DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14563#0115
84
EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT.
years these mysterious mountains of granite have been an
essential feature in the scenery of the Nile.
As you leave Cairo for the upper Nile, the mountains
of the Arabian Desert sweep down to the river-side, and
thenceforth flank its eastern bank the whole distance to
Thebes, and, indeed, to Assouan — sometimes receding four
or five miles from the river, sometimes jutting a huge mass
of limestone right into its bosom. By and by, as you go
southward, the Lybian chain also closes in upon the west;
and in this narrow valley, on an average five or six miles
wide, flows the Nile. And here is all of upper Egypt —
the alluvial deposits of the river spread out into broad plains
or piled up in narrow strips, and covered as below, with
wheat and clover, beans, onions, lentils, cucumbers, corn,
cotton, tobacco, sugar-cane,, indigo, and poppy, with flocks
of sheep and goats, with herds of buffaloes and droves of
camels, with low mud villages overspread with palms, or
more ambitious towns adorned with graceful minarets and
acacia groves.
These mountains are composed principally of a friable
limestone, of a yellowish white color, and are, in part,
covered with the drifting sands of the desert. They vary
from two hundred feet to six or eight hundred feet in height,
and at Thebes are upwards of twelve hundred. They have
no peaks, except around the plain of Thebes, but their
summits are uniformly a flat table-rock, ranging at different
elevations. At certain bends of the river, where they form
the shore, their configuration is peculiarly bold and massive;
again, they lift themselves grandly in the distance. There
is not a particle of verdure of any kind to be seen upon the
whole range, for the five or six hundred miles that it follows
the river upon either side; not a shrub, or a blade of grass,
or a vestige of any living thing. For six thousand years
they have bleached under the_ sun that withers the deserts
EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT.
years these mysterious mountains of granite have been an
essential feature in the scenery of the Nile.
As you leave Cairo for the upper Nile, the mountains
of the Arabian Desert sweep down to the river-side, and
thenceforth flank its eastern bank the whole distance to
Thebes, and, indeed, to Assouan — sometimes receding four
or five miles from the river, sometimes jutting a huge mass
of limestone right into its bosom. By and by, as you go
southward, the Lybian chain also closes in upon the west;
and in this narrow valley, on an average five or six miles
wide, flows the Nile. And here is all of upper Egypt —
the alluvial deposits of the river spread out into broad plains
or piled up in narrow strips, and covered as below, with
wheat and clover, beans, onions, lentils, cucumbers, corn,
cotton, tobacco, sugar-cane,, indigo, and poppy, with flocks
of sheep and goats, with herds of buffaloes and droves of
camels, with low mud villages overspread with palms, or
more ambitious towns adorned with graceful minarets and
acacia groves.
These mountains are composed principally of a friable
limestone, of a yellowish white color, and are, in part,
covered with the drifting sands of the desert. They vary
from two hundred feet to six or eight hundred feet in height,
and at Thebes are upwards of twelve hundred. They have
no peaks, except around the plain of Thebes, but their
summits are uniformly a flat table-rock, ranging at different
elevations. At certain bends of the river, where they form
the shore, their configuration is peculiarly bold and massive;
again, they lift themselves grandly in the distance. There
is not a particle of verdure of any kind to be seen upon the
whole range, for the five or six hundred miles that it follows
the river upon either side; not a shrub, or a blade of grass,
or a vestige of any living thing. For six thousand years
they have bleached under the_ sun that withers the deserts