The River Nile

Egypt has been rightly callcd the "gift of the Nile," which not only irrigates the soil, but manures it at the same time with the deposit of fertilizing mud which it leaves behind, and without which Egypt would be as barren as the Sahara. For the Nlle mud rests on a bed of sea sand, the whole valley between the first cataract and the sea having1 been in prehistorie times a narrow estuary. The soil thus forincd by the lïile is chemically unique. It contains sixty-three per cent. of water and sand, eighteen per cent. of carbonato of lime, nine per cent. of quartz, silioa, felspar, hornblende and epidote, six per cent. of oxide of iron and four per cent. of carbonate of magnesia.