From the Takkazie down to the Mediterranean, a distance of 1200 miles, the Nile does not receive a single brook. The first part of that course is interrupted by cataracts, from the geological structure of the Nubian desert, which consists of a succession of broad sterile terraces, separated by ranges of rocks running east and west. Over these the Nile falls in nine or ten cataracts, the last of which is at Es-Souan (Syene), where it enters Egypt. Most of them are only rapids, where each successive fall of water is not a foot high. That they were higher at a former period has recently been ascertained by Dr. Lepsius, the very intelligent traveller sent by the King of Prussia at the head of a mission to explore that country. He found a series of inscriptions on the rocks at Sennaar, marking the height of the Nile at different periods; and it appears from these, that in that country the bed of the river had been 30 feet higher than it is now. Fifteen miles below Cairo, and at 90 miles from the sea, the Nile is divided into two branches, of which one, running in a northerly direction, enters the Mediterranean below Rosetta; the other, cutting Lower Egypt into two nearly equal parts, enters the sea above Damietta, so that the delta between these two places has a sea-coast of 187 miles. The fall from the great cataract to the sea is two inches in a mile. The basin of the Nile, occupying an area of 500,000 square miles, has an uncommon form: it is wide in Ethiopia and Nubia, but for the greater part of a winding course of 2750 miles it is merely a verdant line of the softest beauty, suddenly and strongly contrasted with the dreary waste of the Red Desert. Extending from the equatorial far into the temperate zone, its aspect is less varied than might have been expected on account of the parched and showerless country it passes through. Nevertheless, from the great elevation of the origin of the river, the upper part has a perpetual spring, though within a few degrees of the equator. At the foot of the table-land of Abyssinia the country is covered with dense tropical jungles, while the rest of the valley is rich soil, the detritus of the mountains for thousands of years.