therewith the wood that
bringeth forth trees.'

"When forced to serve on shipboard by the enterprise of their own
Monarchs or by their Persian conquerors, the Egyptians appear not to
have made bad sailors. They fought well at Salamis. But their natural
tendency was to shun the sea, which they regarded as the element of the
Destroyer Typhon. Their navigation was on the Nile, which formed the
highway of their commerce, the path of their processions and their
pilgrimages, and their passage to the tomb. The river being thus the
universal road, and being moreover without bridges, must have swarmed
with boats of all descriptions--the heavy bari of the merchant, the
light papyrus or earthenware skiffs of the common people, and the
sumptuous barge of Royalty, whose golden pavilion, masts, and rudder,
fringed and embroidered sails, and sculptured prow, remind us of the
galley of Cleopatra. The caravans of surrounding nations visited Egypt
with their precious and fragrant merchandise to exchange for her corn
and manufactures. But the Egyptian trader appears seldom to have visited
other countries either by land or sea.

"The army was a warrior caste. Its might consisted in its chariots. No
mounted cavalry appear in any of the monuments. With this exception they
had every kind of force and every weapon known to ancient warfare. They
used the long bow and drew the arrow, like the English archers, to the
ear. Their armor was imperfect, and more often of quilting than of mail.
They had regular divisions, with standards, and regular camps. Their
sieges were unscientific, and their means of assault scaling ladders,
sapping hatchets, and long pikes brought up to the walls under a sort of
shed. Of their battles no definite notion can be formed. All is lost in
the King, whose gigantic figure, drawn by gigantic horses, crushes,
massacres, or grasps by the hair scores of his pigmy enemies, whose
hands after the victory are laid in heaps before him and counted by
attendant scribes. Thus it is that Rameses the Great and the other
Pharaohs are seen warring against the Assyrian, and Chaldean against the
Jew, the Edomite, the Ethiopian, and the 'nine bows' of Libya, and
assailing the 'fenced cities' of strange races that have long passed
away.

"In the lower parts of civilization and the mechanical arts, the
Egyptians had attained high perfection. Their machinery and tools appear
to have been defective, but the defect was supplied by skill of