The Tour by Louis Couperus

In the still and silent night, the Delta lay flooded by the kindly waters of the sacred river. From the Canopic to the Sebennytic mouth, from the Phatmetic along the Mendesian to the Pelusiac mouth, the Delta lay flooded: one still and silent sea in the night, a wide, silver sheet of water without a ripple, stretching farther than the eye could reach in the soft-falling sheen of the full moon. Between the river-mouths the canals lay in streaks of silver light, full of water to their edges. Past the blossoming reeds, past the blossoming lotuses and water-lilies, the great barge glided up the stream as in a vision.

There was not a sound amid the silence but the dripping from the oars.