profit. Blake did great injury to the Spaniards when he sailed into the Bay of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, but he gained no booty, for the treasure was landed, and he had no soldiers to take the town. The numerous "island voyages" of Elizabeth produced Sir Richard Grenville's magnificent feat of "virtú," when he threw away his life, his ship, and his ship's company, to gain immortal glory. And what else? Well, the quarrel of Essex and Raleigh, and a traditional jest. It was on his return from a barren island voyage that Hawkins, a puritan, told the Lords of the Council how "Paul planteth and Apollos watereth, but God only giveth the increase." Her Majesty, who was no puritan, swore with an oath worthy of her father that this fool had gone out a soldier and was come back a divine. The islands, in fact, were so near Spain that the King could send a squadron to meet the home-coming trade, and then it was too strong to be attacked. In this case, too, there were alternative routes, and the watcher could never be sure as to which of them would be taken.

The best course was to attack the treasure-ships at their ports of departure in the Main and the West Indies. But then the assailants were themselves far from home, and it was long before they were able to cruise in force. The French came first, and as early as 1560 they sacked Havannah, still a very small place. If Coligny's scheme to plant a

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French Huguenot colony in Florida could have been carried out, the settlers would have had the homeward route of the treasure-ships at their mercy. Coligny's colony was stamped out by Pedro Melendez de Avilés. All the world has heard of the execution of Ribault and his men, of the sufferings of Laudonnière, and of M. De Gourgues' alleged revenge. The Spanish officer was ferocious, without doubtas ferocious 88 Elizabeth's officers were to the Spaniards and Italians at Smerwick, to the shipwrecked men of the Armada, of whom many were butchered in Irish prisons after they had been received quarter. The age was cruel, and it must in justice be allowed that the Spaniards could hardly be expected to distinguish between the Huguenots whom they found invading their master's territory in Florida, and the other Frenchmen who had just burnt Havannah after massacring the inhabitants. The Huguenots and the pirates were indeed hand in glove. When we think how weak the Spaniards were, we have to remember that their enemies were also weak at sea, if we are to understand why so many years passed before a serious attack was made on them in the West Indies. Poetry, romance, national partiality, a natural confusion between their achievements and the greater things done in later times, have combined to give a fictitious splendour to the voyages of Hawkins and Drake.

of negroes, and in co-operation 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 a 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

Morgan, who was roundly accused of corrupt connivance with the Spaniards and of cheating his followers, was hooted in the streets when he reached Jamaica. The odd story of the Scots Darien Company has a place in the strange history of West-Indian lawlessness, but it was a thing apart.

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

IN the year 1891, at a small village in Upper Egypt named El Hibeh, some natives natives unearthed 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 a 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 was respected even in the courts of Syria, and though his

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power was now on the wane, fifty years previously the great religious body which bowed the knee to him was feared throughout all the countries neighbouring to Egypt. The main cause of Wenamon's troubles was the lack of appreciation of this fact, that the god's influence in Syria was not as great as it had been in the past; and this report would certainly not have been worth recording here if he had realised that prestige is, of all factors in international relations, the least reliable.

In the year 1113 B.C. the High Priest undertook the construction of a ceremonial barge in which the image of the god might be floated upon the sacred waters of the Nile during the great religious festivals at Thebes; and for this purpose he found himself in need of a large amount of cedar-wood of the best quality. He therefore sent for Wenamon, who held the sacerdotal title of "Eldest of the Hall of the Temple of Amon," and instructed him to proceed to the Lebanon to procure the timber. It is evident that Wenamon was no traveller, and we may perhaps be permitted to picture him as a rather portly gentleman of middle age, not wanting either in energy or pluck, but given, like some of his countrymen, to a fluctuation of the emotions which would jump him from smiles to tears, from hope to despair, in a manner amazing to any but an Egyptian. To us he often appears as an overgrown baby, and his misfortunes have a farcical nature which makes its appeal as much through the medium

of one's love of the ludicrous as through that of one's interest in the romance of adventure. Those who are acquainted with Egypt will see in him one of the types of naïf, delightful children of the Nile, whose decorous introduction into the parlour of the nations of today is requiring such careful rehearsal.

For his journey the High Priest gave Wenamon a sum of money, and as credentials he handed him a number of letters addressed to Egyptian and Syrian princes, and intrusted to his care a particularly sacred little image of Amon - Ra, known as Amon-of-the-Road, which had probably accompanied other envoys to the Kingdoms of the Sea in times past, and would be recognised as & token of the official nature of any embassy which carried it.

Thus armed, Wenamon set out from El Hibeh-probably the ancient Hetbennu, the capital of the Eighteenth Province of Upper Egypt-on the sixteenth day of the eleventh month of the fifth year of the reign of Rameses XII. (1113 B.C.), and travelled down the Nile by boat to Tanis, a distance of some 200 miles. On his arrival at this fair city of the Delta, whose temples and palaces rose on the borders of the swamps at the edge of the sea, Wenamon made his way to the palace of Nesubanebded, and handed to him the letters which he had received from the High Priest. These were caused to be read aloud; and Nesubanebded, hearing that Wenamon was desirous of