asional 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 pur