Wild-looking figures moved among the crowd, their garments, thrown loosely round them, affording a striking contrast to the cleanness of those of the Egyptians, while their unkempt hair was in equally strong contrast to the precise wigs of the middle-class Egyptians and the bare heads of the lower class. Their skins, too, were much darker in color, though there was considerable variation in this respect. Among them were a sprinkling of men of entirely different type, almost black in hue, with thicker lips and flatter features. These were Ethiopians, whose land lay beyond that of Meroe and who had also felt the weight and power of the arms of Egypt. “These people of Meroe,” Amuba said, “are very similar in features to the Egyptians, Chebron. And their tongue is also not unlike yours; I can understand their speech.” “Our oldest books,” Amuba said, “say that we are kindred people, and are Asiatic rather than African in our origin. The people of Meroe say that their far-back ancestors came from Arabia, and first spreading along the western shore of the Red Sea, ascended to the high lands and drove out the black people who inhabited them. “As to our own origin, it is vague; but my father has told me that the opinion among those most skilled in the ancient learning is that we too came from Arabia. We were not all one people, that is certain; and it is comparatively of recent years, though a vast time as far as human lives go, that the people of the Thebaid--that is, of Upper Egypt--extended their dominion over Lower Egypt and made the whole country one nation. Even now, you know, the king wears two crowns--the one of Upper Egypt, the other of the lower country. Along the shores of the Great Sea to the west are Libyans and other peoples similar in race to ourselves. My father considered that the tribes which first came from Asia pressed on to the west, driving back or exterminating the black people. Each fresh wave that came from the east pushed the others further and further, until at last the ancestors of the people of Lower Egypt arrived and settled there. “In Meroe the temples and religion are similar to our own. Whether they brought that religion from Arabia, or whether we planted it there during our various conquests of the country, I cannot tell you; but certain it is that there is at present but little more difference between Upper Egypt and Meroe than there is between Upper Egypt and the Delta.” “And beyond Meroe the people are all black like those we see here?”