Sais was placed on the Canopic, the most westerly branch of the river, at a distance of about forty miles from the sea; between which and it was Naucratis, where the Greeks had been allowed to establish a factory and emporium. In the city also of Sais itself a quarter was assigned to them, where they were governed by their own laws, administered by magistrates selected from among their own body. As Psammetichus, the founder of the Saite Dynasty, had been raised to the throne, and was maintained upon it, mainly by the aid of Greek mercenaries, we can hardly suppose that this contiguity of the city he made his Capital to the source from which so much of his support was derived, was accidental. It was in accordance with his policy towards the Greeks that he granted a Factory to every other nation which was desirous of maintaining one, giving to all equal liberty to trade in the land. From the same motive he had his children taught Greek. Facts of this kind imply the complete reversal of the old national policy of seclusion. The Government, and it must have been seconded by the general approval of the people, saw that seclusion could no longer be maintained, while at the same time the opposite system was offering to the country very great advantages; and so, just as is the case at the present day with the Japanese, the requirements of the new conditions were speedily and unreservedly accepted. The military caste, however, whose susceptibility was offended at the employment of, and still more at the preference which was shown to, a large body of Greek mercenaries, was an exception to the general acquiescence. To the number of 240,000 they seceded from Egypt; and, having been well received in the now rival country of Ethiopia, were settled in a fertile tract of land which was bestowed upon them in the neighbourhood of Meroé. Necho, the son and successor of Psammetichus, was desirous of pushing the new commercial policy of his Father to its utmost limits. With this view, he undertook to adapt for navigation, and to prolong to the head of the Arabian Gulf, an old canal, that had for many centuries connected Bubastis with Lake Timsah, in order that every impediment to the traffic of the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean might be removed. He had carried this great work as far as the Bitter Lakes, when, from some military, or perhaps for an agricultural, reason, he abandoned the work, after having expended upon it the lives of 120,000 of the Fellahs of those times. Herodotus saw the Docks which, as a part of this plan, he had constructed on the Red Sea.