The history of the land of Egypt takes precedence, at all events chronologically, of that of its people.
The Nile, unlike any other river on our globe, for more than the last thousand miles of its course, the whole of which is through sandy wastes-the valley of Egypt being, in fact, only the river channel-is not joined by a single affluent. Nor, in this long reach through the desert, does it receive any considerable accessions from storm-water. From the beginning of its history-that is to say, for more than five thousand years, for so far back extend the contemporary records of its monuments-Egypt has been wondering, and, from the dawn of intelligent inquiry in Europe, all who heard of Egypt and of the Nile have been desiring to know what, and where, were the hidden sources of the strange and mighty river, which alone had made Egypt a country, and rendered it habitable.
Nowhere, in modern times, has so much interest been felt about this earliest, and latest, problem of physical geography as in England; and no people have contributed so much to its solution as Englishmen. At this moment the whole of the civilised world is concerned at the uncertainty which involves the fate of one of our countrymen, the greatest on the long roll of our African explorers, who has, now for some years, been lost to sight in the perplexing interior of this fantastic continent, while engaged in the investigation of its great and well-kept secret; but who, we are all hoping, may soon be restored to us, bringing with him, as the fruit of his long and difficult enterprise, its final and complete solution. Thoughts of this kind do not stand only at the threshold of a tour in Egypt, as it were, inviting one to undertake it, but accompany one throughout it, deepening the varied interest there is so much everywhere in Egyptian objects to awaken.
