gyptians understood the art of making glass. It is now
known that the lens as a magnifying instrument was in use among them.
Attention has been drawn to the fact that the astronomical observations
of the ancients would have been impossible without the aid of the
telescope. Diodorus Siculus says there was an island west of the Celtae
in which the Druids brought the sun and moon near them. An instrument
has recently been found in the sands of the Nile, the construction of
which shows plainly that 6000 years ago the Egyptians were acquainted
with our modern ideas of the science of astronomy.

William Huntington, who has travelled widely in India, Borneo, the Malay
Peninsula, and Egypt, says:

"I think, on the whole, the most interesting experience I ever had was
in an ancient city on the Nile in Egypt.... When I was there a year ago,
and men were digging among the ruined temples, some curious things were
brought to light, and these I regard as the strangest things seen in all
my wanderings. In an old tomb was found a curious iron and glass object,
which on investigation proved to be a photographic camera. It was not
such a camera as is used now, or has been since our photography was
invented, but something analogous to it, showing that the art which we
thought we had discovered was really known 6000 years ago."

The same writer states that a plow constructed on the modern plan was
also found. "It was not of steel but of iron, and it had the same shape,
the same form of point and bend of mold board as we have now."

It is reported that the dark continent possesses means of communication
entirely unknown to Europe. Upon this subject a correspondent to the New
York Tribune writes:

"When Khartoum fell in 1885 I was in Egypt, and I well remember that the
Arabs settled in the neighborhood of the pyramids knew all about it, as
well as about Gen. Gordon's death, days and days before the news
reached Cairo by telegraph from the Soudanese frontier. Yet Khartoum is
thousands of miles distant from Cairo and the telegraph wires from the
frontier were monopolized by the government."

The same correspondent observes that these Arabs told him, months
previously, of the defeat of the Egyptian army under Baker Pasha at
Tokar--that they not only gave him the news, but several particulars
concerning the matter, two full days before intelligence was received
from the Red Sea coast. In answer to the suggestion that such
information might