Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EGYPT IN TRANSITION CHAPTER I THE DESERT TRAIN The Egypt of history paused at that gorge among the Nubian rocks where the Nile spouts its way over the Second Cataract. Often it could not get so far, and the frontier fell back to the First Cataract, where now the great dam blocks the stream by the island temples of Philse; sometimes an ambitious ruler pushed his armies to the south and levied tribute from the tribes and nations towards the Equator; once or twice in the agelong process the movement was reversed, and the lower valley of the river has been subject to the masters of the upper plains. But nearly always, be it under Usertsen or Ramses, under the Ptolemies, the Romans, the Arabs, or the Turks, a line was drawn at some border fortress below the Cataract, by the site of what in modern times is called Wady Halfa. Egypt, with one hand clasped to Asia, ended here; all beyond was Africa — vast, confused, mysterious, incomprehensible, at once a menace and a temptation; a land perhaps to prey upon, perhaps to fear, but one that seemed to have little kinship or community with the kindly, habitable earth men knew. There, at Wady Halfa,where to-day you first touch the Sudan soil and leave the Nile boat for the train that bears you across the desert, at Halfa, or at Syene, which now is Assuan, was the last outpost of Europe and Asia, the final vedette of civilisation. The level sun flamed across the waste of sand upon the spearheads of Pharaoh's mercenaries and the helmets of Roman soldiers as it did upon the bayonets of Kitchener's sentries. Beyond the frontier camp the Nile wound its way slowly upwards towards the Unknown, the region of many names — Cush, Ethiopia, Meroe, Napata, where only vague rumour and doubtful travellers' tales told of dim kingdoms, rising and fallin... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.