"It was at the end of--to my own sensations--a long and very sultry night, that I raised myself from the sofa upon which I had in vain been endeavouring to sleep, on the deck of a Nile boat that lay becalmed off Benisoueff, a town of Middle Egypt. The sun was just showing the upper limb of his disc over the eastern mountains. I was surprised to see that when his rays fell upon the water a deep ruddy reflection was given back. The depth of the tint increased continually as a larger portion of his light fell upon the water, and before he had entirely cleared the top of the hill it presented the perfect appearance of a river of blood. Suspecting some delusion, I rose up hastily, and, looking over the side of the boat, saw there the confirmation of my first impression. The entire body of the water was opaque and of a deep red colour, bearing a closer resemblance to blood than to any other natural production to which it could be compared. I now perceived that during the night the river had visibly risen several inches. While I was gazing at this great sight the Arabs came round me to explain that it was the Red Nile. The redness and opacity of the water, in this extraordinary condition of the river, are subject to constant variations. On some days, when the rise of the river has not exceeded an inch or two, its waters return to a state of semi-transparency, though during the entire period of the high Nile they never lose the deep red tinge which cannot be separated from them. It is not, however, like the green admixture, at all deleterious; the Nile water is never more wholesome or more deliciously refreshing than during the overflow. There are other days when the rise of the river is much more rapid, and then the quantity of mud that is suspended in the water exceeds, in Upper Egypt, that which I have seen in any other river. On more than one occasion I could perceive that it visibly interfered with the flow of the stream. A glassful of it in this state was allowed to remain still for a short time. The upper portion of it was perfectly opaque and the colour of blood. A sediment of black mud occupied about one-quarter of the glass. A considerable portion of this is deposited before the river reaches Middle and Lower Egypt. I never observed the Nile water in this condition there, and indeed no consecutive observations exist of the reddening of the water. It is quite clear that the reddening cannot come from the White Nile, but must be the first floods of the Blue Nile and Bahral Azral coming down." One of the most important matters for the purposes of our present inquiry is connected with the influence upon local calendars, in different parts of the Nile valley, of the variations of the phenomena upon which the Egyptians depended for the marking of New Year's Day.