310 Ancient Africana. 



account of the ravening beasts our author moralises 

 as follows : " But among all these inconveniences, 

 commodities are found of good worth : and the 

 very evills yeeld at last their benefit to their owne 

 Country and other parts of the world. The 

 Elephant, a docible creature and exceeding usefull 

 for battle. The Camell, which affords much riches 

 to the Arabian. The Barbarie horse, which we 

 our selves commend. The Ramme, that besids his 

 flesh gives twentie pounds of wool from his very 

 tayle. The Bull, painefull, and able to doe best 

 service in their tillage. And so most of theire 

 worst, alive or dead, yeeld us their medicinall parts, 

 which the world could not well want." 



Speed divided Africa into " seaven " parts (1) 

 Barbarie or Mauritania; (2) Numidia; (3) Lybia 

 or Africa propria; (4) Nigritarum terra; (5) 

 ^Ethiopia superior; (6) Ethiopia inferior; and 

 (7) ^Egypt. Of the first and last of these divisions 

 he has little to say worth repeating here. Numidia, 

 he tells us, was peopled by "Idolaters, Idiots, 

 Theeves, Murderers, except some few Arabians that 

 are mingled among them of ingenuous disposition, 

 and addicted much to poetry ." Lybia was called 

 " Sacra as much as a Desert. For so it is, and a 

 dry one too, such as can afford no water to a 

 travailor sometimes in seaven dayes journey." 



Terra Nigritarum, the land of negroes, "hath 

 the name either from the colour of the people 

 which are blacke, or from the Eiver Niger, famous 

 as Nilus almost for her overflowing ... it is full 



