part of a lifeless desert. In the words of Amru, Egypt first appears as a dusty plain, then as a fresh sea, and finally as a bed of flowers. To still better understand why seven great temples were erected for Sirius, the "Nile Star," whose constellation was sometimes called "the watch-dog on the Nile," let us read Osborn's graphic description in "Monumental Egypt" of the transformations resulting from the watering of the sands by the overflow of the great river which the Egyptians guarded and held sacred.
"The Nile has shrunk within its banks until its stream has contracted to half its ordinary dimensions, and its turbid, slimy, stagnant waters scarcely seem to flow in any direction. Broad flats or steep banks of black, unbaked Nile mud, form both shores of the river. All beyond is sand and sterility; for the ham-seen or sand-wind of fifty days duration has scarcely ceased to blow. The trunks and branches of the trees may be seen here and there through the dusty, hazy, burning atmosphere, but so entirely are their leaves coated with dust that at a distance they are not distinguishable from the desert sand that surrounds them."
Then comes the inundation:
"Perhaps there is not in Nature a more exhilarating sight, or one more strongly exciting to confidence in God, than the rise of the Nile. Day by day, night by night, its turbid tide sweeps onward majestically over the parched sands of the waste howling wilderness. Almost hourly, as we slowly ascended it before the Etesian wind, we heard the thundering fall of some mud bank, and saw by the rush of all animated Nature to the spot, that the Nile had overleapt another obstruction, and that its bounding waters were diffusing life and joy through another desert."
After the flood comes sowing time and the effects of it all are exhibited:
"in a scene of fertility and beauty such as will scarcely be found in another country at any season of the year. The vivid green of the springing corn, the groves of pomegranate trees ablaze with the rich scarlet of their blossoms, the fresh breeze laden with the perfumes of gardens of roses and orange thickets, every tree and every shrub covered with sweet-scented flowers."
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