after him, describe a rout of numbers or a flight of fugitive slaves as a stampede, like the rush of buffaloes or wild horses. The same people speak of any social calamity under the imagery of the prairie-fire—the most awful, perhaps, of natural spectacles. In southern Italy the volcano is the name for terror; in Switzerland it is the avalanche; in South America it is the earthquake; in Arabia it is the sand-storm; in Siberia it is the snow-drift; among all the world’s sailors it is the hurricane and the water-spout; and among all wayfarers it is the storms and tempests of the region in which they are. But, amidst all this variety, the idea of flood still prevails, so that even these several images are themselves likened to the sudden irruption or malignant trespass of waters out of bounds. So large a proportion of our ideas is derived from the eastern would and its races that it is not surprising if this kind of imagery should have a stronger hold upon us than it otherwise would: and it probably has, seeing what inundation is when it does occur in the countries which have yielded us the most ancient literature we possess. The rush of the sand-storm, the sweep of the pestilence, the mortality from famine, tropical rains, the heat of the ocean on open sands, are all as extravagant in their character as the intensity of the sunshine, which again is constantly described as a deluge of heat and light. To one country, however, above all others, is the imagery of inundation due. The older the world grows, the more is Egypt found to pervade its human history: and Egypt has been from the dawn of tradition the land of inundation. The story of the rise of the Nile, and the sense of what depended on it, was as common when Joseph discoursed about the fat and lean kine which came up out of the water as in our day when Englishmen are seen every season examining the Nilometer in the island of Rhoda. Some persons have inquired whether Joseph did not understand the matter better than we do, judging by his anticipating a course of good or bad years; whether he had not learned from the priests of Memphis, among other learning of the Egyptians, enough about the causes of the overflow of the Nile to be aware that there were alternations of dearth and sufficiency or excess. However this might be, the fact seems clear that through the whole course of Egyptian history, from that day to this, the Nile overflow has been so generally sufficient and no more, that the exceptions are the salient points in the history of the country. When Herodotus was there, four centuries and a-half before our era, the priests could tell him exactly how high the waters had risen every year for as many centuries as they pretended to account for; and when Abdallatif, the Arabian physician, was there in A.D. 1199, he was enabled to form a list of all exceptional years, which were so few as to make the world wonder at such regularity in an element usually so uncertain. The regularity did not induce a thoughtless confidence—at least, among erudite Egyptians—for Herodotus found them full charged with facts about the depth of the mud and the levels of its surface at various periods, and drawing some very anxious conclusions thence as to what would become of Egypt when the deposit of soil should require a larger and larger deluge to cover it. If eight cubits of rise had once been enough to fertilise the country below Memphis, which then (while Herodotus was there) required sixteen, and was actually barren under fifteen, what could be expected when the deposit has increased as much again? Here we are at a distance of 2000 years from the day when the Greek and the Egyptian held that conversation, and the Nile still fertilises its singular valley: and in this year, A.D. 1861, the local consternation is about not the lack but the superabundance of water. The old time seems indeed to be reproduced in several of its features, so as to convey as strong an impression of the immutability of Egypt as its pyramids and royal tombs.
There are inquisitive travellers down that way, as eager as Herodotus himself to find out whatever is known or imagined of the source of the inundation. The difference is that explorers like Speke and Petherick are better qualified to get knowledge at first-hand, than the Egyptian savans whom Herodotus questioned. There are plenty of people still in the Nile Valley who pity the English and the French, as their predecessors pitied the Greeks, 2000 years ago, for depending for food on the fall of rain, and who wonder that the human race in Europe does not come to an end every few years: while, on the other hand, travellers who look across the valley from the roof or deck of their luxurious boat, may be conscious of some compassion for the peasantry who have every year to undergo the solemn and wearing suspense of the rising of the river,—now fearing that it has stopped, now afraid lest it should not stop, and always aware that famine is outside of either line. Rain is sure to fall somewhere at home; and, up to the last moment, there is hope of what it may do: but absolute, irretrievable barrenness is the consequence of a deficient overflow of the Nile, or of an excess beyond a certain point. The differences between the periods are, that the valley is much less populous now than of old; and that, as Egypt is not now the granary of the East, the failure of a crop is not so grave and wide-spread a misfortune. In nothing, however, are the whole series of centuries more alike, throughout their course, than in the spectacle of the waiting upon the rise of the Nile.
When the middle of June is near, there has always been a keen watch set on earth, air, and sky, by day and night. The dykes are examined, and mended as well as the dusty soil permits. The atmosphere at sunrise and sunset affords infinite speculation as to the state of matters in Abyssinia, where the sacred gush is said to take place on the night of the 17th of June (Coptic reckoning). Substances laid out on the housetop at night are weighed in the morning; and prognostications are formed accordingly. Falling stars are counted by watchers, succeeding each other through the night; and every extraordinary meteor is regarded as a curse, because the sign of a curse. Every deficient inundation is held to be preceded by fiery signs in the sky; or, as philosophers put it, by sultry weather. If the meteors tended towards the south, indeed, all might be well, because it portended a north wind,
