32 PAST AGES OF CONQUEST surprising to learn that in the reign of Badi-el-ShiUuk, 1724, after nearly 100 years of cultivated education, it was recognized, even in Constantinople, as a seat of learning, and Sennaar was visited by Oriental philosophers from many lands.

The Hamegs, whose descendants live side by side with those of the Fungs at the present day, eventually gained power, retaining it well on into the nineteenth century, when Ismail Pasha, accompanied by an American, extended Egyptian rule to the limits of Abyssinian territory at the bidding of his father, Mehemet Ali ; Ibrahim, his brother, ascended the White Nile, and his brother-in-law, Mohammed, took Kordofan and Darfur, committing outrages out of the common even in the Sudan. It is interesting to read that, according to Sir H. H. Johnston, officers of the American army were employed also in later years by Gordon, the Khedive desiring the advantage of British characteristics in his officials, with the detachment of transoceanic nationality.

The modern history of the country is so well known through the writings of Bruce, Cailliaud, Baker, and others, including those of the period of the Mahdi rebellion, that it is unnecessary to refer to it in detail. Suffice it to add that during the next sixty years Egyptian rule was consolidated, after a successful fight with Abyssinia at Sennaar and fruitless rebellions at Kassala. Baker in 1870 extended it far to the south into Equatorial Africa, of which territory Gordon became Governor, the