nruly listener, with a view
to hurrying the distribution of the "Sabbathfruit," would endanger the
stability of the dish by vigorous tugging at the table-cloth, and elicit
the reproof suggested by our reading: "You are a veritable
Sambation!"--Aristotle, Pliny, Olympia, Cyrene, "Yosippon," and
grandam--all unite to whet our appetite for African novelties.

Never has interest in the subject been more active than in our
generation, and the question, "What is the quest of the Jews in Africa?"
might be applied literally to the achievements of individual Jewish
travellers. But our inquiry shall not be into the fortunes of African
explorers of Jewish extraction; not into Emin Pasha's journey to Wadelai
and Magungo; not into the advisability of colonizing Russian Jews in
Africa; nor even into the role played by a part of northern Africa in
the development of Jewish literature and culture: briefly, "The Jew's
quest in Africa" is for the remnants of the ten lost tribes.

For more than eight hundred years, Israel, entrenched on his own soil,
bade defiance to every enemy. After the death of Solomon (978 B. C. E.),
the kingdom was divided, its power declining in consequence. The
world-monarchy Assyria became an adversary to be feared after Ahaz, king
of Judah, invited it to assist him against Pekah. Tiglath-Pileser
conquered a part of the kingdom of Israel, and, in about the middle of
the eighth century, carried off its subjects captive into Assyria. In
the reign of Hosea, Shalmaneser finished what his predecessor had begun
(722), utterly destroying the kingdom of the north in the two hundred
and fifty-eighth year of its independence. Before the catastrophe, a
part of its inhabitants had emigrated to Arabia, so that there were
properly speaking only nine tribes, called by their prophets, chief
among them Hosea and Amos, Ephraim from the most powerful member of the
confederacy. Another part went to Adiabene, a district on the boundary
between Assyria and Media, and thence scattered in all directions
through the kingdom of the Medes and Persians.

The prophets of the exile still hope for their return. Isaiah says:[62]
"The Lord will put forth His hand again the second time to acquire the
remnant of his people, which shall remain, from Asshur, and from Egypt,
and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and
from Chamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he will lift up an
ensign unto the nations, and will ass