Poets Also, In Describing The Fair Necks Of
Beautiful Virgins, Call Them _Eburnea Colla_, Or Ivory Necks.
Thus much
may suffice of elephants and ivory, and I shall now say somewhat of the
people, and their manners, and mode of living, with another brief
description of Africa.
The people who now inhabit the regions of the coast of Guinea and the
middle parts of Africa, as inner Lybia, Nubia, and various other
extensive regions in that quarter, were anciently called Ethiopians and
_Nigritae_, which we now call Moors, Moorens, or Negroes; a beastly
living people, without God, law, religion, or government, and so
scorched by the heat of the sun, that in many places they curse it when
it rises. Of the people about Lybia interior, Gemma Phrysius thus
writes: Libia interior is large and desolate, containing many horrible
wildernesses, replenished with various kinds of monstrous beasts and
serpents. To the south of Mauritania or Barbary is Getulia, a rough and
savage region, inhabited by a wild and wandering people. After these
follow the _Melanogetuli_, or black Getulians, and Phransii, who wander
in the wilderness, carrying with them great gourds filled with water.
Then the Ethiopians, called Nigritae, occupy a great part of Africa,
extending to the western ocean or Atlantic. Southwards also they reach
to the river Nigritis or Niger, which agrees in its nature with the
Nile, as it increases and diminishes like the Nile, and contains
crocodiles. Therefore, I believe this to be the river called the Senegal
by the Portuguese.
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