be 12 miles in length, and about 2 1/2 in width towards the middle.

* The description of Argo and its ruins is borrowed from
Caillaud, Voyage a Meroe, vol. ii. pp. 1-7.

It is partly wooded, and vegetation grows there with tropical
luxuriance; creeping plants climb from tree to tree, and form an
almost impenetrable undergrowth, which swarms with game secure from the
sportsman. A score of villages are dotted about in the clearings,
and are surrounded by carefully cultivated fields, in which durra
predominates. An unknown Pharaoh of the XIIIth dynasty built, near to
the principal village, a temple of considerable size; it covered an
area, whose limits may still easily be traced, of 174 feet wide by 292
long from east to west. The main body of the building was of sandstone,
probably brought from the quarries of Tombos: it has been pitilessly
destroyed piecemeal by the inhabitants, and only a few insignificant
fragments, on which some lines of hieroglyphs may still be deciphered,
remain _in situ_. A small statue of black granite of good workmanship is
still standing in the midst of the ruins. It represents Sovkhotpu III.
sitting, with his hands resting on his knees; the head, which has been
mutilated, lies beside the body.

[Illustration: 417.jpg ONE OF THE OVERTURNED AND BROKEN STATUES OF
MIRMASIIAU AT TANIS]

Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph in Rouge-Banville's
_Album photographique de la Mission de M. de Bouge_, No.
114.

The same king erected colossal statues of himself at Tanis, Bubastis,
and at Thebes: he was undisputed master of the whole Nile Valley, from
near the spot where the river receives its last tributary to where
it empties itself into the sea. The making of Egypt was finally
accomplished in his time, and if all its component parts were not as yet
equally prosperous, the bond which connected them was strong enough
to resist any attempt to break it, whether by civil discord within or
invasions from without. The country was not free from revolutions, and
if we have no authority for stating that they were the cause of the
downfall of the XIIIth dynasty, the lists of Manetho at least show that
after that event the centre of Egyptian power was again shifted. Thebes
lost its supremacy, and the preponderating influence passed into the
hands of sovereigns who were natives of the Delta. Xois, situated in the
midst of the marshes, between the Phatnitic and Sebennytic branches of
th