Page:The Pharaohs and their people; scenes of old Egyptian life and history (IA pharaohstheirpeo00berkiala).pdf/124

 with rich and royal gifts for the purpose of conciliating the people of that land over which the Lady-King desired to establish a supremacy, although not at the sword's point.

The expedition arrived in safety, and found the people inhabiting little dome-shaped dwellings, supported on piles and approached by ladders, under the shade of their cocoa-nut and incense trees. The Egyptians, with their strong turn for natural history, were much interested by the novelties they beheld around them, the unfamiliar plants and trees, the strange birds and animals not known in Egypt. All went well. Gifts were exchanged, and the natives promised to acknowledge the supremacy of Egypt, and to send an annual tribute thither. The king of the country appeared on the scene accompanied, say the hieroglyphs, 'by his enormously fat wife an ass serves the fat wife to ride on.' This lady, the queen of the fairyland of Egyptian fancy, is in truth a painful object to behold; not merely fat but bloated, and swollen in such an extraordinary manner as to render it probable that, although the 'Queen of Punt,' she 'was a leper.'