t, and thinks all the world of
himself as he goes home to show off his fine feathers.

"He receives beautiful horses,
And rejoices and exults,
And returns with them to his town."

But then comes the inspection, and if he has not everything in perfect
order he has a bad time of it, for he is thrown down on the ground, and
beaten with sticks till he is sore all over.

But if the lot of the cavalry soldier is hard, that of the infantry-man
is harder. In the barracks he is flogged for every mistake or offence.
Then war breaks out, and he has to march with his battalion to Syria.
Day after day he has to tramp on foot through the wild hill-country, so
different from the flat, fertile homeland that he loves. He has to carry
all his heavy equipment and his rations, so that he is laden like a
donkey; and often he has to drink dirty water, which makes him ill.
Then, when the battle comes, he gets all the danger and the wounds,
while the Generals get all the credit. When the war is over, he comes
home riding on a donkey, a broken-down man, sick and wounded, his very
clothes stolen by the rascals who should have attended on him. Far
better, the wise man says, to be a scribe, and to remain comfortably at
home. I dare say it was all quite true, just as perhaps it would not be
very far from the truth at the present time; but, in spite of it all,
Pharaoh had his battles to fight, and he got his soldiers all right when
they were needed.

The Egyptian army was not generally a very big one. It was nothing like
the great hosts that we hear of nowadays, or read of in some of the old
histories. The armies that the Pharaohs led into Syria were not often
much bigger than what we should call an army corps nowadays--probably
about 20,000 men altogether, rarely more than 25,000. But in that number
you could find almost as many different sorts of men as in our own
Indian army. There would be first the native Egyptian spearmen and
bowmen--the spearmen with leather caps and quilted leather tunics,
carrying a shield and spear, and sometimes an axe, or a dagger, or
short sword--the bowmen, more lightly equipped, but probably more
dangerous enemies, for the Egyptian archers were almost as famous as the
old English bowmen, and won many a battle for their King. Then came the
chariot brigade, also of native Egyptians, men probably of higher rank
than the foot-soldiers. The chariots were very light, and it must have
been exceedingly diff