This view seems to me highly improbable; for though, by canals and embankments, man has done much to modify the natural distribution of the waters of the Nile, and possibly has even transferred its channel from one side of the valley to the other, yet the annual inundation is not his work, and the river must have overflowed its banks and carried spontaneous vegetation with its waters, as well before as since Egypt was first occupied by the human family.
— from Man and Nature; Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action by George P. (George Perkins) Marsh