his brethren would have understood how that God by His
hand would deliver them, but they understood not." His supposition could
not be founded on his success in smiting a single Egyptian; he was too
great a man to be elated by a single act of prowess, but his success on
a large scale in Ethiopia afforded reasonable grounds for believing that
his brethren would be proud of their countryman, and disposed to follow
his leadership, but they were slaves. The notice taken of the matter by
Pharaoh showed that he was eyed by the great as a dangerous, if not
powerful, man. He "dwelt" in Midian for some time before his gallant
bearing towards the shepherds by the well, commended him to the priest
or prince of the country. An uninteresting wife, and the want of
intercourse with kindred spirits during the long forty years' solitude
of a herdsman's life, seem to have acted injuriously on his spirits, and
it was not till he had with Aaron struck terror into the Egyptian mind,
that the "man Moses" again became "very great in the eyes of Pharaoh and
his servants." The Ethiopian woman whom he married could scarcely be the
daughter of Renel or Jethro, for Midian was descended from Keturah,
Abraham's concubine, and they were never considered Cushite or
Ethiopian. If he left his wife in Egypt she would now be some fifty or
sixty years old, and all the more likely to be despised by the proud
prophetess Miriam as a daughter of Ham.
I dream of discovering some monumental relics of Meroe, and if anything
confirmatory of sacred history does remain, I pray to be guided
thereunto. If the sacred chronology would thereby be confirmed, I would
not grudge the toil and hardships, hunger and pain, I have endured--the
irritable ulcers would only be discipline.
Above the fine yellow clay schist of Manyuema the banks of Tanganyika
reveal 50 feet of shingle mixed with red earth; above this at some parts
great boulders lie; after this 60 feet of fine clay schist, then 5
strata of gravel underneath, with a foot stratum of schist between them.
The first seam of gravel is about 2 feet, the second 4 feet, and the
lowest of all about 30 feet thick. The fine schist was formed in still
water, but the shingle must have been produced in stormy troubled seas
if not carried hither and thither by ice and at different epochs.
This Manyuema country is unhealthy, not so much from fever as from
debility of the whole system, induced by damp, cold, and indigestion:
this
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