He Acquired This Information From The Reports Of Various Travellers, Who Stated That After A Long Journey To The Interior, They Had Themselves Seen It.

This account was confirmed by several other ancient authors; but for a long time the question was agitated by modern writers as to whether the Gambia or the Senegal was not the river spoken of; some even denying the existence of the Niger altogether.

The fables of Herodotus were repeated, with a number of additions, by Diodorus; but the narrative of Strabo, in regard to the northern and western coasts, is somewhat more particular and authentic: it adds nothing, however, to our acquaintance with the interior. The Greeks, under the government of the Ptolemies, navigated the Red Sea, and carried on a trade with Egypt; and some settlements were made by them in that country. Ptolemy Euergetes conquered part of Abyssinia, and established a kingdom, of which Axum was the metropolis; and remains of Grecian architecture have since been found in that quarter. To the two districts we have mentioned, the knowledge which the ancients possessed of Africa was almost exclusively confined; though Herodotus speaks of two voyages which had been undertaken with a view to determine the shape of the continent; but as nothing interesting can be gleaned from his indistinct narrative, and as the reality even of these voyages has been disputed, it seems unnecessary to give any account of them.

As in this brief sketch we are to confine ourselves entirely to discoveries made in the interior of Africa, we shall not mention either the various voyages made along the shores, or the different settlements formed upon the coast, as this would lead us far beyond our narrow limits.

The Arabians were the first who introduced the camel into Africa, an animal whose strength and swiftness peculiarly suited it for traversing the immense expanse of burning sands. By means of caravans, the Arabians were enabled to hold intercourse with the interior, whence they procured supplies of gold and slaves; and many of them migrated to the south of the Great Desert. Their number rapidly increased, and being skilled in the art of war, they soon became the ruling power. They founded several kingdoms; the principal one, called Gano, soon became the greatest market for gold, and, under the name of Kano, is still extensive and populous, being the chief commercial place in the interior of Africa. The Arabian writers of the twelfth century, give the most gorgeous, and we fear overrated, accounts of the flourishing state of these kingdoms.

In the fourteenth century, Ibn Batuta, an abridged account of whose travels has been recently translated by Professor Lee of Cambridge, made a journey into Central Africa. After having travelled twenty-five days with a caravan, he came to a place which Major Rennel supposes to be the modern Tisheet, containing the mine whence Timbuctoo is supplied with salt. The houses he describes as built of slabs of salt, roofed with camels' hides.

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