in Egypt explored the valley, the waters of the Nile expanded themselves into a vast lake over what are at this day the plains of Darfur.

The bursting of this lake took place at a period concerning which we are able, on monumental evidence, distinctly to say that it was after the reign of Sukophthis II.-the second successor of Amun Timæus; and as the register of this year is the last of many entries, the probabilities are highly in favor of its occurrence but a little time afterwards. But Amun-Timæus was the Pharaoh whom Salatis expelled from Memphis, and afterwards they both reigned cotemporaneously: Amun-Timæus and his successors in Upper Egypt and Ethiopia, and Salatis and his successors in the Delta and Middle Egypt. But again, Aphophis also was the second or third successor of Salatis. The times of Sukophthis II. and of Aphophis must, therefore, have closely approximated.

Let us now consider the mode in which the disruption of this barrier must have occurred.

It certainly was not occasioned by the cleavage of the rock by an earthquake, or by any other great accident which would have set the entire body of water at liberty at once. Had this been the case, the rush of such a tide would have swept every thing before it, and the valley would have been depopulated an event which we know did not take place.

There is but one other mode possible, and that is, the unusual prevalence of rains in the tropical mountains wherein are the sources of the river. The effect of them would be to elevate the waters of this lake, so that they would come into contact with and undermine some mud-bank, not ordinarily within reach of the inundation. This would allow the escape, not only of the superfluous waters of the flood, but also of some portion of those of the lake. Such an increase as this of the yearly overflow would be highly disastrous at the present day, when all the artificial means for irrigation (both the dykes and the mounds) have been for so many years adjusted to one scarcely varying measure; but at the remote period, now under consideration, we apprehend the case would be very different. The valley was, of necessity, but imperfectly cultivated any where, and it would only be in those narrow portions of it where the culture had already reached the mountains, that any mischief would be done. In the Delta (of which alone the inspired narrative seems to speak), where the cultivated surface is bounded on both sides by mere plains of sand, the only effect of this assumed disruption would have been, the diffusion of the teeming flood over a surface vastly more extended than in ordinary years. Of this circumstance the prescience of Joseph would direct him to take the utmost possible advantage.

Labourers would be sent everywhere to construct, for these new lands, sluices of recession and other necessary works for their productiveness, and the corn that was afterwards gathered by handfuls would now be sown by handfuls. This is God's invariable rule in all things.

The ordinary issues of the lake in Ethiopia would soon relieve the broken bank from the pressure of the overflow, and the Nile would subside to its wonted volume: but a large portion of the waters of the low or blue Nile would still flow through the vast crevasse formed by the disruption, and the surface of the lake would be lowered several feet. The effect of this is well known in engineering. The softer portions of the bank which retained the lake, and which were quite equal to sustain the inert pressure of the whole, would be worn away by the attrition of the currents that would now flow over them; and even in the low Nile the lake would go on decreasing. After eight months of incessant sun and dry sand-winds, cracking and parching the portions of this bank that had hitherto been under water, the Nile would rise again. We have now no occasion to assume another excess of rain in the mountains of Ethiopia. The ordinary flood would all but certainly be more than the bank thus injured could sustain, and another disruption would still further lower the surface of the lake in Ethio

pia, and originate the second year of plenty in the Delta.

By the repetition of this process, it is, we contend, no unreasonable supposition, that it would take seven successive annual floods to wash away entirely the embankments that sustained the lake of Ethiopia, and to bring down the Nile to its present level, and that in this increase of the ordinary measure of the overflow, consisted the cause of the seven plenteous years in the Delta.

We have now to consider the seven years of famine that followed them. The same phenomena will, we apprehend, go far to account for them also. On the first year, after the final subsidence of the lake, the annual overflow (supposing it to have been an ordinary one) on first reaching what was formerly the head of the lake, would enter an endless tissue of devious and intricate channels among rocks and mud-banks; and through this labyrinth it would have to work and wind its way for hundreds of miles. At the same point, only in the year preceding, the annual flood joined a vast body of water, and the wave of its first impulse would convey the commencement of the inundation to the outlet with the speed of gravitation. The far longer time required for threading the mazes of its new channel, would materially delay the appearance of the inundation in Egypt. Another effect would

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follow from the same cause. The quantity of water would be greatly diminished by this longer exposure to the burning sun of Ethiopia. This is the case at all seasons of the year. The Nile at the Barash, which is at the bifurcation of its two mouths, is a much less river than the Nile at Thebes or Philae, at the present day. The vast flats of Nile mud, covering thousands of square miles which, before the inundation of the previous year, had been the bottom of the lake, would also tend, in the year we are supposing, yet further to diminish the annual overflow. They had been for many months exposed to the sun and wind, and must have warped and cracked in a manner utterly inconceivable to those who have not actually witnessed the phenomenon. The mud has risen into huge blisters. It has sunk into deep hollows: it has cracked into yawning crevasses. We exactly describe the present appearance of the plain of Darfur, the locality in question. So much of the water of the inundation would be absorbed by these hollows, that we may safely assume that in an ordinary year, scarcely any of it would pass the foot of the lake; and, assuredly, after such a disturbance, it would be many years before the river would have so worked out the channels of its new course, that any thing like the usual overflow would reach Egypt. We are assuming here, that there should be no failure in the rains on the