hariot force.
They were completely defeated in a pitched battle; numbers of the
chiefs were made prisoners, while the people generally fled to their
caves, where they remained hidden, "like jackals, through fear of the
king's majesty." Seti, having struck terror into their hearts, passed on
towards the south, and fiercely chastised the Cushites on the Upper
Nile, who during the war with the Hittites had given trouble, and showed
themselves inclined to shake off the Egyptian yoke. Here again he was
successful; the negroes and Cushites submitted after a short struggle;
and the Great King returned to his capital victorious on all sides--"on
the south to the arms of the Winds, and on the north to the Great Sea."

Seti was not dazzled with his military successes. Notwithstanding his
triumphs in Syria, he recognized the fact that Egypt had much to fear
from her Asiatic neighbours, and could not hope to maintain for long her
aggressive attitude in that quarter. Without withdrawing from any of the
conquered countries, while still claiming their obedience and enforcing
the payment of their tributes, he began to made preparation for the
changed circumstances which he anticipated by commencing the
construction of a long wall on his north-eastern frontier, as a security
against invasion from Asia. This wall began at Pelusium, and was carried
across the isthmus in a south-westerly direction by Migdol to Pithom, or
Heroopolis, where the long line of lagoons began, which were connected
with the upper end of the Red Sea. It recalls to the mind of the
historical student the many ramparts raised by nations, in their
decline, against aggressive foes--as the Great Wall of China, built to
keep off the Tartars; the Roman wall between the Rhine and Danube,
intended to restrain the advance of the German tribes; and the three
Roman ramparts in Great Britain, built to protect the Roman province
from its savage northern neighbours. Walls of this kind are always signs
of weakness; and when Seti began, and Ramesses II. completed, the
rampart of Egypt, it was a confession that the palmy days of the empire
were past, and that henceforth she must look forward to having to stand,
in the main, on the defensive.

Before acquiescing wholly in this conclusion, Ramesses II., who, after
reigning conjointly with his father for several years, was now sole
king, resolved on a desperate and prolonged effort to re-assert for
Egypt that dominant position in Weste