We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2011
Having had the advantage of journeying through the Deltas, and for nearly 400 miles up the two famous rivers of Asia and Africa (the Indus and the Nile), I venture to record briefly my general impressions on these two grand features of nature.
The Nile runs in a direction directly contrary to that of the Indus, and has its source in the most torrid regions of the globe, whilst the Asiatic stream rises in perpetual snow. The climates, therefore, are directly reversed; yet, passing through the same degrees of latitude, there are in some portions of the countries penetrated by the two rivers very curious coincidences in. productions and climate, to which we will refer hereafter.
page 273 note 1 Brace says three at its greatest velocity.
page 274 note 1 SirWilkinson, G. says, “The average breadth of the valley from one mountain range to another, between Cairo in Lower and Edfu in Upper Egypt, is only about seven miles, and that of the cultivable land, whose limits depend on the inundation, scarcely exceeds five and a half.”—Ch. iii., p. 216.Google Scholar
page 274 note 2 It has been suggested by a competent geologist, that there is a great affinity between the formation of these hills and the whole of the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf formations, and those to the westward of the Indus; the geology of both countries however is a neglected point, and I offer the remark en passant.
page 275 note 1 See former note.
page 276 note 1 The foot of the Bolan Pass, 150 mileg in a north-westerly course from the river, is said to be about 700 feet above the level of the sea, from which it may be distant about 350, which would give, at a rough calculation, about two feet of fall per mile.
page 277 note 1 Cairo is in 30°; Sukkur about 28°; aud the extent of Sindh, N., is about 30°.
page 278 note 1 The Jutts of Sindh and Fellahs of Egypt, the cultivating classes of both countries, are in about the same relative condition. The Jutts, there is every reason to believe, are the aborigines of Sindh, converted to Islamism in, and subsequent to the invasion of Ben Cassim. The Copts, like the Jutts, are the most degraded of all classes.
page 279 note 1 20 paras = to ½ piastre, or 2½d.
page 280 note 1 Herodotus.
