Bambarré, _25th August, 1870._--One of my waking dreams is that the
legendary tales about Moses coming up into Inner Ethiopia with Merr his
foster-mother, and founding a city which he called in her honour
"Meroe," may have a substratum of fact. He was evidently a man of
transcendent genius, and we learn from the speech of St. Stephen that
"he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in
words and in deeds." His deeds must have been well known in Egypt, for
"he supposed that his brethren would have understood how that God by His
hand would deliver them, but they understood not." His supposition could
not be founded on his success in smiting a single Egyptian; he was too
great a man to be elated by a single act of prowess, but his success on
a large scale in Ethiopia afforded reasonable grounds for believing that
his brethren would be proud of their countryman, and disposed to follow
his leadership, but they were slaves. The notice taken of the matter by
Pharaoh showed that he was eyed by the great as a dangerous, if not
powerful, man. He "dwelt" in Midian for some time before his gallant
bearing towards the shepherds by the well, commended him to the priest
or prince of the country. An uninteresting wife, and the want of
intercourse with kindred spirits during the long forty years' solitude
of a herdsman's life, seem to have acted injuriously on his spirits, and
it was not till he had with Aaron struck terror into the Egyptian mind,
that the "man Moses" again became "very great in the eyes of Pharaoh and
his servants." The Ethiopian woman whom he married could scarcely be the
daughter of Renel or Jethro, for Midian was descended from Keturah,
Abraham's concubine, and they were never considered Cushite or
Ethiopian. If he left his wife in Egypt she would now be some fifty or
sixty years old, and all the more likely to be despised by the proud
prophetess Miriam as a daughter of Ham.

I dream of discovering some monumental relics of Meroe, and if anything