Cleopatra | Page 4

in several places, from the ground, and, percolating
through the sands along the valley, give fertility to little dells, long and narrow, which, by
the contrast that they form with the surrounding desolation, seem to the traveler to
possess the verdure and beauty of Paradise. There is a line of these oases extending along
this westerly depression, and some of them are of considerable extent. The oasis of Siweh,
on which stood the far-famed temple of Jupiter Ammon, was many miles in extent, and
was said to have contained in ancient times a population of eight thousand souls. Thus,
while the most easterly of the three valleys which we have named was sunk so low as to
admit the ocean to flow freely into it, the most westerly was so slightly depressed that it
gained only a circumscribed and limited fertility through the springs, which, in the lowest
portions of it, oozed from the ground. The third valley--the central one--remains now to
be described.
The reader will observe, by referring once more to the map, that south of the great
rainless region of which we are speaking, there lie groups and ranges of mountains in
Abyssinia, called the Mountains of the Moon. These mountains are near the equator, and
the relation which they sustain to the surrounding seas, and to currents of wind which
blow in that quarter of the world, is such, that they bring down from the atmosphere,

especially in certain seasons of the year, vast and continual torrents of rain. The water
which thus falls drenches the mountain sides and deluges the valleys. There is a great
portion of it which can not flow to the southward or eastward toward the sea, as the
whole country consists, in those directions, of continuous tracts of elevated land. The
rush of water thus turns to the northward, and, pressing on across the desert through the
great central valley which we have referred to above, it finds an outlet, at last, in the
Mediterranean, at a point two thousand miles distant from the place where the immense
condenser drew it from the skies. The river thus created is the Nile. It is formed, in a
word, by the surplus waters of a district inundated with rains, in their progress across a
rainless desert, seeking the sea.
If the surplus of water upon the Abyssinian mountains had been constant and uniform,
the stream, in its passage across the desert, would have communicated very little fertility
to the barren sands which it traversed. The immediate banks of the river would have,
perhaps, been fringed with verdure, but the influence of the irrigation would have
extended no farther than the water itself could have reached, by percolation through the
sand. But the flow of the water is not thus uniform and steady. In a certain season of the
year the rains are incessant, and they descend with such abundance and profusion as
almost to inundate the districts where they fall. Immense torrents stream down the
mountain sides; the valleys are deluged; plains turn into morasses, and morasses into
lakes. In a word, the country becomes half submerged, and the accumulated mass of
waters would rush with great force and violence down the central valley of the desert,
which forms their only outlet, if the passage were narrow, and if it made any considerable
descent in its course to the sea. It is, however, not narrow, and the descent is very small.
The depression in the surface of the desert, through which the water flows, is from five to
ten miles wide, and, though it is nearly two thousand miles from the rainy district across
the desert to the sea, the country for the whole distance is almost level. There is only
sufficient descent, especially for the last thousand miles, to determine a very gentle
current to the northward in the waters of the stream.
Under these circumstances, the immense quantity of water which falls in the rainy district
in these inundating tropical showers, expands over the whole valley, and forms for a time
an immense lake, extending in length across the whole breadth of the desert. This lake is,
of course, from five to ten miles wide, and a thousand miles long. The water in it is
shallow and turbid, and it has a gentle current toward the north. The rains, at length, in a
great measure cease; but it requires some months for the water to run off and leave the
valley dry. As soon as it is gone, there springs up from the whole surface of the ground
which has been thus submerged a most rank and luxuriant vegetation.
This vegetation, now wholly regulated and controlled by the hand of man, must have
been, in its original and primeval state, of a