 peeks are not a proof how much water there is to overflow the land; for supposing nine days for its passage from Ethiopia, then the 9th of August receives at Cairo no later rains than those that have fallen the 1st of August in Ethiopia, and from that date till the 17th of September, the Nile increases one third of its whole inundation, which is never suffered to appear on the Mikeas, but is turned down to the lakes in the Delta, as I suppose it always has been; so that the quantity of water which falls in Ethiopia hath never yet been ascertained, and never can be by the Mikeas, nor can it ever be known what quantity of water comes in to Egypt, or what quantity of ground it is sufficient to overflow, unless the dykes were to be kept close till the Nile attained its extreme height,which would be about the 25th of September, long before which it would be over the banks and mounds, if they held in till then, or have swept Cairo and all the Delta into the Mediterranean, and if it should not do that, it would retire so late from the fields as to leave the ground in no condition to be sown that year.
I do not comprehend what idea other travellers have formed of the beginning of the inundation of the Nile, as they seem to admit that the banks are not overflowed; and this is certainly the case; because the cities and villages are built there as securely as on the highest part of Egypt, and even when the Nile has risen to its greatest height they still are obliged to water those spots with machines. In another part of the work it is explained how the calishes carry the water upon the lands, approaching always to the banks as the river rises in proportion, and these calishes being derived from the Nile at right angles with the stream, and carrying the water by the inclination of the ground, in a direction different from the course of the river, the water is perfectly stagnated at the foot of the hills, till accumulated as the stream rises, it moves in a contrary direction backwards again, and approaches its banks. But when the inundation is so great that the back-water comes in contact with the current of the Nile, by known laws it must partake the same motion with it, and so all Egypt become one torrent.
Dr Shaw, indeed[174], says, that there seems to be a descent from the banks to the foot of the mountains, but this he considers as an optic fallacy; I wish he had told us upon what principle of optics; but if it was really so, how comes it that the banks are every year dry, when the foot of the mountains is at same time under inundation; or, in other words, what is the reason of that undisputed fact, that the foot of the mountains is laid under water in the beginning of the rivers rising, while the ground which they cultivate by labour near the banks, cannot supply itself from the river by machines, till near the height of the inundation? these facts will not be contraverted by any traveller, who has ever been in Upper Egypt; but if this had been admitted as truth instead of an optic fallacy, this question would have immediately followed. If the land of Egypt at the foot of the mountains, is the lowest, the first overflowed, and the longest covered with water, and often the only part overflowed at all, whence can it arise that it is not upon a level with the banks of the river if it is true that the land of Egypt receives additional height every year by the mud from Abyssinia deposited by the stream? and this question would not have been so easily answered.
The Nile for these thirty years has but once so failed as to occasion dearth, but never in that period so as to produce famine in Egypt. The redundance of the water sweeping every thing before it, has thrice been the cause, not of dearth, but of famine and emigration; but carelessness, I believe, hath been, the occasion of both, and very often the malice of the Arabs; for there are in Egypt, from Siout downwards, great remains of ancient works, vast lakes, canals, and large conduits for water, destined by the ancients to keep this river under controul, serving as reservoirs to supply a scanty year, and as drains, or outlets, to prevent the over abundance of water in wet years, by spreading it in the thirsty sands of Libya to the great advantage of the Arabs, rather than letting it run to waste in the Mediterranean. The mouths of these immense drains being out of repair, in a scanty year, contribute by their evacuation to make it still scantier by not retaining water, and if after a dearth they are well secured, or raised too high, and a wet season follows, they then occasion a destructive inundation.
I hope I have now satisfied the reader, that Egypt was never an arm of the sea, or formed by sediments brought down in the Nile, but that it was created with other parts of the globe at the same time, and for the same purposes; and we are warranted to say this, till we receive from the hand of Providence a work of such imperfection, that its destruction can be calculated from the very means by which it was first formed, and which were the apparent sources of its beauty and pre-eminence. Egypt, like other countries, will perish by the fiat of Him that made it, but when, or in what manner, lies hid where it ought to be, inaccessible to the useless, vain inquiries, and idle speculations of man.