Elephantine Island Egypt
The Elephantine position in the middle of the Nile and on the borders of Nubia would be enough to distinguish this ancient city from the different places of Egypt, when she would not be remarkable for its antiques and its rank in the country's history. The greenery and the freshness of his campaigns so pleasantly contrast with the arid soil that surrounds it, which was nicknamed the Flower Garden Island and the tropics.
The traveler whose curiosity is tired, exhausted by painful steps, and by the same number of monuments and paintings of all genres he has seen since Philae addresses with a sense of joy in this island, which shows him suddenly as an enchanted place, amidst these blackish peaks and the sparkling sands that occupy and fill the horizon. It's not that this territory is a richer culture than the rest of Egypt; it draws all its horrible price website and desert that surrounds it. Mulberry trees, acacias, napecas are, with DUM and the date palm, the only trees Elephantine: some are used as hedges and borders the gardens, others have spread into small wood in the fields; others form an irregular Avenue on the north side. When browsing the trails of the island, was the ear continually struck by the sound of many pots with wheels which still serve, as in the time of Strabo, irrigation of the country, and who have an inexhaustible fertility. Nothing in this island is left uncultivated the rock: each portion of silt that the Nile deposits, is utilized every year, and we are immediately sown vegetables, until landing take enough space to receive the plow. Thus the island almost a whole was formed gradually by river alluvium; the rock which the terminal at noon, served as core to these alluvial deposits.
We walk, we rest with delight in the shade of these evergreen trees; the pure and fresh air that breathes because inexpressible sensation, whose charm may well be felt by those who have approached the tropics. This is the sweet impression that less hot temperature, the opposition meadows and rocks, fields and desert, greenery and sand, gardens and wildest site, in a word contrast of nature and art, that give this district a distinct physiognomy and quite different from the too monotonous aspect of all other points of Egypt.
Finally, amidst all these pictures so varied, so picturesque, the traveler still enjoys the spectacle of several ancient monuments that have remained standing; small but precious remains of the ancient power of Elephantine. This is the first cultivated land of Egypt, and such is the entrance of the Nile in this country when he crossed the granite chain therethrough, and the countless pitfalls of the last cataract.
By: http://www.visite-egypte.com/histoire-egypte/ile-elephantine/