WE COMPARE RELIGIONS. 435 jars which we picked up were frequently painted and glazed with much skill. The soil was in many places wholly composed of the debris of the former dwellings. This was, without doubt, the ancient Napata, of which Djebel Berkel was only the necropolis. Napata must have been one of the greatest cities of Ancient Africa, after Thebes, Memphis and Carthage.

I felt a peculiar interest in wandering over the site of that half-forgotten capital, whereof the ancient historians knew little more than we. That so little is said by them in relation to it is somewhat surprising, notwithstanding its distance from the Roman frontier.

In the afternoon, Achmet, with great exertion, backed by all the influence of the Kashif, succeeded in obtaining ten piastres worth of bread. The latter sent me the shekh of the camels, who furnished me with three animals and three men, to Wadi Haifa, at ninety-five piastres apiece. They were to accompany my caravan to Ambukol, on the Congolese frontier, where the camels from Khartoum were to be discharged. I spent the rest of the day talking with the shekh on religious matters. He gave me the history of Christ, in return for which I related to him that of the Soul of Mahomet, from one hundred and ten thousand years before the Creation of the World, until his birth, according to the Arab Chronicles.

This quite overcame him. He seized my hand and kissed it with fervor, acknowledging me as the more holy man of the two. He said he had read the Books of Moses, the Psalms of David and the Gospel of Christ, but liked David best, whose words flowed like the sound of the zumarra, or Arab flute.

To illustrate it, he chanted one of the Psalms in a series of not unmusical cadences. He then undertook to repeat the ninety-