The land of Egypt is six hundred miles long, and is bounded by two ranges of naked limestone hills which sometimes approach, and sometimes retire from each other, leaving between them an average breadth of seven miles. Northwards they part and finally disappear, giving place to a marshy meadow plain which extends to the Mediterranean coast. To the south they are no longer of limestone, but of granite; they narrow to a point; they close till they almost touch; and through the mountain gate thus formed the river Nile leaps with a roar into the valley, and runs due north towards the sea. This land and its neighbourhood was first inhabited by the descendants of Ham, the third son of Noah; Mizraim, the second son of Ham, occupied Egypt. The noble river Nile is recorded in the Scriptures as the second river which parted from the main stream which went out of Eden to water the garden where Adam and Eve were placed by their Creator. In the winter and spring it rolls a languid stream through a dry and dusty plain; but in the summer an extraordinary thing happens. The river grows troubled and swift, it turns red and then green; it rises, it swells, till at length, overflowing its banks, it covers the adjoining lands to the base of the hills on either side. The whole valley becomes a lake, from which the villages rise like islands, for they are built on artificial mounds. The land of Egypt is by nature a rainless desert, which the Nile, the mysterious Nile only, converts into a fruitful garden every year. The task that Joseph had been entrusted with was stupendous. He had to build storehouses that would contain all the fifth part of the produce of the plenteous years of the fertile land of Egypt that were gathered up during the seven years. Before he set himself to the building of these vast receptacles he must have searched for models, and whilst doing this the building of the Tower of Babel must have come to his recollection, for the father of Abraham was the chief officer of King Nimrod who built it. This was a grand model, and that he followed it is evident from what we see in the Pyramids, or Storehouses of the King, in this, the nineteenth century of our Lord. When the Temple at Jerusalem was about to be built by Solomon, he must have read how the storehouses were built, and he must have been aware for what use they were intended, as well as by whom they were built. Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and as son-in-law of the King he must have had free access to all the secret buildings and records of the land of Egypt.