There were no forests to shelter them, and no refuge or retreat for them but the dry and barren desert, during the period of the annual inundations.

This most extraordinary valley seems thus to have been formed and preserved by Nature herself for the special possession of man.

She herself seems to have held it in reserve for him from the very morning of creation, refusing admission into it to every plant and every animal that might hinder or disturb his occupancy and control.

And if he were to abandon it now for a thousand years, and then return to it once more, he would find it just as he left it, ready for his immediate possession.

There would be no wild beasts that he must first expel, and no tangled forests would have sprung up, that his ax must first remove.