The Nilometer
The often repeated saying that, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile,” is really true. But for the bounteous gifts bestowed by this river Nile what is now a garden of fertility would be a wilderness of rock or sand. The rains falling in the mountains among which the Nile has its sources, occasion the annual inundation, which begins about the end of June and reaches its highest point at the end of September. It then gradually subsides, and by the end of January the country begins again to dry up. By the inundation a thin coat of mud or slime not more than the twentieth of an inch in thickness is everywhere left after its subsidence. At its height the natives stay in their houses on the highest lands, travel on the dikes or swim across from point to point. When it subsides the farmer makes haste to scatter his seed on the oozy, half-liquid mud. He literally “sows his bread upon the waters.” Thus it requires neither plow nor harrow. Pigs and goats tread it into the land thus covered deep with Nile mud. The failure of the inundation brings great distress. Fearful droughts ensue. An excessive inundation causes such a flood as to sweep away the mounds of protection which are built here and there, drown cattle, imperil human life and spread desolation over the land. It is a case, in which the people have “too much of a good thing.” The Nilometer is the measure by which the annual rise of the river is known. This Nilometer is situated at the southern extremity of the island of Rhoda opposite old Cairo.
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