He was strongly disposed to think that in the account of the sources
given to Herodotus by the Registrar of Minerva in the temple of Sais,
that individual was not joking, as the father of history supposed. He
thought that in the watershed the two conical hills, Crophi and Mophi
might be found, and the fountains between them which it was impossible
to fathom; and that it might be seen that from that region there was a
river flowing north to Egypt, and another flowing south to a country
that might have been called Ethiopia. But whatever might be his views or
aims, it was ordained that in the wanderings of his last years he should
bring within the sympathies of the Christian world many a poor tribe
otherwise unknown; that he should witness sights, surpassing all he had
ever seen before of the inhumanity and horrors of the
slave-traffic--sights that harrowed his inmost soul; and that when his
final appeal to his countrymen on behalf of its victims came, not from,
his living voice but from his tomb, it should gather from a thousand
touching associations a thrilling power that would rouse the world, and
finally root out the accursed thing.
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