This heliacal rising of Sirius, which the Egyptians called Sothis, was an event which needs must be heeded, for, having no calendars in those ancient days, it served as a warning that the river would soon overflow its banks and make a vast sea of the lowlands. It then behooved the husbandmen and gardeners to act quickly, and move themselves and their herds and flocks up to the dykes in a place of safety. "Nile's redundant waters never rise Till the hot Dog inflames the summer skies; Nor to his banks his shrinking stream confines, Till high in Heaven th' autumnal Balance shines." --_Lucan's Pharsalia._ During the inundation the lowlands are so completely covered with water that towns and villages rise like islands, while here and there are seen the tops of groves and fruit-trees like shrubs on the surface of the sea. This "yearly tribute of rains" which the Nile brings from other countries, gives new life to the parched land of the Egyptians. Herodotus, centuries ago, said that Egypt was the gift of this river, for without it their country would be a part of a lifeless desert. In the words of Amru, Egypt first appears as a dusty plain, then as a fresh sea, and finally as a bed of flowers. To still better understand why seven great temples were erected for Sirius, the "Nile Star," whose constellation was sometimes called "the watch-dog on the Nile," let us read Osborn's graphic description in "Monumental Egypt" of the transformations resulting from the watering of the sands by the overflow of the great river which the Egyptians guarded and held sacred. "The Nile has shrunk within its banks until its stream has contracted to half its ordinary dimensions, and its turbid, slimy, stagnant waters scarcely seem to flow in any direction. Broad flats or steep banks of black, unbaked Nile mud, form both shores of the river. All beyond is sand and sterility; for the ham-seen or sand-wind of fifty days duration has scarcely ceased to blow. The trunks and branches of the trees may be seen here and there through the dusty, hazy, burning atmosphere, but so entirely are their leaves coated with dust that at a distance they are not distinguishable from the desert sand that surrounds them." Then comes the inundation: "Perhaps there is not in Nature a more exhilarating sight, or one more strongly exciting to confidence in God, than the rise of the Nile. Day by day, night by night, its turbid tide sweeps onward majestically over the parched sands of the waste howling wilderness. Almost hourly, as we slowly ascended it before the Etesian wind, we heard the thundering fall of some mud bank, and saw by the rush of all animated Nature to the spot, that the Nile had overleapt another obstruction, and that its bounding waters were diffusing life and joy through another desert." After the flood comes sowing time and the effects of it all are exhibited: