On the other hand, towards the south, the Nile afforded an easy means of access to those who wished to penetrate into the heart of Africa.  The Egyptians had, at the outset, possessed only the northern extremity of the valley, from the sea to the narrow pass of Silsileh; they had then advanced as far as the first cataract, and Syene for some time marked the extreme limit of their empire.  At what period did they cross this second frontier and resume their march southwards, as if again to seek the cradle of their race?  They had approached nearer and nearer to the great bend described by the river near the present village of Korosko,* but the territory thus conquered had, under the Vth dynasty, not as yet either name or separate organization:  it was a dependency of the fiefdom of Elephantine, and was under the immediate authority of its princes.

* This appears to follow from a passage in the inscription of Uni.  This minister was raising troops and exacting wood for building among the desert tribes whose territories adjoined at this part of the valley:  the manner in which the requisitions were effected shows that it was not a question of a new exaction, but a familiar operation, and consequently that the peoples mentioned had been under regular treaty obligations to the Egyptians, at least for some time previously.

Those natives who dwelt on the banks of the river appear to have offered but a slight resistance to the invaders:  the desert tribes proved more difficult to conquer.  The Nile divided them into two distinct bodies.  On the right side, the confederation of the Uauaiu spread in the direction of the Bed Sea, from the district around Ombos to the neighbourhood of Korosko, in the valleys now occupied by the Ababdehs:  it was bounded on the south by the Mazaiu tribes, from whom our contemporary Maazeh have probably descended.  The Amamiu were settled on the left bank opposite to the Mazaiu, and the country of Iritit lay facing the territory of the Uauaiu.  None of these barbarous peoples were subject to Egypt, but they all acknowledged its suzerainty,—­a somewhat dubious one, indeed, analogous to that exercised over their descendants by the Khedives of to-day.  The desert does not furnish them with the means of subsistence:  the scanty pasturages of their wadys support a few flocks of sheep and asses, and still fewer oxen, but the patches of cultivation which they attempt in the neighbourhood of springs, yield only a poor produce of vegetables or dourah.  They would literally die of starvation were they not able to have access to the banks of the Nile for provisions.  On the other hand, it is a great temptation to them to fall unawares on villages or isolated habitations on the outskirts of the fertile lands, and to carry off cattle, grain, and male and female slaves; they would almost always have time to reach the mountains again with their spoil and to protect themselves there from pursuit, before