has been strictly interdicted from the
earliest time to this very day from casting a glance at it during the
time when the river is rising; for what sovereign could bear to disclose
without reserve the decrees of Providence as to the most important of
his rights, that of estimating the amount of taxes to be imposed? In the
time of the Pharaohs it was the priesthood that declared to the king and
to the people their estimate of the inundations, and at the present day,
the sheik, who is sworn to secrecy, is under the control of the police
of Cairo, and has his own Nilometer, the zero point of which is said
to be somewhat below that of the ancient standard. The engineers of
the French expedition first detected the fraud, by means of which the
government endeavoured every year to secure the full amount of taxes.

When the Nile has reached a height of a little over fifteen old Arabic
ells, it exceeds its lowest level by more than eight ells, and has
reached the height requisite to enable it to irrigate the highest
fields. This happy event is announced to the people, who await it with
breathless anxiety, and the opening of the dykes may be proceeded with.
A festival to celebrate this occasion has been held from the remotest
times. At the present time customs prevail which can, it is alleged, be
traced by direct descent to the times of the Pharaohs, and yet during
the dominion of Christianity in Egypt, and later again under sovereigns
governing a nation wholly converted to Islam, the old worship of the
Nile, with all its splendour, its display, and its strange ceremonies,
was extirpated with the utmost rigour. But some portion of every
discarded religion becomes merged in the new one that has supplanted it
as a fresh form of superstition, and thus we discover from a Christian
document dating from the sixth century, that the rising of the Nile "in
its time" was no longer attributed to Osiris, but to a certain Saint
Orion, and, as the priest of antiquity taught that a tear of Isis led to
the overflowing of the Nile, so we hear the Egyptians of the present
day say that "a divine tear" has fallen into the stream and caused the
flood.

The trade of the Egyptians had given them very little knowledge of
geography. Indeed the whole trade of the ancients was carried on by
buying goods from their nearest neighbours on one side, and selling
them to those on the other side of them. Long voyages were unknown; and,
though the trading wealt