Liberia 



<♦- 



and in England for the last two hundred years. Chevron beads 

 are found on the Central Niger and in Hausaland. These 

 may have travelled thither from mediaeval Egypt. Did the 

 Agri beads of West Africa likewise come across the Sahara 

 and the Niger from Egypt or Carthage, or were they carried 

 along the north coast of the Mediterranean from trading 

 station to trading station, and so down the north-west and 

 west coasts of Africa .? Both routes may have been followed, 

 especially after the rise of Islam. It may be that once Hanno 

 had shown Mediterranean sailors the way to Negro West 

 Africa, that way may have been followed by Carthaginians and 

 Greeks, and by Romanised Moors for some time afterwards. 



As to the Romans, they had conquered most of the Berber 

 tribes of North Africa by the beginning of the Christian era 

 (modern Morocco was incorporated in the Empire about a.d. 

 42), and during the first century a.d. Suetonius Paulinus led 

 a Roman expedition across the Atlas and Anti-Atlas ranges, 

 and apparently reached as far south as the River Draa. This 

 is the river — so far as resemblance of name goes — which is 

 indicated by Pliny and other classical writers of that period as 

 the Daradus ; but it is also mixed up in their descriptions with 

 a supposititious River Gir or Nigir. From this confusion some 

 writers in the eighteenth century asserted that Suetonius Paulinus 

 had actually marched across the Sahara Desert to the River 

 Niger, an impossibility with the means and time at his command. 

 He probably got no farther than the River Draa, and between 

 the Draa and the Senegal there is not, so far as we know, even 

 a trace of an ancient or modern watercourse. 



The Nigir or Daradus (River Draa) was said by Polybius 

 and Pliny to contain crocodiles ; but it is distinctly stated that 

 the Bambotus or Chretes contained not only crocodiles, but 

 river-horses. Of course, it is quite possible that nineteen 



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