THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN we should be thankful for the great amount of information which he gathered concerning the peoples who lived between the nth and 24th degrees of north latitude, and who were at that time unknown to Europeans.

Our knowledge of the events which took place in Nubia and the Sudan in the latter half of the eighteenth century is extremely small, for records written by travellers in those countries during this period do not exist. It is very doubtful if any learned European visited Nubia whilst the country was in the unsettled state described by Norden, and we know for a fact that Dr.

PococKE, who travelled in Egypt in 1737 and 1738, did not attempt to proceed further south than Aswan. The eminent traveller Niebuhr (born March 17th, 1733, died 1763), who visited Egypt in 1761, contented himself with describing Cairo and its inhabitants with care, and says nothing about Upper Egypt or Nubia.' The only Europeans who passed through the country appear to have been priests and others who were on their way to or from Ethiopia, and such travellers, whenever it was at all possible, preferred to traverse the blazing deserts to the west of the Nile for weeks at a time, and to endure the miseries of scarcity of water, rather than trust themselves to the Barabara tribes, and become the victims of their extortion and greed.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century a serious dispute broke out between the Mamluks who had rule in Upper Egypt, and the governor of Ibrim, or Primis, in Nubia, and in 1791 war broke out. The caravan traffic between the two countries was entirely stopped, and no one was allowed to pass from Egypt into Nubia under any pretext whatsoever. Such was the state of * See the World Displayed, or a curious collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. xii., London, 1774 ; and Voyages de Richard Pococke, vol. i.-vi., Neuchatel, 1772.

' See Nouvelle Dibliotheque des Voyages, torn, xi., p. 187. Paris (no date).

' That such was also the case with writers in the seventeenth century is clear from Wansleben's interesting little work, entitled " The present State of Egypt, '* or, a nc7v Relation of a late voyage into that Kingdom, performed in the years " 1672 and 1673. Printed by R. K. for John Starkey at the Miter in Fleet Street, " near Temple Bar, London, 1678." Wansleben visited many monasteries and churches in Upper Egypt, but he never went south of Thebes. Much of the information which he gives about Upper Egypt he derives from the narrative of Father Portais.

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