among them, no doubt, the use of metal weapons (which were probably as good as those used by the Egyptians themselves), there came a time when--to use a term once much employed by the European pioneer--the black men became “saucy” and objected to be harried, bullied, assessed, and exploited by the lordly Egyptian. The Negro race at this time, too, was becoming infiltrated by the same splendid stock--the Hamites--as had so largely composed the ruling population of Egypt. Here and there, no doubt, Negro tribes submitted willingly to be governed by Hamitic princes (as has been the case in Uganda and Unyoro), and, thus ruled, offered sharp opposition to Egyptian encroachments. Egyptian interest, therefore, in the sources of the Nile died away, especially as in the revival of native Egyptian power and in the expulsion of foreign dynasties the thoughts of Egypt were all bent on the conquest and retention of Syria, Asia Minor, and Cyprus. These lands were more desirable in their eyes than the appalling wastes of the Sahara, the sun-smitten Sudan, the cold mountains of Abyssinia, or the fetid marshes of the Nile Negroes. Almost older than the civilisation of Egypt was that of Mesopotamia, the reflex action of which on the Hamites of western Arabia and Abyssinia and on the inhabitants of the Nile Delta may have provoked the civilisation of Egypt. Empires rose, declined, fell, and were revived in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and their influence over Arabia and Syria produced in those countries a stirring of commerce and invention and a desire for distant enterprise. The Phœnicians, who were originally an Arab people of the Persian Gulf, forced their way across the barren wastes of northern Arabia to the coasts of Syria, leaving behind, however, colonies of bold navigators at the northern end of the Persian Gulf. The Phœnicians, by the building of more seaworthy boats, and probably by the development of sails, soon traversed the Mediterranean in all directions, passed out through the Straits of Gibraltar, and even found their way to Britain long before Julius Cæsar. Their most noteworthy action in connection with Africa perhaps was the founding of Utica in 1100 B.C. and Carthage in 820 B.C., these settlements being made at no great distance from each other in that projection of North Africa which constitutes the modern state of Tunis. The Carthaginian successors of the Phœnicians carried on the work of discovery along the north and west coasts of Africa until, in the memorable voyage of Hanno, they had penetrated as far south in that direction as the existing colony of Sierra Leone. The Phœnicians as bold navigators were enlisted in the service of one of the last Egyptian sovereigns of a real Egyptian dynasty,--Neku, son of Psametik I., who succeeded to the throne of Egypt in 611 B.C. Evidently by this time the overland routes to the regions of the Upper Nile and even to Somaliland had been closed by