The River War | Page 2

smooth sand--a little rosier than buff, a little
paler than salmon--are interrupted only by occasional peaks of
rock--black, stark, and shapeless. Rainless storms dance tirelessly over
the hot, crisp surface of the ground. The fine sand, driven by the wind,
gathers into deep drifts, and silts among the dark rocks of the hills,
exactly as snow hangs about an Alpine summit; only it is a fiery snow,
such as might fall in hell. The earth burns with the quenchless thirst of
ages, and in the steel-blue sky scarcely a cloud obstructs the
unrelenting triumph of the sun.
Through the desert flows the river--a thread of blue silk drawn across
an enormous brown drugget; and even this thread is brown for half the
year. Where the water laps the sand and soaks into the banks there
grows an avenue of vegetation which seems very beautiful and
luxuriant by contrast with what lies beyond. The Nile, through all the
three thousand miles of its course vital to everything that lives beside it,
is never so precious as here. The traveller clings to the strong river as to
an old friend, staunch in the hour of need. All the world blazes, but here
is shade. The deserts are hot, but the Nile is cool. The land is parched,
but here is abundant water. The picture painted in burnt sienna is
relieved by a grateful flash of green.
Yet he who had not seen the desert or felt the sun heavily on his
shoulders would hardly admire the fertility of the riparian scrub.
Unnourishing reeds and grasses grow rank and coarse from the water's
edge. The dark, rotten soil between the tussocks is cracked and
granulated by the drying up of the annual flood. The character of the
vegetation is inhospitable. Thorn-bushes, bristling like hedgehogs and
thriving arrogantly, everywhere predominate and with their prickly
tangles obstruct or forbid the path. Only the palms by the brink are
kindly, and men journeying along the Nile must look often towards

their bushy tops, where among the spreading foliage the red and yellow
glint of date clusters proclaims the ripening of a generous crop, and
protests that Nature is not always mischievous and cruel.
The banks of the Nile, except by contrast with the desert, display an
abundance of barrenness. Their characteristic is monotony. Their
attraction is their sadness. Yet there is one hour when all is changed.
Just before the sun sets towards the western cliffs a delicious flush
brightens and enlivens the landscape. It is as though some Titanic artist
in an hour of inspiration were retouching the picture, painting in dark
purple shadows among the rocks, strengthening the lights on the sands,
gilding and beautifying everything, and making the whole scene live.
The river, whose windings make it look like a lake, turns from muddy
brown to silver-grey. The sky from a dull blue deepens into violet in
the west. Everything under that magic touch becomes vivid and alive.
And then the sun sinks altogether behind the rocks, the colors fade out
of the sky, the flush off the sands, and gradually everything darkens
and grows grey--like a man's cheek when he is bleeding to death. We
are left sad and sorrowful in the dark, until the stars light up and remind
us that there is always something beyond.
In a land whose beauty is the beauty of a moment, whose face is
desolate, and whose character is strangely stern, the curse of war was
hardly needed to produce a melancholy effect. Why should there be
caustic plants where everything is hot and burning? In deserts where
thirst is enthroned, and where the rocks and sand appeal to a pitiless
sky for moisture, it was a savage trick to add the mockery of mirage.
The area multiplies the desolation. There is life only by the Nile. If a
man were to leave the river, he might journey westward and find no
human habitation, nor the smoke of a cooking fire, except the lonely
tent of a Kabbabish Arab or the encampment of a trader's caravan, till
he reached the coast-line of America. Or he might go east and find
nothing but sand and sea and sun until Bombay rose above the horizon.
The thread of fresh water is itself solitary in regions where all living
things lack company.
In the account of the River War the Nile is naturally supreme. It is the
great melody that recurs throughout the whole opera. The general
purposing military operations, the statesman who would decide upon
grave policies, and the reader desirous of studying the course and

results of either, must think of the Nile. It is the life of the lands
through which it flows. It is the cause of the war: the means by which
we fight; the