ature
knows thereof beside thyself, O King, thy servant Prexaspes, and the
gulls and cormorants, that hover over his grave."

The king uttered a piercing shriek of rage, was seized by a fresh
shivering-fit, and sank back once more in raving delirium.

Long weeks passed, every day of which threatened its death. At last,
however, his strong constitution gained the day, but his mind had given
way, and remained disordered and weak up to his last hour.

When he was strong enough to leave the sick-room and to ride and shoot
once more, he abandoned himself more than ever to the pleasure of
drinking, and lost every remnant of self-control.

The delusion had fixed itself in his disordered mind, that Bartja was
not dead, but transformed into the bow of the King of Ethiopia, and
that the Feruer (soul) of his father Cyrus had commanded him to restore
Bartja to its original form, by subjugating the black nation.

This idea, which he confided to every one about him as a great secret,
pursued him day and night and gave him no rest, until he had started for
Ethiopia with an immense host. He was forced, however, to return without
having accomplished his object, after having miserably lost the greater
part of his army by heat and the scarcity of provisions. An historian,
who may almost be spoken of as contemporary, tells us that the wretched
soldiers, after having subsisted on herbs as long as they could, came
to deserts where there was no sign of vegetation, and in their despair
resorted to an expedient almost too fearful to describe. Lots were drawn
by every ten men, and he on whom the lot fell was killed and eaten by
the other nine.

[Herodotus visited Egypt some 60 years after the death of Cambyses,
454 B.C. He describes the Ethiopian campaign, III. 25.]

At last things went so far, that his subjects compelled this madman to
return, but only, with their slavish Asiatic feelings, to obey him all
the more blindly, when they found themselves once more in inhabited
regions.

On reaching Memphis with the wreck of his army, he found the Egyptians
in glorious apparel celebrating a festival. They had found a new Apis
and were rejoicing over the reappearance of their god, incarnate in the
sacred bull.

As Cambyses had heard at Thebes, that the army he had sent against
the oasis of Ammon in the Libyan desert, had perished miserably in a
Khamsin, or Simoom, and that his fleet, which was to conquer Carthage,
had refused to fight