Southward upstream. — You will remember that downstream means toward the mouth of a river. On your map find the sign for the Nile River, in the land west of the Red Sea. The Nile River flows into the Mediterranean Sea, which is north of it. Find on your map the mouths of the river. Notice that going downstream on the Nile means going toward the northern end of the river, and that going upstream means going toward the southern end. The boat you take is going upstream. Things floating in the river will drift toward its northern end. Why? Move your pencil point upstream — south — along the line which stands for the Nile.

Directions. — The pictures in Figures 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, and 58 show scenes that you could see on the first half of your trip upstream. Some of them you could see right along the river banks. To see others, you might have to leave the boat and go a short distance from the river. As you look carefully at these pictures, find in them at least eight things which remind you of those you saw along the Tigris. Notice the trees, the houses, the animals, the people, their clothing, and the work the people are doing. Do the things you see in this part of the journey make you think that the land of the Nile is a land of much rain or of little rain? Why?

Blanks to fill. — Copy the following sentences, and fill the blanks with words suggested to you by the pictures you have just studied. The number of dots over each blank shows the number of letters in the right word for the blank. After each sentence are the numbers of the pictures you can look at again, if you need to, in ofder to know how to fill the blanks. Use the titles of these pictures in the List of Illustrations (p. 144), too, if you need to do so.

1. In the land near the Nile River, there are many ______ _____trees. (Figures 52, 53, and 55.)

2. Some of the people near the Nile make their living by raising _____. They use both the wool and the mutton. (Figure 53.)

3. Many of the houses have _____ roofs. (Figures 52 and 57.)

4. Many people dress in _____ clothing, such as people in the Tigris and Euphrates country wear. (Figures 55 and 57.)

5. Many of the people along the Nile make their living by _____. (Figures 52 and 55.)

6. The people along the Nile take from the river to put on their _____. (Figures 54 and 56.)

7. Beyond the farm land lies _____ land. (Figure 55.)

8. The people use _____ for carrying loads. (Figure 52.)

The farm pictures. — Do you wonder why the camels you see in Figure 52 are walking right across the farm land? They are carrying mud from the banks of the Nile so that it may be scattered over the fields. The rich mud makes the crops grow better. The people near the Nile use its mud as well as its water on their farms.

Perhaps you wondered, too, about the little round walls in Figure 55. On the floors inside these walls, the farmers thresh their wheat and barley.

Questions to answer. — From the following stories, find answers to these questions. Perhaps you have asked some of them already.

1. Is the region of the lower Nile drier than the Tigris and Euphrates region, or not quite so dry?

2. What sometimes happens to mud houses when it rains hard?

3. Why do boats on the Nile differ from the keleks and koofahs on the Tigris?

4. What three more things are mentioned that are like things you saw in the land of the Tigris and Euphrates?

(Scroll back down)

Rain in Egypt. — The region along the lower Nile is named Egypt. A great desert called the Sahara stretches for hundreds and hundreds of miles westward from the Nile. This is the greatest desert in the world. A smaller desert reaches from the Nile to the Red Sea. Even less rain falls in Egypt than in the Tigris-Euphrates country. In some years it does not rain even once. Farms extend away from the river on either side just as far as men put water from the river on the land, and no farther. From Figure 55, you see that you can stand on a rocky slope some distance from the river bank and look across the river, and the watered, or irrigated, farms on each side of the river, to the desert on the other side. Notice that you can tell plainly just where the desert nearest you in the picture joins the farm land.

When it does rain in Egypt, it sometimes rains very hard and makes trouble for many people. One traveler tells of spending the night in a Nile village when one of these hard rain storms came. The rain fell in torrents. The roof was made of palm leaves plastered together with mud. Before long it began to leak. Muddy water splashed down on him. By morning the roof was almost destroyed. When the people with whom he stayed talked to their neighbors, it was found that there was not a whole roof in the village. Such rains, however, come very seldom, and it is easy to build new roofs.

Nile boats. — Did you notice that you saw no koofahs and keleks on the Nile as you did on the Tigris and Euphrates? There are no asphalt springs near the Nile and so the natives in this region do not build boats like koofahs. In earlier times they did build rafts, and they used inflated skins, but it was not so hard for them to get lumber from other lands for their boats as it was for the people in the Tigris country. Long ago, then, they learned to build boats much like some of ours. You see several Nile boats in Figure 58. The sails are so tall, that they can catch the breeze even where the banks are high.

Another delta. — Do you remember that you were to watch for other deltas? Had you guessed from your map that the Nile has built a delta? Look carefully at Figure 43 to see how the Nile joins the sea. Notice that it divides before it reaches the sea. The water was separated in this way in trying to get round or over the material which the river dropped at its mouth. Once upon a time, then, the mouth of the river was at the place where the river now -divides. The coast is now many miles farther north than it was then. Although the sign for this delta is very tiny on the map in Figure 43, the delta itself is large. It is an almost fiat land of many farms and farming people.

A Nile city. — Several miles upstream from the place where the Nile branches before it flows into the sea, you come to the great city of Cairo on your left. It is on the eastern bank of the river. At first glance, there are things that remind you of Bagdad. You can see tall minarets and the domes of mosques. The wharves are crowded with people of many kinds. Dark skinned Egyptian boys beg you to let them carry your baggage.

As you go eastward into the city, you find that a part of Cairo is more like an American city than like Bagdad. This is the newer part. You may hire a donkey boy to guide you through the older town where only natives live. Your donkey carries you through narrow, crowded streets lined with little shops. The fruit seller is putting his fruit on bright colored papers on the shelf in his booth to tempt you to buy. A water carrier is sprinkling the dusty street with water which he carries in a goat-skin bag. Another water carrier with a tall earthen jar on his back sells water to drink, If you wish to buy, he fills for you a little brass cup. Bread sellers peddle flat bread cakes which they carry in baskets. You pass along one street lined with the shops of coppersmiths. You turn off into a lane lined with the bazaars of cloth sellers. You push close to the wall to let a camel with a load of clover on his back pass you. The walls of the houses are whitewashed, and some of them are striped with bright colors. Many doorways are painted red, blue, or yellow. Some of the shops are just little bo6ths in the walls of the two-story houses. On the second story, balconies jut out over the street, and shade you from the heat and glare of the sun.

More ruins. — Egypt, like the land of the Tigris and Euphrates, is a land where people lived thousands of years ago. At many places along the Nile may be seen ruins of their ancient buildings and monuments. Among these ruins men have found many records of the people who lived here long ago. Some natives earn their living by digging in the ruins for things that will tell more about these ancient Egyptians. The most famous of all their monuments are the great pyramids. In Figure 59 you can see one of these. About how high is your school building? The tallest of these pyramids is about four hundred fifty feet high. Think how much taller it is than your school building. It was built as a tomb for a great Egyptian king. It is made of great blocks of stone, each taller than you are. These pyramids stand in the desert across the river from Cairo, about seven miles from the west bank. You may reach them easily from Cairo, driving much of the way along an avenue bordered with beautiful trees.

The picture in Figure 60 was taken farther upstream along the Nile. From places like this, these ancient people got some of the stone which they used in building their wonderful tombs ahd temples.

Things to do. —

1. Find on your map the sign that stands for Cairo. As you know, it is on the eastern bank of the river, near the place where the river brauches. Look at Figure 61. How many of the things which are mentioned in the paragraphs about Cairo can you find in this picture? Will the sign for Cairo on your map now remind you of this scene, and of the things you have read about this city?

2. Answer now the questions on page 38.

Glimpses of the great desert. — You found that in Bagdad you might see some people who had come in with caravans from the desert near-by. In the same way, you might meet people along the Nile who had come from the great western desert in order to trade. If you could have journeyed with them in the desert, you might have seen the views in Figures 62, 63, and 64. Where else have you seen homes like those in Figure 62? How do you think the people in Figure 62 make a living? Figures 63 and 64 show you that in some places, even in the great desert, there is enough water so that men can make date palms and a few other plants grow. Such a place is called an oasis.

Three boys and their homes. — One of the boys in tie following stories lives in an oasis town, in a home like those shown in Figure 63. Another one lives in a home like those you see in Figure 62, and the third in a home like those in Figure 52. Decide which boy lives in the oasis, which one in the desert, and which one in the river village.

I. Abdullah was a proud boy that day because his father told him he could drive the camel at the sakieh, or water wheel. He had never been left to do this work all by himself. Before this, his work usually had been to watch the cattle that grazed in the clover and were tied so they would not wander into a field of grain. This morning his father needed Abdullah’s brother, who usually drove the camel at the sakieh, to help him prune the palm trees. Just as a gardener cuts back a grape vine to make the grapes grow larger and better, so Abdullah’s father cuts off the outer leaves of the palm tree to make the tree bear more dates. Abdullah, then, took his brother’s place ‘near the camel at the water wheel.

The sakieh was shaded by a clump of trees, and Abdullah liked working there better than watching the cattle. He was near the canal, and could see the kingfisher perch in the trees along the bank and dive after fish. He had to make the camel go round and round to keep the wheel turning. As the wheel went round, it turned another wheel which dipped up water from the canal and poured it into a small trough, as you can see in Figure 54. The water flowed through this trough into a little ditch that led to the fields.

Although Abdullah was proud of his new work, the day seemed very long, and he was glad when at last his father told him that it was time for the evening meal. It grew dark as they walked home through the flat, green fields. He thought longingly of his rice and sweetened milk. Perhaps there would be eggs, too, or a little mutton. He saw the smoke from the fire, and knew that his mother and sisters were cooking supper, even before he entered the little mud-brick house.

II. There had been a great wind storm. All day the air had been full of sand. Some sand had blown even into the date-palm grove. The long hedge of tall coarse grass, that Azir’s father and his neighbors had planted to keep the sand out of the gardens, was almost covered. Toward evening the storm died down, and the next morning there was work for every one to do. Even little Azir could help, carry the sand away in baskets from the garden and from the hedge of grass.

Azir knew that all of them soon would be paid for the great care they took of their palm trees, for it was almost time for the dates to be harvested. He was too little to help very much in gathering the fruit, but he liked to watch the men get the great bunches down from the tops of the trees where they hung. One man with a big knife dimbed almost to the top of the tall trunk. Another climbed high enough so the man near the top could hand a bunch down to him. A third mar. climbed far enough to take the bunch from the second man. In this way, several men formed a sort of ladder. Down this human ladder were passed the big bunches of dates, some of them weighing as much as forty pounds.

Azir helped to pick the dates from the stems and to sort them. His father looked carefully at each bunch that was picked. He was eager to see whether or not the dates were good, for dates are his chief crop. If they were plentiful, he would have not only all the dates he and his family needed for themselves, but also many to sell.

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