In a twenty years' residence at Cairo, the consul Maillet had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile (lettre ii. particularly p. 70, 75); the fertility of the land (lettre ix.). From a college at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a keener glance:
What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,
Where Nile, redundant o'er his summer bed,
From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o'er Egypt with his watery wings:
If with adventurous oar, and ready sail,
The dusky people drive before the gale:
Or on frail floats to neighboring cities ride.
That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide. (Mason's Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200)