If ever two old rabbis in the _Beth ha-Midrash_ at Cyrene stole a chat in the intervals of their lectures, the same question probably passed between them. For, Africa has always claimed the interest of the cultured. Jewish-German legend books place the scenes of their most mysterious myths in the "Dark Continent," and I remember distinctly how we youngsters on Sabbath afternoons used to crowd round our dear old grandmother, who, great bowed spectacles on her nose, would read to us from "Yosippon." On many such occasions an unruly listener, with a view to hurrying the distribution of the "Sabbathfruit," would endanger the stability of the dish by vigorous tugging at the table-cloth, and elicit the reproof suggested by our reading: "You are a veritable Sambation!"--Aristotle, Pliny, Olympia, Cyrene, "Yosippon," and grandam--all unite to whet our appetite for African novelties. Never has interest in the subject been more active than in our generation, and the question, "What is the quest of the Jews in Africa?" might be applied literally to the achievements of individual Jewish travellers. But our inquiry shall not be into the fortunes of African explorers of Jewish extraction; not into Emin Pasha's journey to Wadelai and Magungo; not into the advisability of colonizing Russian Jews in Africa; nor even into the rôle played by a part of northern Africa in the development of Jewish literature and culture: briefly, "The Jew's quest in Africa" is for the remnants of the ten lost tribes. For more than eight hundred years, Israel, entrenched on his own soil, bade defiance to every enemy. After the death of Solomon (978 B. C. E.), the kingdom was divided, its power declining in consequence. The world-monarchy Assyria became an adversary to be feared after Ahaz, king of Judah, invited it to assist him against Pekah. Tiglath-Pileser conquered a part of the kingdom of Israel, and, in about the middle of the eighth century, carried off its subjects captive into Assyria. In the reign of Hosea, Shalmaneser finished what his predecessor had begun (722), utterly destroying the kingdom of the north in the two hundred and fifty-eighth year of its independence. Before the catastrophe, a part of its inhabitants had emigrated to Arabia, so that there were properly speaking only nine tribes, called by their prophets, chief among them Hosea and Amos, Ephraim from the most powerful member of the confederacy. Another part went to Adiabene, a district on the boundary between Assyria and Media, and thence scattered in all directions through the kingdom of the Medes and Persians.