DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0230
212 A TIIO USAND MILES UP THE NILE.
astride on their shoulders, or water-jars balanced on their
heads—but birds, beasts, boats; everything that we have
been used to see along the river. The buffaloes dozing at
midday in the shallows, the camels stalking home in single
file toward sunset, the water-fowl haunting the sand-banks,
seem suddenly to have vanished. Even donkeys are now
rare; and as for horses, I do not remember to have seen one
during the seven weeks we spent in Nubia. All night, too,
instead of the usual chorus of dogs barking furiously from
village to village, we hear only the long-drawn wail of an
occasional jackal. It is not wonderful, however, that
animal life should be scarce in a district where the scant
soil yields barely food enough for those who till it. To
realize how very scant it is, one needs only to remember
that about Derr, where it is at its widest, the annual
deposit nowhere exceeds half a mile in breadth; while for
the most part of the way between Phila? and Wady llalfeh
■—a distance of two hundred and ten miles—it averages
from six to sixty yards.
Here, then, more than ever, one seems to see how
entirely these lands which we call Egypt and Nubia are
nothing but the banks of one solitary river in the midst of
a world of desert. In Egypt, the valley is often so wide
that one forgets the stony waste beyond the corn-lands.
But in Nubia the desert is ever present. We cannot
forget it, if we would. The barren mountains press upon
our path, showering down avalanches of granite on the
one side and torrents of yellow sand on the other. We
know that those stones are always falling; that those sands
are always drifting; that the river has hard work to hold
its own; and that the desert is silently encroaching day by
day.
These golden sand-streams are the newest and most
beautiful features in the landscape. They pour down from
the high level of the Libyan desert just as the snows of
.Switzerland pour down from the upper plateaux of the
Alps. Through every ravine and gap they find a channel
—here trickling in tiny rivulets; flowing yonder in broad
torrents that widen to the river.
Becalmed a few miles above Philse, we found ourselves
at the foot of one of these largest drifts. The M. B.'s
challenged us to climb the slope and see the sunset from
the desert. It was about sis o'clock, and the thermometer
astride on their shoulders, or water-jars balanced on their
heads—but birds, beasts, boats; everything that we have
been used to see along the river. The buffaloes dozing at
midday in the shallows, the camels stalking home in single
file toward sunset, the water-fowl haunting the sand-banks,
seem suddenly to have vanished. Even donkeys are now
rare; and as for horses, I do not remember to have seen one
during the seven weeks we spent in Nubia. All night, too,
instead of the usual chorus of dogs barking furiously from
village to village, we hear only the long-drawn wail of an
occasional jackal. It is not wonderful, however, that
animal life should be scarce in a district where the scant
soil yields barely food enough for those who till it. To
realize how very scant it is, one needs only to remember
that about Derr, where it is at its widest, the annual
deposit nowhere exceeds half a mile in breadth; while for
the most part of the way between Phila? and Wady llalfeh
■—a distance of two hundred and ten miles—it averages
from six to sixty yards.
Here, then, more than ever, one seems to see how
entirely these lands which we call Egypt and Nubia are
nothing but the banks of one solitary river in the midst of
a world of desert. In Egypt, the valley is often so wide
that one forgets the stony waste beyond the corn-lands.
But in Nubia the desert is ever present. We cannot
forget it, if we would. The barren mountains press upon
our path, showering down avalanches of granite on the
one side and torrents of yellow sand on the other. We
know that those stones are always falling; that those sands
are always drifting; that the river has hard work to hold
its own; and that the desert is silently encroaching day by
day.
These golden sand-streams are the newest and most
beautiful features in the landscape. They pour down from
the high level of the Libyan desert just as the snows of
.Switzerland pour down from the upper plateaux of the
Alps. Through every ravine and gap they find a channel
—here trickling in tiny rivulets; flowing yonder in broad
torrents that widen to the river.
Becalmed a few miles above Philse, we found ourselves
at the foot of one of these largest drifts. The M. B.'s
challenged us to climb the slope and see the sunset from
the desert. It was about sis o'clock, and the thermometer