In other countries the year is divided into seasons, reckoned according to the position of the sun and the temperature, or according to the rainfall. In Egypt the state of the all-important river is the principal factor in determining the seasons. These are, first, the months of the inundation, or Nili, August to November; second, the winter, or Shitwi, December to March; and, third, the summer, or Sefi, April to July, when the river is at its lowest. Nowhere else do the actual seasons correspond with the nominal in a manner so regular and unfailing. But, of course, within these limits there is a great variation in the amounts of both the maximum and the minimum of the volume of the Nile, and the dates at which they occur from year to year. During the twenty-six years 1873-1898 the maximum flood at Assouan varied from the exceptional height of 9·15 metres above zero on the gauge to the equally exceptional 6·40 metres. And the dates on which these maxima were attained varied from October 1 in the first case to August 20 in the other. The dates on which the volume of water passing through reached its minimum varied from May 8 to June 24; while the worst lowest on record was ·71 metre below zero, and the best was 1·88 metres above it. (Zero, it should be explained, is the lowest level which the river would touch in an average year.) These figures are the result of the free and unimpeded flow of the Nile. To us, with our wider field of observation, with our knowledge of the sources of the Nile, and preciser information as to the conditions prevailing in those distant countries, the behaviour of the river seems, after all, but the resultant of many natural causes, and capable of prediction, and even regulation. But to those who, living in a country where rain was practically unknown, knew nothing of the tropical lakes or the rain-shrouded hills of Abyssinia, and who merely saw the great river issuing from the burning deserts of the south in flood at the very time when other rivers were parched and dried, how marvellous it must have seemed, and how inexplicable must have appeared those occasional variations, threatening destruction, on the one hand by excessive inundation, and on the other by famine and drought! Few floods in the history of Egypt can have been higher than that of 1878, and few lower than that of 1877, when 1,000,000 acres were left without water. But several great famines have been recorded in the past. Perhaps the worst of these began in A.D. 1064. A succession of low Niles took place, lasting for seven years, like the seven lean kine of Pharaoh’s dream. Terrible results followed. Even human flesh was eaten, and the Caliph’s family had to flee to Syria. Similar disasters occurred in A.D. 1199.