shows plainly that 6000 years ago the Egyptians were acquainted
with our modern ideas of the science of astronomy.
William Huntington, who has travelled widely in India, Borneo,
the Malay Peninsula, and Egypt, says:
"I think, on the whole, the most interesting experience I ever
had was in an ancient city on the Nile in Egypt. . . . When I
was there a year ago, and men were digging among the ruined
temples, some curious things were brought to light, and these I
regard as the strangest things seen in all my wanderings. In an
old tomb was found a curious iron and glass object, which on
investigation proved to be a photographic camera. It was not
such a camera as is used now, or has been since our photography
was invented, but something analogous to it, showing that the art
which we thought we had discovered was really known 6000 years
ago."
The same writer states that a plow constructed on the modern plan
was also found. "It was not of steel but of iron, and it had the
same shape, the same form of point and bend of mold board as we
have now."
It is reported that the dark continent possesses means of
communication entirely unknown to Europe. Upon this subject a
correspondent to the New York Tribune writes:
"When Khartoum fell in 1885 I was in Egypt, and I well remember
that the Arabs settled in the neighborhood of the pyramids knew
all about it, as well as about Gen. Gordon's death, days and
days before the news reached Cairo by telegraph from the
Soudanese frontier. Yet Khartoum is thousands of miles distant
from Cairo and the telegraph wires from the frontier were
monopolized by the government."
The same correspondent observes that these Arabs told him, months
previously, of the defeat of the Egyptian army under Baker Pasha
at Tokar--that they not only gave him the news, but several
particulars concerning the matter, two full days before
intelligence was received from the Red Sea coast. In answer to
the suggestion that such information might have been conveyed by
means of signal fires, this writer says that such fires would
have attracted the attention of the English and native scouts,
and that the whole country is unpropitious to such methods;
besides, no system of signal fires, no matter how elaborate,
could have conveyed the news so quickly and in such detail. The
