t. One may hope, at least, that the most
prosperous days of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Romans will be
reproduced once more for the modern Egyptians, as an outcome of the
wise administration which has originated through the occupation of the
country by the English, as an international trust held for civilisation.
By aid of British initiative, Egypt now controls a vast empire in
equatorial Africa and the Sudan, and the great water ways of this
immense territory are being gradually brought under such control that
the maximum advantage to all the population will be the necessary
result. The whole Nile is now opened to commerce. The British have
guaranteed equal rights, and what has been called the policy of the
"open door," for the commerce of all nations.

The history of the modern exploration of the Nile is closely associated
with the history of Egypt in modern times. The men who first
visited Egypt and ascended the Nile valley were in almost every case
Indo-Euro-peans. The early Egyptians were familiar perhaps with the
Nile as far as Khartum, and with the Blue Nile up to its source in Lake
Tsana, but they showed little or no interest in exploring the White
Nile. In 457 B.C., Herodotus entered Egypt, and ascended the Nile as
far as the First Cataract. He then learned many things about its upper
waters, and made enquiries about the territories which lay beyond.
He heard that the source was unknown; that there was a centre of
civilisation in a city of the Ethiopians, in the bend of the Nile at
Meroe (Merawi of to-day), but about the regions beyond he was unable to
learn anything. Eratosthenes, the earliest geographer of whom we
have record, was born in 276 b. c. at Cyrene, North Africa. From the
information he gathered and edited, he sketched a nearly correct route
of the Nile to Khartum. He also inserted the two Abyssinian affluents,
and suggested that lakes were the source of the river.

When Rome extended her domains over Egypt, in 30 B.C., the interest of
the Romans was aroused in the solution of the problem of the discovery
of the source of the Nile. Strabo set out with AElius Gallus, the Roman
Governor of Egypt, on a journey of exploration up the Nile as far as
Philae, at the First Cataract. About 30 B.C. Greek explorers by the names
of Bion, Dalion, and Si-mondes were engaged in active exploration of the
Nile above the First Cataract and perhaps south of Khartum, according to
the account of Pliny the Elder