throws it down. In other countries, sons
are constrained to make provision for their parents; in Egypt it is
not only the sons, but the daughters. In other countries the priests
have long hair; in Egypt their heads are shaven. Other nations fasten
their ropes and hooks to the outside of their sails, but the Egyptians
to the inside. The Greeks write and read from left to right, but the
Egyptians from right to left."

After sailing for some seven hundred miles up the river Nile from the
coast, past Heliopolis, the once famous city of Ancient Egypt, past
Memphis, the old capital, past Thebes, with its hundred gates, to
Elephantine, the "ivory island," opposite to what is now Assuan, he
is more than ever puzzled about its course and the reason of its
periodical floods.

"Concerning the nature of the river, I was not able to gain any
information from the priests. I was particularly anxious to learn from
them why the Nile, at the commencement of the summer solstice, begins
to rise and continues to increase for a hundred days--and why, as soon
as that number is past, it forthwith retires and contracts its stream,
continuing low during the whole of the winter until the summer solstice
comes round again. On none of these points could I obtain any
explanation from the inhabitants, though I made every inquiry."

The sources of the Nile entirely baffled Herodotus as they baffled
many another later explorer long years after he had passed away. "Of
the sources of the Nile no one can give any account, since the country
through which it passes is desert and without inhabitants," he
explains, his thirst for knowledge unsatisfied. Some priest
volunteers this explanation. On the frontiers of Egypt are two high
mountain-peaks called Crophi and Mophi; in an unfathomable abyss
between the two rose the Nile. But Herodotus does not believe in Crophi
and Mophi; he inclines to the idea that the Nile rises away in the
west and flows eastward right across Libya.

He travelled a little about Libya himself, little realising the size
of the great continent of Africa through which he passed. Many a strange
tale of these unknown parts did he relate to his people at home. He
had seen the tallest and handsomest race of men in the world, who lived
to the age of one hundred and twenty years--gold was so abundant that
it was used even for the prisoners' chains--he had seen folks who lived
on meat and milk only, never having seen bread or wine.

[Illus