470 THE EGYPTIANS. 



ledge of the arts and sciences, which they afterwards 

 developed into the peculiar Egyptian type ; that they 

 found the valley inhabited by a negro race, fishing in 

 papyrus canoes, living chiefly on the lotus root, and 

 perhaps growing doura corn ; that they reduced those 

 negroes to slavery, divided them into castes, allowed 

 them to retain in each district the form of animal 

 worship peculiar to the respective tribes, making such 

 worship emblematical, and blending it with their own 

 exalted creed ; and finally, that the} r married the native 

 women, which would thus account for the dash of the 

 tar-brush plainly to be read by the practised eye in 

 the portraits though not in the conventional faces of the 

 monuments. On the other hand it may be held that 

 Egypt was colonised by a Berber tribe ; that its civ- 

 ilization was entirely indigenous ; that the distinction 

 of classes arose from natural selection, and was after- 

 wards petrified by law, and that the negro traits in 

 the Egyptian physiognomy were due to the importa- 

 tion of Ethiopian girls, who have always been favour- 

 ites in the harems of the east. But whichever of 

 these hypotheses may be true, the essential point is 

 this, that civilisation commenced in the application 

 of mechanics to the cultivation of the fields, and 

 that this science could only have been invented under 

 pressure of necessity. 



Let us now pass beyond the Tigris and climb up the 

 hills which bound it on the left. We find ourselves 

 on the steppes of Central Asia, in some parts lying 

 waste in salt and sandy plains, in others clothed with 

 fields of waving grass. Over these broad regions 

 roamed the Turks or Tartars, living on mares' milk, 

 dwelling in houses upon wheels. Beyond the steppes 

 towards the East is another chain of hills, and beyond 



