before the army of
Cambyses came on, and they deposited their supplies along the route at
the points where they would be most needed. Herodotus, the Greek
traveler, who made a journey into Egypt not a great many years after
these transactions, and who wrote subsequently a full description of
what he saw and heard there, gives an account of another method by
which the Arab king was said to have conveyed water into the desert,
and that was by a canal or pipe, made of the skins of oxen, which he
laid along the ground, from a certain river of his dominions, to a
distance of twelve days' journey over the sands! This story Herodotus
says he did not believe, though elsewhere in the course of his history
he gravely relates, as true history, a thousand tales infinitely more
improbable than the idea of a leathern pipe or hose like this to serve
for a conduit of water.

By some means or other, at all events, the Arab chief provided
supplies of water in the desert for Cambyses's army, and the troops
made the passage safely. They arrived, at length, on the frontiers of
Egypt.[A] Here they found that Amasis, the king, was dead, and
Psammenitus, his son, had succeeded him. Psammenitus came forward to
meet the invaders. A great battle was fought. The Egyptians were
routed. Psammenitus fled up the Nile to the city of Memphis, taking
with him such broken remnants of his army as he could get together
after the battle, and feeling extremely incensed and exasperated
against the invader. In fact, Cambyses had now no excuse or pretext
whatever for waging such a war against Egypt. The monarch who had
deceived his father was dead, and there had never been any cause of
complaint against his son or against the Egyptian people. Psammenitus,
therefore, regarded the invasion of Egypt by Cambyses as a wanton and
wholly unjustifiable aggression, and he determined, in his own mind,
that such invaders deserved no mercy, and that he would show them
none. Soon after this, a galley on the river, belonging to Cambyses,
containing a crew of two hundred men, fell into his hands. The
Egyptians, in their rage, tore these Persians all to pieces. This
exasperated Cambyses in his turn, and the war went on, attended by the
most atrocious cruelties on both sides.

[Footnote A: For the places mentioned in this chapter, and the track
of Cambyses on his expedition, see the map at the commencement of this
volume.]

In fact, Cambyses, in this Egyptian campaign, pursu