480 EARLY EXPLORERS OF AFRICA. 



Bantu race itself has not yet emerged. Nor is it said that the 

 people were black ; but they lived in villages and kept sheep.* 



About this time must have taken place the periplus of Hanno, 

 the Carthaginian, who, passing the Canary Islands, called " of 

 the Blessed," reached Sherbro Island, and met the hairy men, two 

 of whose females after great struggles were secured, dispatched, 

 and skinned, that their " fells " might be placed in Carthaginian 

 temples. Our pity for these natives is somewhat mitigated, when 

 our Greek version of the original Semitic inscription recording 

 the adventure calls them gorillas', it is said that the present 

 Mandingo word " tooralla " means men, and that the Fula word 

 for "man" is " gor.'"^ I mention this North African detail to 

 illustrate the value of philology, in dealing with research, 

 ethnological and general — a point I shall return to again. 



I will just refer to Herodotus's third tale of African adven- 

 ture a little later, when the Nasamonian youths, who have the 

 v^pt,<; (as the teller tells) to cross from the Syrtis through the 

 Sahara to the West, also find " little men " in the woods, blacks in 

 a city, and a great river running east. If the Niger is meant, they 

 followed in mid-5th century B.C., very much the course of Den- 

 ham, Clapperton, and Lander in the early part of last century. 

 This adventure does not affect South Africa, but again I recall it 

 with a sigh for some Nasamonian y/S/ot? to infect our Governments 

 with a desire to endow research on the looth scale of these brave 

 men of old. Had we now in our high places but a fraction of 

 the keenness and enterprise for science of these ancients — sav of 

 ■Pharoah Necho, how different we should be ! And had these 

 ancients — Semite or Hamite — had as little enterprise in the 

 conduct and endowment of research, or its encouragement, as 

 some of our great ones to-day, what would South Africa herself 

 have been but a desolate wilderness, a home of barbarism, or a 

 welter of warring tribes ? 



I pass over Agatharchides, who, about iii r.c, treats of 

 the Red Sea region, which does not at present concern us. This 

 brings us to Strabo who, only a generation before the Christian 

 era, gives us a lengthy account of the Ethiopians, which, if it 

 does not really touch the Bantu, at least describes customiS and 

 ideas which they share with nations further north. It is inter- 

 esting that he is as sceptical about the pygmies, as we have seen 

 Herodotus to be about astronomic data. He considers them a 

 fiction suggested by the Ethiopians' tiny dogs. (He is evidently 

 taking Pygmy as Tom Thumb, literally.) The diet of blood 

 suggests the Masai rather than the Bantu : that of curds and 

 millet is familiar enough in this land. 



Mr. Tooke has observed from Strabo their belief " in an 



* Can they have been the Hottentots who introduced a new breed of 

 sheep to the Kaffirs, if we may derive Xosa gusha from the Hottentot 

 gut? 



tSee Johnston's "Opening up of Africa," and the Geographi GrcBci 

 Minores, which last has been useful for this paper. 



