the rise is scarcely noted. It is, however, continually gaining
ground; here a sandbank is covered, there an empty channel is filled,
islets are outlined where there was a continuous beach, a new stream
detaches itself and gains the old shore. The first contact is disastrous
to the banks; their steep sides, disintegrated and cracked by the heat,
no longer offer any resistance to the current, and fall with a crash, in
lengths of a hundred yards and more.

[Illustration: 31.jpg DURING THE INUNDATION]

As the successive floods grow stronger and are more heavily charged with
mud, the whole mass of water becomes turbid and changes colour. In eight
or ten days it has turned from greyish blue to dark red, occasionally of
so intense a colour as to look like newly shed blood. The "Red Nile" is
not unwholesome like the "Green Nile," and the suspended mud to which
it owes its suspicious appearance deprives the water of none of its
freshness and lightness. It reaches its full height towards the 15th
of July; but the dykes which confine it, and the barriers constructed
across the mouths of canals, still prevent it from overflowing. The Nile
must be considered high enough to submerge the land adequately before
it is set free. The ancient Egyptians measured its height by cubits of
twenty-one and a quarter inches. At fourteen cubits, they pronounced it
an excellent Nile; below thirteen, or above fifteen, it was accounted
insufficient or excessive, and in either case meant famine, and perhaps
pestilence at hand. To this day the natives watch its advance with the
same anxious eagerness; and from the 3rd of July, public criers, walking
the streets of Cairo, announce each morning what progress it has made
since evening. More or less authentic traditions assert that the prelude
to the opening of the canals, in the time of the Pharaohs, was
the solemn casting to the waters of a young girl decked as for her
bridal--the "Bride of the Nile." Even after the Arab conquest, the
irruption of the river into the bosom of the land was still considered
as an actual marriage; the contract was drawn up by a cadi, and
witnesses confirmed its consummation with the most fantastic formalities
of Oriental ceremonial. It is generally between the 1st and 16th of July
that it is decided to break through the dykes. When that proceeding has
been solemnly accomplished in state, the flood still takes several days
to fill the canals, and afterwards spreads over the