Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger

Should he escape these initial perils, the Amu--an agricultural and
settled people inhabiting the fertile region--would give the stranger
but a sorry reception: he would have to submit to their demands, and
the most exorbitant levies of toll did not always preserve caravans from
their attacks.* The country seems to have been but thinly populated;
tracts now denuded were then covered by large forests in which herds of
elephants still roamed,** and wild beasts, including lions and leopards,
rendered the route through them dangerous.

* The merchant who sets out for foreign lands "leaves his
possessions to his children--for fear of lions and
Asiatics."

** Thûtmosis III. went elephant-hunting near the Syrian town
of Niî.

The notion that Syria was a sort of preserve for both big and small
game was so strongly implanted in the minds of the Egyptians, that their
popular literature was full of it: the hero of their romances betook
himself there for the chase, as a prelude to meeting with the princess
whom he was destined to marry,* or, as in the case of Kazarâti, chief
of Assur, that he might encounter there a monstrous hyena with which to
engage in combat.

* As, for instance, the hero in the _Story of the
Predestined Prince_, exiled from Egypt with his dog, pursues
his way hunting till he reaches the confines of Naharaim,