It is, however, in deserts when man has set to work and supplies water and strenuous labour, that the most wonderful results appear. The whole of lower Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Damascus, Baghdad, Palmyra, and other historic cities, show what the desert can be made to produce. As one slowly steams up the Nile from Philae or Shellal towards Wady Halfa, there are places where the brown, regular layers of the Nubian Sandstone form cliffs which advance almost to the water's edge. Yet there is a narrow strip of green which fringes the water. It is upon the actual bank itself, which is a gentle slope of ten to fifteen feet, that Lupines, Lubia beans, and other plants are regularly cultivated. This narrow green ribbon remains almost always on each bank. Where the cliffs recede, one notices a line of tall, graceful date palms, mixed occasionally with the branched Dôm palm (the nut of which yields vegetable ivory).[66] Tamarisks, conspicuous for their confused, silvery-green foliage, can be noticed here and there. The Acacias are common enough, and sometimes one of them is used as a hedge. It is a spreading, intricately-branched little shrub, with very white branches and stout curved thorns. [66] Used to make billiard balls. If one lands and strolls along the banks below the palm trees or amongst plantations of barley, wheat, or lentils, one sees the native women in their dark green robes gathering fruits or digging. Goats and donkeys are tethered here and there. There are sure to be castor-oil bushes. Small but neat pigeons, with a chestnut-coloured breast and bluish-banded tails are perching on the palms or acacias, and utter their weak little coo. The air is suffering from the horrible creaking and groaning of a "sakkieh" water-wheel. This is made entirely of acacia wood, and is watering the plantations. Sometimes it seems like a crying child, then, perhaps, one is reminded of the bagpipes, but its most marked peculiarity is the wearisome iteration. It never stops. One of them is said to supply about 1-1/2 acres daily at a cost of seven shillings per diem. Exactly the same instrument can be seen pictured on the monuments of Egypt 4000 to 5000 years ago. The "shadouf" is of still older date. This is a long pole bearing at one end a pot or paraffin tin and balanced by a mass of dried mud or a stone. All day long a man can be seen scooping up the coffee-coloured water of the Nile and pouring it on the land for the magnificent sum of one piastre a day. Where not irrigated, the soil is dry and parched and can only carry a few miserable little thorny bushes. The entire absence of grass on the brick-like soil has a very strange effect to English eyes.