the land of Egypt for relics of the past may come on
another papyrus roll with the end of the story, and then we shall find
out whether the dog did kill the Prince, or whether God gave all his
dooms into his hand, as his wife hoped.

These are some of the stories that little Tahuti and Sen-senb used to
listen to in the long evenings when they were tired of play. Perhaps
they seem very simple and clumsy to you; but I have no doubt that, when
they were told in those old days, the black eyes of the little Egyptian
boys and girls used to grow very big and round, and the wizard who could
fasten on heads which had been cut off seemed a very wonderful person,
and the talking serpents and crocodiles seemed very real and very
dreadful.

Anyhow, you have heard the oldest stories in all the world--the fathers
and mothers, so to speak, of all the great family of wonder-tales that
have delighted and terrified children ever since.

CHAPTER IX

EXPLORING THE SOUDAN

There is no more wonderful or interesting story than that which tells
how bit by bit the great dark continent of Africa has been explored, and
made to yield up its secrets. But did you ever think what a long story
it is, and how very early it begins? It is in Egypt that we find the
first chapters of the story; and they can still be read, written in the
quaint old picture writing which the Egyptians used, on the rock
tombs of a place in the south of Egypt, called Elephantine.

[Illustration: Plate 11
THE SPHINX AND THE SECOND PYRAMID. _Page_ 79]

In early days the land of Egypt used to end at what was called the First
Cataract of the Nile, a place where the river came down in a series of
rapids among a lot of rocky islets. The First Cataract has disappeared
now, for British engineers have made a great dam across the Nile just at
this point, and turned the whole country, for miles above the dam, into
a lake. But in those days the Egyptians used to believe that the Nile,
to which they owed so much, began at the First Cataract. Yet they knew
of the wild country of Nubia beyond and, in very early times indeed,
about 5,000 years ago, they used to send exploring expeditions into that
half-desert land which we have come to know as the Soudan.

Near the First Cataract there lies the island of Elephantine, and when
the Egyptian kingdom was young the great barons who owned this island
were the Lords of the Egyptian Marches, just as the Percies and the
Douglases wer