6. The Nile is sometimes poetically called a sea, d"^ (Isa. xviii, 2 ; Nah. iii, 8 ; Job xli, 31 ; but we cannot agree with Gesenius, Thesaur. s. v., that it is intended in Isa. xix, 5) : this, however, can scarcely be considered to be one of its names. See Sea.
7. By some the Gihon, "(irT'S, one of the rivers of Eden, is thought to have been the Nile ; but the boun- daries of that locality were far away from Egypt. See
GlHOX.
II. Course, General Description, and Characierisiics of the Nile. — 1. This great river, or rather its principal branch the White Nile (for its upper streams consist of several branches), according to one of the latest discov- eries, has its origin in the northern end of the lake Victoria Nyanza, a point which is about 150 miles south of the equator. The southern end of the lake is situ- ated close on the 3° south latitude, which gives to the Nile a length, in direct measurement, of above 2300 miles, or more than one eleventh of the circumference of our globe. The lake is known to have only one feed- er of importance on its eastern side, viz. the Kidette River, and none on the western. It is about 3^ east of the Mountains of the Moon, and the issue of the Nile
Map of the Sources of the Nile.
NILE
100
NILE
from Victoria Xyanza presents the appearance of a small cascade, which ■was named by the late captain Speke " liipon Falls,"' after tlie nobleman who presided over the Royal Geographical Society when his expedition was planned. According to Sir Thomas Baker, how- ever, who visited that region in 1864, the real source of tlie White Nile is another lake called the Albert Nyan- za, about 100 miles north-west of the Victoria Nyanza. ]Mr. Stanley, the exploring correspondent of the N. Y. Herald, claims to have determined that the true source of the Nile is the Chambesi, while according to others it is lake Tanganyika, still farther south. It thus appears that the ancient problem as to the origin of the Nile is not yet fully determined. The Hindus call the source of the Nile -1 mam, the name of a district north-east of the Nyanza, which leads us to suppose that the ancient Hindus must have had some communication with both its northern and southern ends (Speke's Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, p. 4G6, 4G7, etc.). Great, however, as is the body of water of this the longer of the two chief confluents, it is the shorter, the Bahr el-Azrek, or Blue lliver, the Astapus of the ancients, which brings down the alluvial soil that makes the Nile the great fertilizer of Egypt and Nubia. Tlie Bahr el-Azrek rises in the mountains of Abyssinia, and carries down from them a great quantitj' of decay- ed vegetable matter and alluvium. The two streams form a junction at Khartum, now the seat of govern- ment of Siidan, or the Black Country inider Egyptian rule. The Bahr el-Azrek is here a narrow river, with high, steep mud banks like those of the Nile in Egypt, and with water of the same color; and the Bahr el- Abiad is broad and shallow, -with low banks and clear water. Farther to the north another great river, the Atbara, rising, like the Bahr el-Azrek, in Abj'ssinia, falls into the main stream, which for the remainder of its course does not receive any other tributary. Through- out the rest of the valley the Nile does not greatly vary, excepting that in Lower Nubia, through the fall of its level by the giving way of a barrier in ancient times, it does not inundate the valley on either hand. From time to time its course is impeded by cataracts or rapids, sometimes extending many miles, until at the First Cataract, the boundary of Egypt, it surmounts the last obstacle. Below Syene it continues its course for 500 miles, until a little below Cairo the river divides itself into two branches, one flowing to Rosetta, the other to Damietta, containing between them the present Delta, at the apex of wliich was " the land of Goshen," where Jacob and his family had their settlement. Above the Delta its average breadth may be put at from half a mile to three quarters, excepting where large islands increase the distance. In the Delta the branches are usually' narrower. Ancient authors speak of five, seven, and occasionallv of innumerable mouths of the Nile ; but the "septem ostia Nili," mentioned by Virgil {^Eneid, vi, 800) and other Roman writers, seven centuries after Isaiah (xi, 15) had prophesied respecting "the seven streams of the river," show that it was commonly rec- ognised as having seven mouths at its exit to the Mediterranean Sea. The names of these are as follows : (1) The Canopic; (2) Bolbitine, at Rosetta; (.3) Seben- itic ; (4) Mendcsiah ; (5) Saitic ; (6) Phanitic, at Da- mietta; (7) the Pelusiac, which is the most eastern mouth of tlie seven.
As regards the geological formation of the river's bed, for several hundred miles, from the inner boundaries of the Delta to within a short distance of the First Cataract, the silt and sand rest on wliat is known as the " marine" or nummulilic limestone. Over this there is a later for- mation of the tertiary, which contains marine deposits and forests of dicotyledonous trees. Underneath, the limestone rests on a sandstone of permian or triassic age ; the sandstone rests, in turn, on the famous breccia de verde of Egypt; and the breccia on a group of azoic rocks, consisting of gneisses, quartzes, mica-schists, and clay -slates, which surround the red granite of Syene