For that extraordinary land the world has ever contended, and will yet
contend.
From the Persian conquest to the present day, although the scene of
continual strife, Egypt has been an example of almost uninterrupted
productiveness. Its geographical position afforded peculiar advantages
for commercial enterprise. Bounded on the east by the Red Sea, on the
north by the Mediterranean, while the fertilizing Nile afforded inland
communication, Egypt became the most prosperous and civilized country of
the earth. Egypt was not only created by the Nile, but the very
existence of its inhabitants depended upon the annual inundation of that
river: thus all that related to the Nile was of vital importance to the
people; it was the hand that fed them.
Egypt depending so entirely upon the river, it was natural that the
origin of those mysterious waters should have absorbed the attention of
thinking men. It was unlike all other rivers. In July and August, when
European streams were at their lowest in the summer heat, the Nile was
at the flood! In Egypt there was no rainfall--not even a drop of dew in
those parched deserts through which, for 860 miles of latitude, the
glorious river flowed without a tributary. Licked up by the burning sun,
and gulped by the exhausting sand of Nubian deserts, supporting all
losses by evaporation and absorption, the noble flood shed its annual
blessings upon Egypt.
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