Nor are we here in England, three thousand miles off, unaffected by the niggardliness of nature to Egypt in this matter. The country possesses railroads, steamboats, and sugar, and other, factories on a large scale, but no fuel to create for them motive power. This must come from without, and it is all supplied from English collieries, and brought in English vessels. In return for it we get no insignificant portion of the produce of the valley of the Nile. How strangely are things concatenated. The rains that fall in the highlands of Abyssinia, and in equatorial Africa, are grinding down pebbles in the channels of mountain torrents, and washing away the vegetable mould, and transporting their infinitesimal water-borne particles to Egypt, for the purpose of giving employment to the coal-miners of Durham, and to the weavers of Manchester. The intelligence and industry of England turn to account, through the medium of Egypt, the evaporation that takes place on the Indian and South Atlantic oceans. Such are the working and interworking of the physical and mental machinery of this world of ours: or rather, perhaps, we have here some slight indication of what they will one day become. CHAPTER XLVIII. TREES IN EGYPT. Divisæ arboribus patriæ.—VIRGIL. Vegetation is the garb of nature; and no description of any region can pretend to completeness till the trees—the most conspicuous part of the vegetation—have been brought into view. In Egypt as each specimen of the few species of trees commonly met with (the species may be counted on the fingers of one hand) must be carefully looked after to be kept alive, every particular tree comes to be regarded as beautiful, and valuable. The knowledge the traveller has of this care and regard, which have been bestowed upon them, enhances the interest with which he beholds them. Besides, the trees of Egypt are entitled to a place in any description of the country, for the additional reason, that on its level plain they are the most marked and pleasing objects on which the eye rests. A work, therefore, that aims at giving anything like a picture of Egypt, must bring out, with some little distinctive prominency, the characteristics of each species.