That some unwarranted conclusions have at times been announced
is true; but the fact remains that again and again rude pottery
and other evidences of early stages of civilization have been
found in borings at places so distant from each other, and at
depths so great, that for such a range of concurring facts,
considered in connection with the rate of earthy deposit by the
Nile, there is no adequate explanation save the existence of man
in that valley thousands on thousands of years before the
longest time admitted by our sacred chronologists.
Nor have these investigations been of a careless character.
Between the years 1851 and 1854, Mr. Horner, an extremely
cautious English geologist, sank ninety-six shafts in four rows
at intervals of eight English miles, at right angles to the
Nile, in the neighbourhood of Memphis. In these pottery was
brought up from various depths, and beneath the statue of
Rameses II at Memphis from a depth of thirty-nine feet. At the
rate of the Nile deposit a careful estimate has declared this to
indicate a period of over eleven thousand years.
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