the Nile Valley
itself. The Egyptian Empire was forgotten, and Egypt was regarded as
permanently a little country. The conditions which we found here we took
to be permanent conditions. They were not. We arrived when the country
was in a most unnatural state as regards its foreign relations; and we
were obliged to regard that state as chronic. This, though wise, was
absolutely incorrect. Egypt in the past never has been for more than a
short period a single country; and all history goes to show that she
will not always be single in the future.

With the temporary loss of the Syrian province Egypt's need for a navy
ceased to exist; and the fact that she is really a naval power has now
passed from men's memory. Yet it was not much more than a century ago
that Muhammed Ali fought a great naval battle with the Turks, and
utterly defeated them. In ancient history the Egyptian navy was the
terror of the Mediterranean, and her ships policed the east coast of
Africa. In prehistoric times the Nile boats were built, it would seem,
upon a seafaring plan: a fact that has led some scholars to suppose that
the land was entered and colonised from across the waters. We talk of
Englishmen as being born to the sea, as having a natural and inherited
tendency towards "business upon great waters"; and yet the English navy
dates from the days of Queen Elizabeth. It is true that the Plantagenet
wars with France checked what was perhaps already a nautical bias, and
that had it not been for the Norman conquest, England, perchance would
have become a sea power at an earlier date. But at best the tendency is
only a thousand years old. In Egypt it is seven or eight thousand years
old at the lowest computation. It makes one smile to think of Egypt as
a naval power. It is the business of the historian to refrain from
smiling, and to remark only that, absurd as it may sound, Egypt's future
is largely upon the water as her past has been. It must be remembered
that she was fighting great battles in huge warships three or four
hundred feet in length at a time when Britons were paddling about in
canoes.

One of the ships built by the Pharaoh Ptolemy Philopator was four
hundred and twenty feet long, and had several banks of oars. It was
rowed by four thousand sailors, while four hundred others managed the
sails. Three thousand soldiers were also carried upon its decks. The
royal dahabiyeh which this Pharaoh used upon the Nile was three hundred
and thir