"This is the account given of Menes [the first king of Egypt] by Herodotus--Menes, the first king of Egypt, as the priests informed me, protected Memphis by a dam against the river which ran towards the sandy chain of the Libyan Mountains. About 100 stadia above Memphis, he made an embankment against the bend of the river, which is on the south side. The effect of this was to dry up its ancient bed, as well as to force the stream between the two chains of mountains. This bend of the Nile, which is confined within the embankment walls, was very carefully attended to by the Persians, and repaired every year. For, if the river were to burst through its banks and overflow at this point, all Memphis would be in danger of being swamped. Menes, _the oldest of their kings_, having thus drained the tract of land by means of the dyke, built upon it the city now called Memphis, which lies in the mountain valley of Egypt. To the west and north he dug a lake round it, which communicates with the river--on the east it is bounded by the Nile--and afterwards erected in it a temple to Vulcan, a splendid edifice, deserving of especial notice" (ii. 48). Bunsen fully endorses this account--"Herodotus, therefore, has recorded the following fact, that before the time of Menes the Nile overflowed the tract of country which he fixed upon as the site of his new metropolis" (p. 49 and p. 51). "There is no foundation whatever for Andriossy's hypothesis that the story originated in the fact of the Nile having once run westward from the Pyramid mountains to Bahr Bela Ma (stream without water) and the Natron and Mareotic Lakes. Herodotus mentions an historical fact, and describes the work of an historical king. Andriossy's hypothesis, if well founded, would belong to geology." A sagacious and well-founded remark on the part of Baron Bunsen, but, as I submit, equally applicable to the work of Yao or Yu. Merely noting that, if the above work was really carried out by Menes, and it would have been, from the point of view of Genesis, so carried out at a period contemporary with that of Yao or Yu--and, moreover, conceding to it in any case (I mean the work of Menes) a certain historical basis--let us dispassionately compare both with the passage from Klaproth, which I shall now extract. It is taken from the Sanscrit History of Cashmere.[55] [55] Klaproth says:--"The only Sanscrit history deserving the name of the chronicle of the kings of Kashmir, Radja Paringin'i, translated by W. H. Wilson."--_Klaproth, Mem. Relatif à L'Asie_. Klaproth says:--