228 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY to descend from Canaanites — that is, Phoenicians — of the tribe of Nimrod. They claim, further, that all the pagan tribes in the mountains of Haussaland descend from them, because in their southward journey they left, in every place they stopped at, a tribe of their own people in the mountains. Sultan Bello, who records this claim of the Yoruba people, was apparently unacquainted with the Egyptian story. But the coincidence between the two accounts is too striking to be ignored. The Nimrod the Powerful of Egyptian history, son of Housal, who worshipped the Phoenician gods, and Nimrod the Mighty, the first son of Canaan (or Phoenicia) of the Mosaic record, may fairly be taken as identical, and it is easy to comprehend how the dispersion of a large army, of which the component parts would be driven to take refuge where they could, might lead to just such a tradition as that cherished by the Yoruba population of the present day.

It is interesting also to observe in Egyptian records the constant reference to "magicians of the south." The part which magic played in the chronicles of Egypt is of course a matter of common knowledge. The whole north coast of Africa was, we are told, protected by talismans, burning glasses, and other marvels raised on pedestals, which were placed at intervals along the shore. Alexandria could not be built till talismans had been erected which had power to protect it from the monsters of the deep. Macrizi, in his " Historical Description of Egypt," written in the fifteenth century, has preserved for us accounts of some of the most famous talismans constructed by the kings, and quite as often by the queens, who reigned in the Valley of the Nile. We find there the magical bird with outspread wings, raised on a pedestal for protective purposes above towns or graves, which in the seventeenth century had still its prototype in the copper birds, described by Barbot as spreading their wings above all the best houses of Benin. The same idea perhaps inspired the golden bird perched on