Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker.

Date:
1885-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    directions). Early in the afternoon of a day during the second of these seasons the wind, as is the case in all tropical regions, some- times rises to a hurricane, in which case it is called a ‘Samum’. Of this wind there are two or three different varieties: (1) It is called a ‘Shobeh’ when it blows chiefly from the east, and f2) a ‘Merisi’ when it comes directly from the south. In the latter case it is also sometimes called a ‘Khamsin’, hut this name more properly applies to the very hot, dry, and dust-laden winds which frequently blow unremittingly for one or two whole days together, and render the climate peculiarly trying in March and April (comp. p. 2). The name Khamasin, as it is more correctly written , is the plural of Khamsin, signifying ‘fifty’, and is applied to these winds in conse- quence of the fact that they prevail only during a period of fifty days before the summer solstice, after which they invariably cease. The Arabs confine this name to the period, and name the winds themselves shard. The wind to which the name is applied in winter affords but a feeble idea of the Khamsin of the hotter season, which forms the only disagreeable featiire of the Egyptian climate, and one from which there is no escape. The impalpable sand finds its way into the most carefully closed rooms, boxes, and even watches, and the parching heat is most destructive to the blossoms of fruit-trees. In accordance with the Temperature the Egyptian year may also he divided into two seasons, a period of hot weather, lasting eight months (April to November), and a cool season of four months (December to March). Throughout the whole country the heat gradually increases from April till the middle or end of June, and many of the superstitious natives believe that a perceptible fresh- ening of the air takes place on the night of the ‘dropping’ (17th June ; see p. 239). In Alexandria the blowing of the N. N. W. wind sometimes interrupts the regular increase of the heat, so that the maximum may be reached as early as May or June or may be post- poned to September or October. The maximum heat in the Delta is about 95° Fahr. in the shade, in Upper Egypt about 109°. At Cairo the thermometer sometimes rises as high as 114° during the prevalence of the Khamsin. In December, January, and February the temperature is at its lowest, falling in the Delta to 35°, in Alex- andria to 40°, and in Upper Egypt to 41°. The quicksilver rarely sinks to the freezing-point, except in the desert and at night. On 16th Feb. 1874, during Rohlfs’ expedition in the Libyan desert, the thermometer fell to 23°. About sunrise the traveller will some- times find a thin coating of: ice in his basin, or on neighbouring- pools of water, where, owing to the rapid evaporation, the tempe- rature falls several degrees lower than in the surrounding air. As a rule, throughout the whole country, and at every season, the tem- perature is highest from 1 to 5 p.m., and lowest during the two hours before sunrise. The result of the observations often years has been that the mean temperature in the Delta and at Cairo is 58° Fahr. in winter, 78° in spring, 83° in summer, and 66° in autumn. M. Pirona’s observations, carried on for fourteen years, fix the mean temperature on the coast near Alexandria at 60° in winter, 66° in
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