breath. But among them was an upper class who had great learning and
much ancient knowledge. These men made their laws wherein there was
always sense under what seemed to be folly, designed the temples,
managed the mines of gold and other metals and followed the arts. They
were the real masters of the land, the rest were but slaves content to
live in plenty, for in that fertile soil want never came near them, and
to do as they were bid.

Thus they passed from the cradle to the grave amidst song and flowers,
carrying out their light, allotted tasks, and for the rest, living as
they would and loving those they would, especially their children, of
whom they had many. By nature and tradition the men were warriors and
hunters, being skilled in the use of the bow and always at war when they
could find anyone to fight. Indeed when we came among them their trouble
was that they had no enemies left, and at once they implored Bes to lead
them out to battle since they were weary of herding kine and tilling
fields.

All of these things I found out by degrees, also that they were a great
people who could send out an army of seventy thousand men and yet leave
enough behind them to defend their land. Of the world beyond their
borders the most of them knew little, but the learned men of whom I have
spoken, a great deal, since they travelled to Egypt and elsewhere to
study the customs of other countries. For the rest their only god was
the Grasshopper and like that insect they skipped and chirruped through
life and when the winter of death came sprang away to another of which
they knew nothing, leaving their young behind them to bask in the sun of
unborn summers. Such were the Ethiopians.

Now of all the ceremonies of the reception of Bes and his re-crowning
as Karoon, I knew little, for the reason that the tooth of the crocodile
poisoned my blood and made me very ill, so that I remained for a moon
or more lying in a fine room in the palace where gold seemed to be as
plentiful as earthen pots are in Egypt, and all the vessels were of
crystal. Had it not been for the skill of the Ethiopian leeches and
above all for the nursing of my mother, I think that I must have died.
She it was who withstood them when they wished to cut off my arm, and
wisely, for it recovered and was as strong as it had ever been. In the
end I grew well again and from the platform in front of the temple was
presented to the people by Bes as his saviour and the ne