Nile

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

changes, and the valley, which in Nubia never exceeded 5 to 9 miles in width, broadens out, its greatest extent being, in one place, as much as 33 miles from side to side. The reason of this change is that at Gebel Silsileh, some way below Assuan, the sandstone (found throughout Nubia) gives way to lime stone, which forms cliffs bounding the river for nearly 475 miles. When the Nile reaches the Delta the limestone again gives place to later geological formations.

Thus Egypt in its entire length is framed in rocky walls, which sometimes reach a height of 600 to 800 feet; they form the stereotyped horizon of all landscape views in this country. These limestone hills are not mountains in our sense of the word. Instead of rising to peaks, they form the edge of a large table-land with higher plateaus here and there. This table-land is entirely without water, and is covered with the sand of the desert, which is continually trying to trickle down into the Nile, by channels grooved ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

of the ancient Egyptians, who maintained hundreds of labourers working the large stone-pits and quarries in this vast rocky waste.

To return to the Nile valley:--had the river merely forced its way through the Nubian sandstone and the Egyptian limestone, the valley could never have attained its wonderful fertility under the rainless glowing sky of Egypt, where decomposition of all vegetation is so rapid. But the Nile is not solely the outflow of the great lakes of tropical Africa; it also receives from the west all the waterflow from the high mountains of Abyssinia; and the mountain torrents, laden with rocky d?bris, dash down the sides of the hills in the rainy season, and form the two ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: