hen the ship was at sea. When the
professor made his bow, Mr. Gaskette exposed to the view of the audience
a map which had been completed before the steamer arrived at Port Said;
and all the way through the canal he and his assistants had been busy
upon others.

"Perhaps I ought to apologize for this map, Captain Ringgold," said Mr.
Gaskette, when he had unrolled the huge sheet; "for the boundaries of
these ancient countries are so indefinite in the great atlas that I have
not been able to lay down all of them."

"You have done exceedingly well, Mr. Gaskette, and I think the professor
can ask for nothing better than you have given him," replied the
commander.

"Certainly not," added the learned gentleman. "I can give the boundaries
no more definitely than they are presented on this beautiful map. I am
extremely delighted to have the assistance which it will afford me. The
artist might have guessed at some of the division lines, as others have
done. He has given us Mesopotamia, Susiana, and the region between them,
and that is all I desire.

"Perhaps I shall disappoint you, Mr. Commander, by the meagreness of my
description of these ancient countries; for these subjects in detail
would be very tiresome to the company under present circumstances, and I
propose to bring out only a few salient points in regard to them," said
the professor.

"The only thing I feared, Professor, was that you would go into them too
diffusely, forgetting that your audience are not savants, or even
college students, such as you have been in the habit of addressing. I am
very glad to find that you have just the right idea in regard to the
situation," replied Captain Ringgold.

"It is fortunate that we agree," continued the instructor, as he took
the pointer and turned to the map. "This map lays before you the region
lying to the north-east of Arabia, on the port hand of the ship, as the
commander would say; and with your imagination you can look over these
mountains and sands and see it. You observe that Syria is on the west of
the northern part of it, with Armenia just where it is now, on the north
of it, though there was more of it then than now; for in ancient times
it reached to the Caspian Sea. An old lady in the country at whose house
I used to spend my vacation used to call things that could not be
changed as fixed as the laws of the 'Medes and Parsicans.' She meant
the Medes and Persians; and Media, now a part of Persia, was the ea