“There was an extraordinary change [writes Baker] in the appearance of the river between Gozerajup and this spot. There was no longer the vast sandy desert with the river flowing through its sterile course on a level with the surface of the country, but after traversing an apparently perfect flat of forty-five miles of rich alluvial soil, we suddenly arrived upon the edge of a deep valley, between five and six miles wide, at the bottom of which, about two hundred feet below the general level of the country, flowed the river Atbara. On the opposite side of the valley, the same vast table-lands continued to the western horizon. “We commenced the descent towards the river; the valley was a succession of gullies and ravines, of landslips and watercourses; the entire hollow of miles in width had evidently been the work of the river. How many ages had the rains and the stream been at work to scoop out from the flat tableland this deep and broad valley? Here was the giant labourer that had shovelled the rich loam upon the delta of lower Egypt! Upon these vast flats of fertile soil there can be no drainage except through soakage. The deep valley is therefore the receptacle not only for the water that oozes from its sides, but subterranean channels bursting as land-springs from all parts of the walls of the valley, wash down the more soluble portions of the earth, and continually waste away the soil. Landslips occur during the rainy season; streams of rich mud pour down the valley’s slopes, and as the river flows beneath in a swollen torrent, the friable banks topple down into the stream and dissolve. The Atbara becomes the thickness of pea-soup, as its muddy waters steadily perform the duty they have fulfilled from age to age. Thus was the great river at work upon our arrival on its banks at the bottom of the valley. The Arab name, ‘Bahr-al-Aswad’ (black river), was well bestowed. It was the black mother of Egypt, still carrying to her offspring the nourishment that had formed the Delta. “At this point of interest the journey had commenced; the deserts were passed, all was fertility and life; wherever the sources of the Nile might be, the Atbara was the parent of Egypt! This was my first impression, to be proved hereafter.” Baker gives a fine description of the splendid type of Arab who is still found in the regions of the Atbara:--