Word: nile
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...Nile's career Ludwig sees a comforting parable for careerist man. For half its 4,000-mile course the river flows through the desert, receiving "neither tributaries nor rain, yet it does not dry up; indeed, close to its end, it creates the most fertile of all lands." Ludwig calls the Nile the world's greatest river, and his 619 pages of testimony bear him out. "Its basin contains the biggest lake of the eastern hemisphere, the highest mountains, the biggest city of its continent." It owns "the richest bird life of the northern hemisphere, nearly every animal...
...NILE : THE LIFE STORY OF A RIVER -Emil Ludwig-Viking...
Emil Ludwig has written 13 biographies. Each of them, winding somehow safe to the last page, made him think of a river. And once a river made him think of the life of man. Then (1924) and there (the great dam at Aswan on the Nile) he decided to write a potamography -the life story of a river. The big job took him a long time, for the Nile covers a lot of ground, has been flowing a long time, has affected many races of men. Last week Potamographer Ludwig's book was ready at last. First readers found...
...annual Nile flood, on which Egypt's fertility depends, comes in summer, when rivers normally shrink. From June to September the Nile rises 13 to 14 ells (1 ell = 7/10 yd.) in Upper Egypt, 7 to 8 ells in the Delta. Value of the flood is twofold: water for irrigation, silt for crops. Fertilizing value of the Nile's silt has been assessed at $7.50 an acre. Seventy percent of Egypt's cultivated land yields double or treble harvests; in some places there are seven harvests in 15 months. Could Mussolini starve Egypt by damming Lake Tana...
...Egypt even the seasons (flood, winter, summer) are the Nile's doing. And Egypt's whole civilization-and consequently the world's-is the result, says Ludwig, of the river's perennial lessons. "The calculation of the height of the flood produced the measurement of height, the marking out of single fields with boundaries that were washed away every year gave rise to square measure, to the protection of property and the settlement of boundary disputes. It was the Nile that created mathematics, law and equity, money and politics, long before any other association of people...