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

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CITIES OF EGYPT.

mysteries, his place unknown, whom no abode can
hold, whose mind none can attain unto. Yet to this
day the river is reverenced. Every year before the
festal ceremony of cutting the canal of Cairo, the signal
that the inundation has attained its needed height, a
pillar of mud is raised to be washed away by the rising
waters : it is called ' the bride,' and legend says that it
represents a virgin who in ancient times was decked in
gay apparel and cast into the stream as a sacrifice, by a
fiercer marriage than that in which the Doge of Venice
was wont to wed the Adriatic. We see another indica-
tion that the common people did not look beyond the
Nile to Providence, in the contrast drawn in Deu-
teronomy between the husbandry of Egypt and that of
Palestine, the mechanical nature of the one, the faith
that watched the varying seasons in the other (Deut.
xi. 10-12).

The wonderful spectacle of Egypt flooded by the
inundation, the Delta one vast lake, a torrent between
desert and desert, in the valley of Upper Egypt, towns
and villages islanded in the swirling waters, the people
hurrying their cattle to places of safety—this sight, wel-
come as it is to the natives, is full of terror to the