The general direction of the river from Assouan to Korosko is south; it there takes a western course, which it retains the whole of the way to Dongola. The eastern bank is, throughout, better adapted for cultivation than the western; and wherever the former is of any breadth, it is covered with the rich alluvial earth deposited by the Nile. On the western side, on the contrary, the sands of the desert are impetuously carried to the very brink of the river, by the north-west winds which prevail during the winter and spring seasons; and it is, generally, only in those places where the course of the sandy torrent is arrested by the mountain, that the narrow plain admits of cultivation. The eastern shore is, in consequence, much more populous than the western; but it is not a little singular, that all the chief remains of antiquity are upon the latter. The ancient Egyptians, perhaps, worshipped their bounteous deities more particularly in those places where they had most to dread from the inimical deity Typhon, or the personified desert, who stands continually opposed to the beneficent Osiris, or the waters of the Nile. The bed of the river is, in general, much narrower than in any part of Egypt, and the course of its waters less impeded by sand-banks. Immediately after the inundation, the poor Nubians cultivate, on the narrow shore, Dhourra, and the grain called Dokhen (دخن), of which bread is made;[16] but it is upon the crop of Dhourra that they depend for their subsistence; while its dry stalks serve during the whole of the summer, as food for their cattle, instead of straw. The Birsim, or lucerne of Egypt, is unknown here, as well as in Upper Egypt, south of Kenne. After the inundation has subsided, and the Dhourra harvest is finished, the soil is irrigated by means of water wheels (Sakie ساقيه), turned by cows, which throw up the water either from the river, or from pits dug in the shore; for water is every where found in plenty, on digging to the depth of fifteen or twenty feet, after the inundation; it is the same in Upper Egypt during the summer; but the water of these pits or wells has a disagreeable, brackish taste; and even the best of it is very heavy, and difficult to digest.[17] In order that the soil may be well soaked, the fields are divided into numerous small squares, of about ten feet each, with elevated borders, so as to retain the water, which is conveyed to them by narrow side channels. The fields are then sown for the second time with barley, a kind of bean called Kasherangag, tobacco of the worst kind, and the French bean (Louby), the leaves of which afford, when boiled, a soup much esteemed among the Nubians. I seldom saw any wheat. Near Derr are some fields of lentils, peas, and water melons. On the declivity of the shore, towards the river, which is more humid, and less exposed to the sun than the upper plain, a kind of bitter horse-bean (Turmus ترمس) is sown,