The glowing accounts brought back by the returned navigators of the abundance of fruits, vegetables, and the splendor of the climate of the new country, kindled the fire of adventurous enthusiasm in the Ethiopians, and they soon followed the example set them by the Egyptians. Henceforward, streams of emigrants were passing over the Isthmus of Suez, that high road to Africa, who became permanent residents of the promised land. FOOTNOTES: [1] 2 Chron. xiv: 8-13. [2] Hawkins, in his work on Meroe, identifies Tirhakah with the priest Sethos, upon ground, we think, not tenable. [3] 2 Kings, xvii: 4. [4] 2 Kings, xix: 9. [5] Herod. iii: 114. [6] Herod iii: 21. [7] Iliad II: 423. [8] Iliad XXIII. [9] Chron. xiv: 9; xvi: 8; Isaiah xlv: 14; Jeremiah xlvi: 9; Josephus Aut. II; Heeren, vol I: p. 290. [10] E. H. Sears, in the “Christian Examiner,” July, 1846. [11] Josephus Ant., Vol. I: p. 8. CHAPTER II. THE CARTHAGINIANS. Although it is claimed in history that Carthage was settled by the Phœnecians, or emigrants from Tyre, it is by no means an established fact; for when Dido fled from her haughty and tyrannical brother, Pygmalion, ruler of Tyre, and sailing down the Nile, seeking a place of protection, she halted at Carthage, then an insignificant settlement on a peninsula in the interior of a large bay, now called the gulf of Tunis, on the northern shore of Africa (this was B. C. 880), the population was made up mainly of poor people, the larger portion of whom were from Ethiopia, and the surrounding country. Many outlaws, murderers, highwaymen, and pirates, had taken refuge in the new settlement. Made up of every conceivable shade of society, with but little character to lose, the Carthaginians gladly welcomed Dido, coming as she did from the royal house of Tyre, and they adopted her as the head of their government. The people became law-abiding, and the constitution which they adopted was considered by the ancients as a pattern of political wisdom. Aristotle highly praises it as a model to other States. He informs us that during the space of five centuries, that is, from the foundation of the republic down to his own time, no tyrant had overturned the liberties of the State, and no demagogue had stirred up the people to rebellion. By the wisdom of its laws, Carthage had been able to avoid the opposite evils of aristocracy on the one hand, and democracy on the other. The nobles did not engross the whole of the power, as was the case in Sparta, Corinth, and Rome, and in more modern times, in Venice; nor did the people exhibit the factious spirit of an Athenian mob, or the ferocious cruelty of a Roman rabble.