with Spanish smugglers, on voyages which were the beginning of a curious chapter in the history of the slave trade. He was not averse to piracy, as he showed when he joined forces with the French pirates at Borburata, and sailed to San Juan de Ulloa, where he and they were destroyed by the flota of New Spain. Drake hung about solitary places on the coast, was beaten off at Nombre de Dios, and captured a small convoy of treasure on the isthmus, with the help of а Frenchman, who was wounded by the Spaniards and left in the lurch by the Devonshire Sea Rover. The expedition of 1585 plundered small places, for San Domingo and Carthagena were then nothing more, won small booty, and lost half its men by disease. The final expedition of Hawkins and Drake, with Baskerville, in 1595, ended in disaster. It was designed to seize the isthmus, but Baskerville was beaten on shore, and the ships returned leaving Drake and Hawkins to their long sleep at the bottom of the sea.

To seize the isthmus would have been the most effectual of all ways of intercepting the King of Spain's treasure. But none of the attempts made to do it succeeded, not even the victorious raid of Morgan and his Buccaneers. It is true that Morgan took and burnt Panama, yet the treasure had been removed before he reached the place. Little booty was taken. Most of the Buccaneers died of

Neither the Elizabethan adventurers nor the Buccaneers made direct attacks on the flotas and the armada de galeones. The first heavy blow they received, which the Spaniards count the first great disaster they suffered in the West Indies, was delivered in 1628, and by the Dutchman, Piet Hein. Piet is the Benbow of Dutch naval history-the thorough tarpaulin and regular bred seaman. He fought his way up from before the mast through many adventures, including a period of servitude at the oar in Spanish galleys. He became an admiral in the service of the Dutch West India Company, and in 1628 captured a whole treasure - fleet and millions of ducats at Matanzas. As a feat of war it was no great matter, for he had the larger fleet, and the Spanish admiral Benavides had corruptly loaded his war galleons with merchandise. Benavides was executed for it, and perhaps justly, though when we read how his judge in Spain declared that even if he were blameless, he ought to be put to death as a sacrifice for so great a disaster, doubts arise as to the justice.

Piet

un

In the year 1891, at a small village in Upper Egypt named El Hibeh, some natives earthed a much damaged roll of papyrus which appeared to them to be very ancient. Since they had heard that antiquities have a market value, they did not burn it along with whatever other scraps of inflammable material they had collected for their evening fire, but preserved it, and finally took it to a dealer, who gave them in exchange for it a small sum of money. From the dealer's hands it passed into the possession of Monsieur Golenischeff, a Russian Egyptologist, who happened at the time to be travelling in Egypt; and by him it was carried to St Petersburg, where it now rests. This savant presently published a translation of the document, which at once caused a sensation in the Egyptological world; and during the next few years four amended translations were made by different scholars. The interest shown in this tattered roll was due to the fact that it had been found to contain the actual report written by an official named Wenamon to his chief, the High Priest of Amon-Ra, relating his adventures in the Mediterranean while procuring cedar-wood from the forests of Lebanon. The story which Wenamon tells is of the greatest value to archæ ologists, giving as it does a

VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXIX.

vivid account of the political conditions obtaining in Syria and Egypt during the reign of the Pharaoh Rameses XII.; but it also has a very human interest, and the misfortunes of the writer may still excite one's sympathy after this lapse of three thousand years.

In the time at which Wenamon wrote his report Egypt had fallen on evil days. A long line of incapable descendants of the great Rameses II. and Rameses III. had ruled the Nile valley; and now & wretched ghost of a Pharaoh, Rameses XII., sat upon the throne, bereft of all power, a ruler in name only. The government of the country lay in the hands of two great nobles: in Upper Egypt, Hirhor, High Priest of AmonRa, was undisputed master; and in Lower Egypt, Nesubanebded, a prince of the city of Tanis (the Zoan of the Bible), virtually ruled as king of the Delta. Both these persons ultimately ascended the throne of the Pharaohs; but at the time of Wenamon's adventures the High Priest was the more powerful of the two, and could command the obedience of the northern ruler, at any rate in all sacerdotal matters. The priesthood of Amon-Ra was the greatest political factor in Egyptian life. That god's name respected even in the courts of Syria, and though his 2 Y

was