Liberia 



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hundred years ago crocodiles may still have lingered in the 

 Draa River, just as they are still to be found in a Syrian river, 

 and until recently were present in the lakes of the Isthmus of 

 Suez. But the Gir or Nigir of classical writers, though con- 

 founded by them with the geographical position of the River 

 Draa, was undoubtedly the reflex of stories circulated by the 

 Moors or Carthaginians of the tropical River Senegal and 

 also of the Upper Niger ; and so much did this description 

 linger in the minds of the Western Mediterranean people, that 

 when the Portuguese first brought back the story of a great 

 Nile-like river flowing from west to east beyond the coast- 

 lands of Guinea, it was at once identified as Pliny's Nigir or 

 Niger, and this is the origin of the name which that river 

 bears in European languages at the present day. 



The islands of Madeira and Porto Santo seem first to 

 have been discovered by Carthaginian or Phoenician seafarers 

 of Cadiz. Some such agency, no doubt, revealed to the 

 Mediterranean world the existence of the Canary Archipelago.^ 

 In the earliest allusions to the Canary Islands no mention 

 is made of their being inhabited ; but this may be due to a 

 confusion with the Madeira Archipelago, which certainly had 

 never been inhabited by man until rediscovered and colonised 

 by the Portuguese. But the Canary Islands were already 

 populated by a race of Berber (Libyan) origin when the 

 rule of Rome was finally established over North Africa. 

 The nearest of the Canary Islands to the mainland is 

 Fuerteventura, which is only about sixty (English) miles distant 

 from the Morocco coast. There is, however, nothing to show 

 that the Libyan people of North Africa before the coming 

 of the Carthaginians possessed any sea-going boats, and it 



' These islands were named by Pliny Nivmia, the Snowy (Tenerife); Canaria, 

 the Doggy (Grand Canary), from its big shepherd dogs, 



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