Another of the provisions that had been made for the early progress of the country was something quite unique: there was not by nature, and there could not be constructed by man, a single strong place in the whole of Egypt, such as would enable powerful and ambitious individuals, or malcontent factions of the people, to maintain themselves in independence of the rest of the community, or to defy the government. Nature had supplied no such places, and the conditions of the country were such that they could not be formed. This is a point which involves so much that I will return to it presently. It ought not to be unnoticed here, for it is one of the important peculiarities of the country, that Egypt yields both a winter and a summer harvest. The overflow of the river, and the warmth of the winter sun suffice for the former, which consists of the produce of temperate regions; and artificial irrigation for the latter, which consists of the produce of the tropics. This gives it the advantage of the climates of two zones; the one temperate and the other tropical; for, though it lies to the north of the tropic, its winter, by reason of its environment by the heat-accumulating desert, resembles our summer, and its summer, for the same reason, that of the tropics. Egypt is thus enabled to exceed all other countries in the variety of its produce. Both its wheat and its cotton are grown beneath its palms. This variety of produce ought to contribute largely to the wealth, and well-being of a country; and it was, we know, a very considerable ingredient in the greatness of the Egypt of the Pharaohs. The characteristics of surrounding nature had corresponding effects on the ideas, too, and sentiments of the ancient Egyptians. We may, for instance, be absolutely certain that had they lived in an Alpine country, although they might have had the power of commanding the requisite materials on easier terms, they never would have built the Pyramids, for then an Egyptian Pyramid would have been but a pigmy monument by the side of nature’s Pyramids. But as these structures stood in Egypt, when seen from the neighbourhood of Memphis and Heliopolis, and throughout that level district of country, they went beyond nature. There they were veritable mountains; and that is what the word means. There were no other such mountains to be seen. In that was their motive. Man had entered into rivalry with nature, and had outdone nature.