56 THE WORLD'S WONDERS . 



and fled up into the Mountains, and that they only drove some 

 of their Cattle thence, doing them no further damage ; adding 

 also, that he had ayled round Africa, had it not been impossible : 

 To which the King giving small credit, and for that Sataspes 

 had not performed his Undertaking, remitted him to his former 

 sentence.' 



" As little availed that expedition of the Nasamones (a People 

 inhabiting Tunis) to this discovery, who (as Herodotus relates in 

 his Euterpe, second book) chose by lot five young men of good 

 Fortunes and Qualifications, to explore the African Deserts, 

 never yet penetrated, to inform themselves of their Vastness, and 

 what might be beyond ; these setting forth with fit Provisions, 

 came first where only wild Beasts inhabited ; thence traveling 

 westward through barren Lands, after many days, they saw a 

 Plain planted with Trees, to which drawing near they tasted 

 their Fruits, whilest a Dwarf-like People came to them about 

 half their stature, neither by speech understanding the other, 

 they led them by hand over a vast Common, to their City, where 

 all the inhabitants were Blacks, and of the same size ; by this 

 City ran towards the East a great River, abounding with Croco- 

 diles, which Etearchus, King of the Ammonians, to whom the 

 Nasamones related this, supposed to be the Nile. This is all we 

 have of Antiquity, and from one single Author, who writ 420 

 years before the Incarnation, which sufficiently sets forth the 

 Ignorance of the Ancients concerning Africa." 



THE DISADVANTAGES OF NATIVE AFRICANS. 



WHAT has been written of South America in no inconsiderable 

 measure applies to Africa, but there are disadvantages noticeable 

 in the latter against which natives of the former country do not 

 have to contend. Africa has ever appeared like a country cursed 

 by God, its people in the greater part bearing a mark that has 

 descended apparently from posterity to posterity since the day 

 that Ham was bitterly cursed by his father, and made a slave to 

 his heartless brothers. Egypt, the seat of learning, the birth-place 

 of genius, with her Alexandria palace and her great philosophic 

 schools, is now only a mausoleum of a dead civilization, like an 



