THE VALLEY OF THE NILE.
The parentage and birth of Cleopatra.–Cleopatra’s residence in
Egypt.–Physical aspect of Egypt.–The eagle’s wings and
science.–Physical peculiarities of Egypt connected with the laws of
rain.–General laws of rain.–Causes which modify the quantity of
rain.–Striking contrasts.–Rainless regions.–Great rainless region of
Asia and Africa.–The Andes.–Map of the rainless region.–Valley of the
Nile.–The Red Sea.–The oases.–Siweh.–Mountains of the Moon.–The
River Nile.–Incessant rains.–Inundation of the Nile.–Course of the
river.–Subsidence of the waters.–Luxuriant vegetation.–Absence of
forests.–Great antiquity of Egypt.–Her monuments.–The Delta of the
Nile.–The Delta as seen from the sea.–Pelusiac mouth of the Nile.–The
Canopic mouth.–Ancient Egypt.–The Pyramids.–Conquests of the Persians
and Macedonians.–The Ptolemies.–Founding of Alexandria.–The Pharos.
The story of Cleopatra is a story of crime. It is a narrative of the
course and the consequences of unlawful love. In her strange and
romantic history we see this passion portrayed with the most complete
and graphic fidelity in all its influences and effects; its
uncontrollable impulses, its intoxicating joys, its reckless and mad
career, and the dreadful remorse and ultimate despair and ruin in which
it always and inevitably ends.
Cleopatra was by birth an Egyptian; by ancestry and descent she was a
Greek. Thus, while Alexandria and the Delta of the Nile formed the scene
of the most important events and incidents of her history, it was the
blood of Macedon which flowed in her veins. Her character and action are
marked by the genius, the courage, the originality, and the
impulsiveness pertaining to the stock from which she sprung. The events
of her history, on the other hand, and the peculiar character of her
adventures, her sufferings, and her sins, were determined by the
circumstances with which she was surrounded, and the influences which
were brought to bear upon her in the soft and voluptuous clime where the
scenes of her early life were laid.
Egypt has always been considered as physically the most remarkable
country on the globe. It is a long and narrow valley of verdure and
fruitfulness, completely insulated from the rest of the habitable world.
It is more completely insulated, in fact, than any literal island could
be, inasmuch as deserts are more impassable than seas. The very
existence of Egypt is a most extraordinary phenomenon. If we could but
soar with the wings of an eagle into the air, and look down upon the
scene, so as to observe the operation of that grand and yet simple
process by which this long and wonderful valley, teeming so profusely
with animal and vegetable life, has been formed, and is annually
revivified and renewed, in the midst of surrounding wastes of silence,
desolation, and death, we should gaze upon it with never-ceasing
admiration and pleasure. We have not the wings of the eagle, but the
generalizations of science furnish us with a sort of substitute for
them.
The long series of patient, careful, and sagacious observations, which
have been continued now for two thousand years, bring us results, by
means of which, through our powers of mental conception, we may take a
comprehensive survey of the whole scene, analogous, in some respects, to
that which direct and actual vision would afford us, if we could look
down upon it from the eagle’s point of view. It is, however, somewhat
humiliating to our pride of intellect to reflect that long-continued
philosophical investigations and learned scientific research are, in
such a case as this, after all, in some sense, only a sort of substitute
for wings. A human mind connected with a pair of eagle’s wings would
have solved the mystery of Egypt in a week; whereas science, philosophy,
and research, confined to the surface of the ground, have been occupied
for twenty centuries in accomplishing the undertaking.
It is found at last that both the existence of Egypt itself, and its
strange insulation in the midst of boundless tracts of dry and barren
sand, depend upon certain remarkable results of the general laws of
rain. The water which is taken up by the atmosphere from the surface of
the sea and of the land by evaporation, falls again, under certain
circumstances, in showers of rain, the frequency and copiousness of
which vary very much in different portions of the earth. As a general
principle, rains are much more frequent and abundant near the equator
than in temperate climes, and they grow less and less so as we approach
the poles. This might naturally have been expected; for, under the
burning sun of the equator, the evaporation of water must necessarily go
on with immensely greater rapidity than in the colder zones, and all the
water which is taken up must, of course, again come down.
It is not, however, wholly by the latitude of the region in which the
evaporation takes place that the quantity of rain which falls from the
atmosphere is determined; for the condition on which the falling back,
in rain, of the water which has been taken up by evaporation mainly
depends, is the cooling of the atmospheric stratum which contains it;
and this effect is produced in very various ways, and many different
causes operate to modify it. Sometimes the stratum is cooled by being
wafted over ranges of mountains, sometimes by encountering and becoming
mingled with cooler currents of air; and sometimes, again, by being
driven in winds toward a higher, and, consequently, cooler latitude. If,
on the other hand, air moves from cold mountains toward warm and sunny
plains, or from higher latitudes to lower, or if, among the various
currents into which it falls, it becomes mixed with air warmer than
itself, its capacity for containing vapor in solution is increased, and,
consequently, instead of releasing its hold upon the waters which it has
already in possession, it becomes thirsty for more. It moves over a
country, under these circumstances, as a warm and drying wind. Under a
reverse of circumstances it would have formed drifting mists, or,
perhaps, even copious showers of rain.
It will be evident, from these considerations, that the frequency of the
showers, and the quantity of the rain which will fall, in the various
regions respectively which the surface of the earth presents, must
depend on the combined influence of many causes, such as the warmth of
the climate, the proximity and the direction of mountains and of seas,
the character of the prevailing winds, and the reflecting qualities of
the soil. These and other similar causes, it is found, do, in fact,
produce a vast difference in the quantity of rain which falls in
different regions. In the northern part of South America, where the land
is bordered on every hand by vast tropical seas, which load the hot and
thirsty air with vapor, and where the mighty Cordillera of the Andes
rears its icy summits to chill and precipitate the vapors again, a
quantity of rain amounting to more than ten feet in perpendicular height
falls in a year. At St. Petersburg, on the other hand, the quantity thus
falling in a year is but little more than one foot. The immense deluge
which pours down from the clouds in South America would, if the water
were to remain where it fell, wholly submerge and inundate the country.
As it is, in flowing off through the valleys to the sea, the united
torrents form the greatest river on the globe–the Amazon; and the
vegetation, stimulated by the heat, and nourished by the abundant and
incessant supplies of moisture, becomes so rank, and loads the earth
with such an entangled and matted mass of trunks, and stems, and twining
wreaths and vines, that man is almost excluded from the scene. The
boundless forests become a vast and almost impenetrable jungle,
abandoned to wild beasts, noxious reptiles, and huge and ferocious birds
of prey.
Of course, the district of St. Petersburg, with its icy winter, its low
and powerless sun, and its twelve inches of annual rain, must
necessarily present, in all its phenomena of vegetable and animal life,
a striking contrast to the exuberant prolificness of New Grenada. It is,
however, after all, not absolutely the opposite extreme. There are
certain regions on the surface of the earth that are actually rainless;
and it is these which present us with the true and real contrast to the
luxuriant vegetation and teeming life of the country of the Amazon. In
these rainless regions all is necessarily silence, desolation, and
death. No plant can grow; no animal can live. Man, too, is forever and
hopelessly excluded. If the exuberant abundance of animal and vegetable
life shut him out, in some measure, from regions which an excess of heat
and moisture render too prolific, the total absence of them still more
effectually forbids him a home in these. They become, therefore, vast
wastes of dry and barren sands in which no root can find nourishment,
and of dreary rocks to which not even a lichen can cling.
The most extensive and remarkable rainless region on the earth is a vast
tract extending through the interior and northern part of Africa, and
the southwestern part of Asia. The Red Sea penetrates into this tract
from the south, and thus breaks the outline and continuity of its form,
without, however, altering, or essentially modifying its character. It
divides it, however, and to the different portions which this division
forms, different names have been given. The Asiatic portion is called
Arabia Deserta; the African tract has received the name of Sahara; while
between these two, in the neighborhood of Egypt, the barren region is
called simply _the desert_. The whole tract is marked, however,
throughout, with one all-pervading character: the absence of vegetable,
and, consequently, of animal life, on account of the absence of rain.
The rising of a range of lofty mountains in the center of it, to produce
a precipitation of moisture from the air, would probably transform the
whole of the vast waste into as verdant, and fertile, and populous a
region as any on the globe.
