This banking business has been going on for ages and is a very important part of the history of civilization. Here and there along the sides of the older and larger river valleys are found the remains of ancient plains. These plains are now, many of them, quite a distance above the level of the stream. This means that they were at one time the bottom-lands of that same stream, but the stream, as it dug deeper and deeper into its bed, grew narrower, and so abandoned its old flood-plains. As savage man gradually settled down and took to farming, he found these bottom-lands, with their rich, mellow soil, just the thing for his crooked-sticks and stone hoes--the only kinds of ploughs and hoes there were in those days. With such crude farming tools he couldn't have managed to scratch a living on any other kind of soil. When the river floods came along, all these crooked-stick farmers had to do was to keep out of the way until the floods went down, and there were their fields all fertilized for them, as good as new, and they could go on for thousands of years working the same fields without ever bothering their heads as to whether they needed any lime or potash or nitrogen, or anything; for they didn't. The river floods attended to all that. [Illustration: FATHER NILE AND THE MAKING OF EGYPT "Egypt," said Herodotus, "is the gift of the Nile"; and it is true so far as her fertile lands are concerned. The ancients attributed the annual floods to the god of the Nile, as shown in that statue of Father Nile in the Vatican. Below is a threshing scene in Egypt painted by Gerome. The last picture, from a carving in the tomb of an Egyptian noble, shows how they ploughed and sowed in the Pyramid age.] So, in course of time, civilizations such as those of Egypt and India and Persia grew up, and in further course of time these civilizations spread into Europe, and finally to the New World. HOW RIVER BANKS GO BANKRUPT