Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker.

Date:
1885-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    same day only 705,588,389 cubic metres passed Cairo. At the confluence of the White and Blue Nile their average volumes are in the proportion of three to one, hut the latter assumes far greater importance when swollen by the Abyssinian rains. The Blue Nile is in fact a species of mountain-torrent, being liable to rise suddenly and sweep away everything it encounters on its ra- pidly descending course. It is therefore called the Bahr el-Azrak, i. e. the blue, ‘dark’, or ‘turbid’, in contradistinction to the Bahr el-Abyad, i. e. the white, or rather the ‘clear’ river, whose water descends from clear lakes and is farther filtered by the vast grassy plains and occasional floating plants through which it passes. The Blue Nile (together with its coadjutor the Atbara) may there- fore be regarded as the sole origin of the fertility of Egypt, and also as the cause of the inundation, while on the other hand the regular and steady supply of water afforded by the White Nile performs the very important office of preventing the lower part of the river from drying up altogether in summer. The White Nile is not only much larger than the Blue in average volume, but is, with its tributaries, more than double the length. It does not, however, remain very long undivided. Higher up, in 9° N. latitude, it receives on the east side the waters of the Sobat, a stream descending from the mountains to the south of Abyssinia, and resembling the Blue Nile in character, though much smaller. A little farther up, on the opposite side, the White Nile is joined by the Bahr el-Ghazal, or Gazelle River, a very sluggish stream, fed by numerous springs rising in the Nyam- nyam and Kredy regions, between 4° and 5° N. latitude. Higher up the river takes the name of Bahr el-Gebel, and is considerably smal- ler in volume , and beyond 5° N. latitude it ceases to be navigable, as it descends in a series of rapids from the Albert Nyanza or Mwutan Lake. This sheet of water is connected by another river, the ‘Somerset’, which may be regarded as the continuation of the White Nile, with the Victoria Nyanza or TJkerewe Lake; while the Shimiju and other S. feeders of the latter may be called the ulti- mate sources of the Nile. The Yalley of the Nile from Khartum to the Delta, although from its great length (15° of latitude) necessarily possessing great varieties of climate, forms one long unbroken tract of country, the fertilising soil of which is brought down by the Blue Nile from the Abyssinian mountains. The breadth of the Yalley of the Nile, including the barren land immediately flanking it, varies from 41/2lo 10 miles in Nubia, and from 14 to 32 miles in Egypt. The banks, of which the eastern is called the ‘Arabian’, and the western the ‘Libyan’, rise at places to upwards of 1000 ft., resembling two large canal embankments, between which the river has forced its passage through the plateau of ‘Nubian sandstone’ (which extends to the Gebel Selseleh above Edfu), and through the nummulite limestone of Upper and Central