during the Greek period, to be the most unfortunate of mortals, and if they appeared to be so to the mariners of the Ptolemies, doubtless they enjoyed the same reputation in the more remote time of the Pharaohs.  A few fishing villages, however, are mentioned as scattered along the littoral; watering-places, at some distance apart, frequented on account of their wells of brackish water by the desert tribes:  such were Nahasit, Tap-Nekhabit, Sau, and Tau:  these the Egyptian merchant-vessels used as victualling stations, and took away as cargo the products of the country—­mother-of-pearl, amethysts, emeralds, a little lapis-lazuli, a little gold, gums, and sweet-smelling resins.  If the weather was favourable, and the intake of merchandise had been scanty, the vessel, braving numerous risks of shipwreck, continued its course as far as the latitude of Suakin and Massowah, which was the beginning of Puanit properly so called.  Here riches poured down to the coast from the interior, and selection became a difficulty:  it was hard to decide which would make the best cargo, ivory or ebony, panthers’ skins or rings of gold, myrrh, incense, or a score of other sweet-smelling gums.  So many of these odoriferous resins were used for religious purposes, that it was always to the advantage of the merchant to procure as much of them as possible:  incense, fresh or dried, was the staple and characteristic merchandise of the Red Sea, and the good people of Egypt pictured Puanit as a land of perfumes, which attracted the sailor from afar by the delicious odours which were wafted from it.

These voyages were dangerous and trying:  popular imagination seized upon them and made material out of them for marvellous tales.  The hero chosen was always a daring adventurer sent by his master to collect gold from the mines of Nubia; by sailing further and further up the river, he reached the mysterious sea which forms the southern boundary of the world.  “I set sail in a vessel one hundred and fifty cubits long, forty wide, with one hundred and fifty of the best sailors in the land of Egypt, who had seen heaven and earth, and whose hearts were more resolute than those of lions.  They had foretold that the wind would not be contrary, or that there would be even none at all; but a squall came upon us unexpectedly while we were in the open, and as we approached the land, the wind freshened and raised the waves to the height of eight cubits.  As for me, I clung to a beam, but those who were on the vessel perished without one escaping.  A wave of the sea cast me on to an island, after having spent three days alone with no other companion than my own heart.  I slept there in the shade of a thicket; then I set my legs in motion in quest of something for my mouth.”  The island produced a quantity of delicious fruit:  he satisfied his hunger with it, lighted a fire to offer a sacrifice to the gods, and immediately, by the magical power of the sacred rites, the inhabitants,