less, perpetually kept up by the trading nations themselves, from the ports of India and Africa, and on the Red Sea from Edom.
The pilots from these ports alone, of all the world, had a secret confined to their own knowledge, upon which the success of these voyages depended. This was the phenomena of the trade-winds*[1] and monsoons, which the pilots of Sesostris knew; and which those of Nearchus seem to have taught him only in part, in his voyage afterwards, and of which we are to speak in the sequel. History says further of Sesostris, that the Egyptians considered him as their greatest benefactor, for having laid open to them the trade both of India and Arabia, for having overturned the dominion of the Shepherd kings; and, lastly, for having restored to the Egyptian individuals each their own lands, which had been wrested from them by the violent hands of the Ethiopian Shepherds, during the first usurpation of these princes.
In memory of his having happily accomplished these events, Sesostris is said to have built a ship of cedar of a hundred and twenty yards in length, the outside of which he covered with plates of gold, and the inside with plates of silver, and this he dedicated in the temple of Isis. I will not enter into the defence of the probability of his reasons for having built a ship of this size, and for such a purpose, as one of ten yards would have sufficiently answered. The
- ↑ * These are far from being synonymous terms, as we shall see afterwards.
- These are far from being synonymous terms, as we shall see afterwards.
