The ancient cities of Egypt were founded on the banks of the Nile, just as are the modern cities. Away from the river, life is insupportable. It has often been said that the Nile is Egypt, and Egypt is the Nile. This is true, for the cultivable land of Egypt above the Delta is just a green strip a mile or two wide on each side of the river all along its course. On the margin is the encroaching desert, which only the waters of the Nile prevent from overwhelming the land. Where the waters of the Nile flow into the little irrigation canals and feed the fields, there abundant crops of cotton, sugar-cane, and other things are raised. Beyond, are the arid hills, and the cruel sands where the rock in summer becomes so hot that it is possible to bake bread by the heat of the sun. The people living in lands that are blessed with an adequate rainfall can have no conception of what the Nile means to Egypt. The drought which occasionally affects our own country brings home to us the importance of rain to the land. Our whole country-side soon begins to complain about lack of water. Wells begin to run dry. Water has even to be carried to some villages by train. A traveller spent a night at an old inn on the Sussex downs, and found an inch of chalk sediment at the bottom of his small jug of shaving water in the morning. Crops which should have been 4 feet high had struggled up only a few inches. There was no moisture to help them to develop. Fields of heavy land were all ploughed up, but before the farmer could harrow them and prepare a fine tilth for the seeds, the clods were baked as hard as iron, so hard that it was impossible to do anything with them, and the fields carried no crops at all. A succession of such seasons would have a profound effect on the life of this country, and compel our people to live where water could be obtained. That is why the Egyptians were—and are—chained to the Nile. The floods fed the land. When the river failed to rise, and the water was confined within the banks, there was famine. No wonder those ancient Egyptians worshipped the Nile. Their lives depended on it. They watched the river anxiously to see what it was going to do, scanning the chocolate-coloured waters as they went flowing by. They wondered whether the river was going to condemn them to starvation, or whether it was about to scatter plenty over the land. Far away from Cairo, up at Khartoum, the rise began about the end of April, but so great is the distance that no perceptible increase was to be noticed at Cairo until the end of June.