vance was
probably greater at Philae than in other places, because the traveller
was there stopped in his voyage by the cataracts on the Nile, and he had
to be supplied with labourers to carry his luggage where the navigation
was interrupted. Accordingly the priests at Philae petitioned the king
that their temple might be relieved from this heavy and vexatious
charge, which they said lessened their power of rightly performing their
appointed sacrifices; and they further begged to be allowed to set up a
monument to record the grant which they hoped for. Euergetes granted the
priests' prayer, and accordingly they set up a small obelisk; and the
petition and the king's answer were carved on the base of this monument.

The gold mines near the Nubian or Golden Berenice, though not so rich
as they used to be, were worked with full activity by the unhappy
prisoners, criminals, and slaves, who were there condemned to labour in
gangs under the lash of their taskmasters. Men and women alike, even old
men and children, each at such work as his overstretched strength was
equal to, were imprisoned in these caverns tunnelled under the sea or
into the side of the mountain; and there by torchlight they suffered
the cruel tortures of their overseers without having power to make their
groans heard above ground. No lot upon earth could be more wretched than
that of these unhappy men; to all of them death would have been thought
a boon.

The survey of the coast of the Red Sea, which was undertaken in this or
the last reign, did not reach beyond the northern half of that sea. It
was made by Agatharcides, who, when the philosopher Heracleides Lembus
filled the office of secretary to the government under Philometor, had
been his scribe and reader. Agatharcides gives a curious account of the
half-savage people on these coasts, and of the more remarkable animals
and products of the country. He was a most judicious historian, and gave
a better guess than many at the true cause of why there was most water
in the Nile in the dry est season of the year; which was a subject of
never-ceasing inquiry with the travellers and writers on physics. Thaies
said that its waters were held back at its mouths by the Etesian winds,
which blow from the north during the summer months; and Democritus of
Abdera said that these winds carried heavy rain-clouds to Ethiopia;
whereas the north winds do not begin to blow till the Nile has risen,
and the river has returne