Merritt’s Island, which is about forty miles long and contains about thirty thousand acres is situated in the northern part of the river. The water on its east side is from one-fourth of a mile to six miles wide, and is known as Banana River. The shores of Indian River, both on the west side of Merritt’s Island and on the main land, are free from swamps and marshes, and rise at an angle of from twenty to twenty-five degrees to an elevation of from twenty-five to fifty feet. In many places the banks are high bluffs. The country on Merritt’s Island, and the west shore has the appearance of an endless park, the timber being principally scattered pines, with an undergrowth of palmettos and grass, interspersed with an occasional forest of palm, live oak and other hard wood timbers.
The orange belt is from one to three miles in width, and is principally on the west side near the river. West of the orange belt are the St. John’s prairies, which are unfit for orange culture, but afford fine pasturage, and are good for vegetables and the culture of sugar-cane and hay.
The river south of Indian River Inlet, on the eastern shore, is skirted with a narrow belt of mangrove timber of only a few rods in width, which is very dense and almost impenetrable. It is a deep green the entire year, and presents a beautiful appearance. The strip of land adjacent to the ocean between Jupiter Inlet and the mouth of St. Lucie River, is known as Jupiter Island, and is about half a mile wide and twenty miles long. It has some excellent land and is elevated from fifteen to thirty feet above the sea. The river here, at Jupiter Narrows, is less than half a mile wide. The western bank is from forty to fifty feet high and covered with a dense low scrub of live oak bushes, not more than two or three feet high, and when viewed from the Island, these heights remind one of the green pastures of the north--they are always the same colour, a beautiful green. This portion of the river is full of oysters and the inlet is the finest fishing on the coast. On the bank of the river, at various places, are large mounds of clam and oyster shells; the largest of them near Jupiter Inlet, is nearly a quarter of a mile long and about forty feet high.
At the north end of the river are some fine live oak and palm hummock lands, very rich and suitable for orange groves, sugar-cane and garden vegetables. The climate from October to May is a perpetual Indian summer, commingled with the balmiest days of spring, seldom interrupted by storms and only with occasional showers, while most of the time there is a gentle breeze coming inland from the even-tempered waters of the Gulf Stream. The prevailing winds are easterly, being the trade winds, which extend as far north as Cape Canaveral and are perceptible as far north as New Smyrna and St. Augustine. The nights are cool even in summer--the atmosphere invigourating and health restoring.
Mineral and other springs are frequent, many of them possessing medicinal properties. Game is abundant--bear, deer, quail and wild turkeys on the land, ducks on the lakes and rivers, and green turtle and fish in the waters. All of these, with its beautiful building sites, its superior surf bathing and boat sailing, the absence of swamps and marshes, will eventually cause the banks of this magnificent sheet of water to become one vast villa of winter residences.
THE NILE
J. HOWARD REED
The holy river--“the Jove-descended Nile”--formerly bore the name of Ægyptus. Professor Rawlinson in his _History of the Ancient Egyptians_, says: “The term Egypt was not known to the ancient Egyptians themselves, but appears to have been first used by the Greeks as a name for the Nile, and thence extended to the country. It is stated by some authorities that the river received its present title from Nilus, an ancient king of Thebes, who named the stream after himself.”
“Father Nile” was an object of great veneration to the ancients, and a gift of its waters was considered by them as a present fit for kings and queens. The veneration in which the river was held, of course, arose from the blessings of its annual overflow spread broadcast over its banks by fertilizing the seed of the sower, producing abundant crops for the sickle of the reaper, and thus making glad the heart of man. It is stated that the Arabs in the present day consider it a delicious privilege to slake their thirst with the salubrious and agreeable waters of the river, and I have read that they will even artificially excite thirst to indulge in the pleasure of imbibing refreshing and satisfying draughts from the “holy stream.” The general Pescennius Niger is said to have cried to his soldiers: “What! crave you for wine, when you have the water of the Nile to drink?” Homer is stated to have said, no doubt referring poetically to its regular and fertilizing overflow: “The Nile flows down from heaven.” The Egyptians say that “If Mahomet had tasted the waters of the Nile, he would have prayed God to make him immortal, that he might have enjoyed them for ever.”
The river has a total length of considerably over 3,000 miles, and is remarkable among the rivers of the world from the fact that for about the last 1,500 miles of its flow it receives no tributary--none, in fact, after the Albara or Tacazze. The consequence is that, by the time it reaches the sea, its volume is considerably reduced by evaporation, and from the large quantity of water used along its banks for irrigation and other purposes. The river is formed of two principal branches, the Bahr-el-Azrek, or Blue Nile, and the Bahr-el-Abiad, or White Nile, the latter of which is the main branch or true Nile. It receives also, as tributary rivers, the Atbara or Tacazze before mentioned, with the Sobat and Asua on the east side; and the Bahr-el-Gazelle on the west; besides other smaller and less important streams. Its waters are discharged into the Mediterranean through several mouths, the two principal of which are known as the Rosetta and Damietta mouths--the first-named being to the west and the other to the east. The principal island formed by the divisions of the river being shaped like the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, takes the name of Delta; and the Nile is doubtless the river which first suggested what is now a technical name for all similar formations at the mouths of rivers.
[Illustration: THE NILE]
The rise and overflow of the Nile caused by the seasonal rains of the interior, has been for ages noted for its regularity. The rise commences about midsummer, reaches its greatest height at the autumnal equinox, and has again subsided by Christmas; leaving the land highly enriched by the fertilizing sediment of red earth brought down by the Abyssinian tributaries and deposited by the river. The land can then be worked and the crops planted. The rise and fall of the river is watched with great anxiety by the inhabitants of the Nile valley. At intervals along its banks river gauges, or nilometers, are fixed, upon which the variations of the river are duly recorded.
Nearly five centuries before the Christian era, the first great African traveller, Herodotus, writing about the Nile, said: “Respecting the nature of this river, I was unable to gain any information, either from the priests or any one else. I was very desirous, however, of learning from them why the Nile, beginning at the summer solstice, fills and overflows for a hundred days; and when it has nearly completed this number of days, falls short in its stream and retires; so that it continues low all the winter, until the return of the summer solstice.”
Seneca writes that the Emperor Nero sent an exploring expedition under two centurions with military force to explore the countries along the banks of the Astapus or White River, and to search for the Nile’s sources. They passed down the river a considerable distance until immense marshes were met with. They forced their way through, and continued their journey southward, until the river was seen “tumbling down or issuing out between the rocks.” They were then obliged to turn back and declare their mission a failure. The centurions are stated to have brought back with them a map of the districts they had passed through, for the information of the Imperial Nero.
This early expedition succeeded in penetrating about 800 Roman miles south of Meroe--that is to say, reaching three or four degrees north latitude. The place where water was seen “tumbling down from between the rocks” was probably the Fola or Mekade cataract, again discovered in our own day by the late General Gordon. The river here rushes through a narrow ravine, over and between rocks of from thirty to forty feet high. These falls are stated to be the only insurmountable obstacle to the navigation of the Nile, for vessels of considerable size, from the Mediterranean to the Albert Lake.
About seventy years later, during the Second Century, we find Claudius Ptolemy, a celebrated geographer and astrologer of Alexandria, writing about the Nile and its sources. He tells us that the “holy stream” rises some twelve degrees south of the equator, in a number of streams that flow into two lakes, situated east and west of each other; from which, in turn, issue two rivers; these afterwards unite and form the Nile. Ptolemy also mentions that in the interior of Africa were some mountains which he called “_Selenes Oros_”--generally translated “Mountains of the Moon.”