186 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. [CHAP.
passages in Diodorus, which refer to that region, are derived
from the same source. As Agatharchides passed
chides?"1" the latter P^ of his life at Akxandria, where he was
tutor to the young king, Ptolemy Soter II (Lathyrus),
he enjoyed ample opportunities of obtaining information about
the coast of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and the interior
of the neighbouring countries of Aethiopia and Arabia. It was
through his book that the fame of the wealth and prosperity of
the Sabaeans in the south-west corner of Arabia—the modern
Yemen—was popularly known, so that the name of Arabia Felix
became attached to that country. Among other subjects, he paid
especial attention to the mode of life of the tribes in those
regions; but the most interesting part of his narrative relates to
the mode of working the Aethiopian gold-mines near the Egyptian
coast of the Red Sea, which he has described in much detail,
and the hardships suffered by the slave population who were
employed in them. These, he tells us, in some cases were
prisoners taken in war, in others condemned criminals, or persons
who had been made the victims of calumny; and not infrequently
their whole families were consigned to the same terrible fate.
"Those who are thus condemned to penal servitude, being
very numerous, and all in fetters, are kept con-
0fHthe^ethio- stantly at work both by day and night without any
pi" ^°ld" repose, and are jealously guarded to prevent their
escape; for they are watched by companies of
barbarian soldiers who speak a language different from theirs, to
prevent their winning any of them over by friendly intercourse or
appeals to their humanity...... Unkempt, untended as they are,
without even a rag to hide their shame, the awful misery of these
sufferers'is a spectacle to move the hardest heart. None of them,
whether sick or maimed or aged, not even weak women, meet
with compassion or respite; all are forced by blows to work
without intermission, until they expire under this hard treatment.
So overpowering is their affliction, that they are ever anticipating
worse evils in the future, and welcome death as a blessed change
from life."
The following is the description of the method of working in
the mines and of the preparation of the ore: