Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

4 CITIES OF EGYPT.

geographers, as untrue to fact as the island Atlantis of
Greek legend, or the Lyonesse of mediaeval romance,
both sunk beneath the ocean to explain their disap-
pearance. The true Egypt of the old monuments, of
the Hebrews, of the Greeks and Romans, of the Arabs,
and of its own people in this day, is a mere fraction of
this vast area of the maps, nothing more than the valley
and plain watered by the Nile, for nearly seven hundred
miles by the river's course from the Mediterranean south-
ward. On either side are the great wastes, the highlands
of the eastern desert, the undulating lowlands of the
western, both parts of that great belt which runs across
Africa and is nowhere broken but by the course of the
Nile. The very populations are different. The scanty
tribes which roam in the deserts are in manners, and
some even in race, alien to the settled dwellers on the
banks of the Nile. The strongest ruler of Egypt cannot
call the wanderers his subjects. One tribe on the west
moves from the Nile to the Atlantic. It would need a
mighty Pharaoh to control the Benee 'Alee.

The story of Egypt is graven in its rocks, and written
in its soil. Countless ages ago the mighty river gathered
his forces in Central Africa, where the equatorial rains