Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/482

370 use it was made for, was apparently to serve for a hieroglyphic, of what he had accomplished, viz. that he had laid open the gold and silver trade from the mines in Ethiopia, and had navigated the ocean in ships made of wood, which were the only ones, he thereby insinuated, that could be employed in that trade. The Egyptian ships, at that time, were all made of the reed papyrus *, covered with skins or leather, a construction which no people could venture to present to the ocean.

is much to be learned from a proper understanding of these last benefits conferred by Sesostris upon his Egyptian subjects. When we understand these, which is very easy to any that have travelled in the countries we are speaking of, (for nations and causes have changed very little in these countries to this day), it will not be difficult to find a a solution of this problem, What was the commerce that, progressively, laid the foundation of all that immense grandeur of the east; what polished them, and cloathed them with silk, scarlet, and gold; and what carried the arts and sciences among them, to a pitch, perhaps, never yet surpassed, and this some thousands of years before the nations in Europe had any other habitation than their native woods, or eloathing than the skins of beasts, wild and domestic, or government, but that first, innate one, which nature had given to the strongest?

us inquire what was the connection Sesostris brought about between Egypt and India; what was that commerce

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 * See the article papyrus in the Appendix.