62 EARLY GEOGRAPHICAL SPECULATIONS. [CHAP.

characterises the surface of the Delta as being level, moist and
muddy1, and notices that in approaching Egypt by water the
mariner finds evidence far out at sea of the alluvium which is
brought down by the Nile, since the water is comparatively
shallow a day's sail from land, and mud is brought up by the
sounding-line3. From this he concluded that what in his time
was Lower Egypt was originally an arm of the sea, and that the
country was " acquired, and a gift of the river." The facts which
the historian here records were no doubt the result of his own
observation, for he had verified them on the spot; but in all
probability both these and the deductions which he drew from
them date from a much earlier time : indeed, we know on the
authority of Arrian that the expression " a gift of the river " had
already been used of the Delta by Hecatacus8.

But the question connected with the Nile which more than
any other excited the ingenuity of the Greeks, was
the cause °f *ts inundation, which was sufficiently
remarkable from its extent and its fertilising in-
fluence, but on account of its regular periodical recurrence and
its taking place in the summer season was a unique phenomenon,
Herodotus has recorded the various explanations
of it, by of it which had been propounded before his time,

Thalea' together with his own1. The first of these, which

subsequent writers agreed in attributing to Thalea, the founder of
the Ionian school, was that it arose from the Etesian winds,
which blew from the north during the summer, coming from the
Euxine and the coasts of the Aegean, and caused the water of the
river to overflow by preventing it from running off into the sea.
Herodotus rightly remarks on the insufficiency of this explanation,
inasmuch as other rivers which flow in an opposite direction to
these winds are not affected in the same manner, and the rising

Hecataeus °f ^ ^^ ta'CeS P^06 GVen W^en *eV ^° not

blow. The second view — which, though the

1 Herod, i. 7. a Herod, a. 5.

8 Arrian, Anab. 5. 6. 5; Afyrarfr re'Hp65or6$ r« Kai'H/earaios ol Xeymcot,
4 cl ty TOV &Xov j 'E/tttToJov trrl rA d^l T$ 7g rf AJyurrlp TOMATO,

4 Herod, a. 19—25.