ut of the land, was
the successor of Ramses II., 'the new king over Egypt,' Merenptah, the
son of Ramses, and now believed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. He
reigned about 1325 years A.D.

"The Land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived, is the north-eastern
part of Egypt, the whole of it lying to the east of the Damietta branch
of the Nile," continued the commander, using his pointer upon the map.
"Through this region then, as now, there were fresh-water canals, by
which the country was made very productive, and the people were very
prosperous. The city of Ramses, built by the Israelites, was doubtless
the most important in Goshen. It is the ancient Tanis, the ruins of
which are still to be seen. Pithom, the other city mentioned in the
Scripture, is here," and the speaker pointed it out. "It is quite near
the Arabian Desert, and the present fresh-water canal runs within a few
miles of it.

"With the birth of Moses, and the finding of the child in the ark or
basket by the daughter of Pharaoh, and her adoption of it, you are all
familiar; and the story is quite as interesting as any you can find in
other books than the Bible. Though of the house of Levi, he became an
Egyptian for the time; but he claimed his lineage, and became the leader
of the Israelites, and conducted them out of Egypt.

"A great deal of study has been given by learned men to the route by
which this was accomplished. Most of them agreed that he started from
Tanis, or Ramses. On that narrow strip of land between the lake and the
Mediterranean, which you have seen from the promenade, was one of the
usual roads from Egypt into Asia, and was the one which led into
Palestine, the Holy Land. Where Moses and his followers crossed the Red
Sea is still an open question, though hardly such to devout people who
accept literally the Bible as their guide in matters of faith and fact
both. These accept the belief that the crossing of the Red Sea, with the
miracles attending it, was in the portion near Suez.

"Heinrich Karl Brugsch, a learned German and eminent Egyptologist, born
in Berlin in 1827, has constructed a theory in relation to the exodus of
the Israelites which is more ingenious than reasonable to the pious
reader of the Scripture. It would be hardly profitable for us to go into
the details of his reasoning, though he uses the Bible as the foundation
of his statements. There were two roads from Egypt to Palestine, the one
mentioned, and one farther s