THE KNELL OF NAPATA 31 Threatened about 1517 a.d. by an invasion through Abyssinia by Selim, the fii'st Turkish Sultan to own Egypt, the wily Fung King, Amara Dunkas, had resource to artifice to preserve his nation, at the cost of any conscience he may have possessed. He succeeded in convincing Selim that he was a good JNIuslim, and his genealogical tree as an Arab filled Selim with amazement, and stupefies present-day genealogists. All of which goes to show Dunkas as a plausible diplomatist.

But this rang the knell of the Christian kingdom of Napata. Meroe was evacuated after hundreds of years of dignity, leaving only its monuments ; Napata sank into obscurity, and the bulwark which for so long had delayed the spread of Mohammedanism over Africa succumbed to a flank attack.

Poncet, the first European of more modern days to visit the Sudan, gives evidence of the moral anarchy which ensued after the disruption of the Christian Church and the superficial absorption of Mohammedan tenets. He proceeded from Dongola in 1699, and on to Sennaar, in company with Father de Brevedent, one of that marvellous body which, 150 years before, had founded a Jesuit mission even at Zimbabwe in Mashonaland.

Lender a series of competent rulers the Fung kingdom had progressed. Many missionaries, mainly Franciscan friars, who became responsible for the murder of M. le Noir du Roule by Badi-el-Ahmar in 1704, were in the country, and it is not