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That she became remarkable for the number and wealth of her 
cities, that afterwards in Christian times she contained six hundred 
bishoprics. That, notwithstanding the scantiness and poverty of 
her present population, there are everywhere, at this very moment, 
ruins, which bear witness to the truth of the accounts of, and 
references to, her former greatness and fertility. 
Secondly. That the Carthaginians were famed for the use of 
elephants, and that there is reason for supposing they found them 
in their own country, though at present its physical character 
precludes their existence as wild animals north of the Sahara. 
Thirdly. That the Greeks attributed the origin of knowledge 
and civilization to some region in the interior of Africa. 
Fourthly, That in the earliest account of maritime discovery, 
the history of the Argonautic expedition, we find the fifty heroes 
taking a strange course also through the interior of Africa, and 
apparently quite inconsistent with our present geographical 
knowledge. 
Fifthly. We find that Homer in order to display his acquaint- 
ance with regions, mysterious, though not absolutely unknown to his 
fellow-countrymen—which were probably as mysterious to them, as 
was the Spanish Main to the contemporaries of Drake, or the 
interior of New Guinea to ourselves—carries his hero into a region, 
where he finds a people living on vegetable diet, and presenting 
all the characteristics of such a race. 
Lastly. Without quoting examples, I may say, that there are 
in classical authors a large number of references to the district on 
the Lesser Syrtis, seemingly at discord with our present knowledge, 
and which to myself, at any rate, were once totally inexplicable. 
To all these, however, I am inclined to think that I found the 
key this summer in the Paris Exhibition. 
As I was leaving it for the last time, I happened to ramble 
into a little court, which the Ministry of Public Instruction had 
devoted to some curiosities of travel. Here was a very roughly 
executed model by Capt. Roudaire to show the feasibility of 
covering the whole of the country south of Tunis, and part of 
Algeria, for three hundred miles in length and forty in breadth, 
