Its length, from Cairo to Assouan, is 450 miles. Its breadth does not exceed nine to twelve miles, except at Cairo, where it measures about eighty miles along the sea-coast, which forms the base of a triangular district known as the Delta ([Greek: delta]) of the Nile. The two other angles are marked by the cities of Pelusium and Alexandria. This long strip of fertility is narrowly shut in between deserts of almost incredible sterility. A peculiarity worthy of attention, because it is the unique cause of the fertility of Egypt, is, that the valley of the Nile, instead of sloping down on either side to the river-bank, assumes a gently convex form. It is owing to this slight convexity that, at the epoch of the inundation--beginning in June and ending in October--the Nile waters overflow to the right and to the left, rest upon the soil, and there deposit their precious mud. How different the aspects of the country at different seasons of the year! First, the bright sparkling sheets of far-spreading and fertilising water; then the emerald green of the growing crops; lastly, the ripe warm yellow hues of the full harvest. Well might Amrou, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, remark to the Caliph Omar, that, "according to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a _silver_ wave, a verdant _emerald_, and the deep _gold_ of an abundant harvest." The soil of Egypt is, then, simply an alluvium mixed with the sand which the winds bring from the Desert. Its aspect is that of a rich, well-cultivated land, but bears the impress of a wearisome monotony. You see there neither the dark dense forest, the rolling prairie, nor the undulating woodland; from the shore of the Mediterranean to the tropics you meet everywhere with the same cultivation; the same mud-built villages, with their dirty and winding streets; and ever the same clumps of palms, which would end by becoming tedious if it were not that their elegance of form invests them with an eternal beauty--if a glorious radiance did not gild with "refined gold" everything it touches--if, finally, an after-glow of wondrous loveliness, of which the eye and soul can never weary, which whenever seen suggests some new and subtle emotions, did not terminate every day by a crepuscular pomp of indescribable magnificence. [Illustration: VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE DESERT. 1. Doum-Palm. 2. Date-Palm. 3. Alfa (_Stipa tenacissima_).]