ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE OF AFRICA. 23 



appears regularly organized, and forming a great and pow- 

 erful kingdom ; and wh-ni Greece was under the tumultuary 

 sway of a multitude of petty chieftains, Homer already 

 celebrates the hundred gates of Thebes, and the mighty 

 hosts which in warlike array issued from them to battle. 

 Egypt was illustrious also among the ancients as producing 

 the first elements of learning and abstract science, — the 

 first approach to alphabetical writing by hieroglyphic em- 

 blems, — -the first great works in sculpture, painting, and 

 architecture ; and travellers even now find that country co- 

 vered with magnificent monuments, erected at an era when 

 the faintest dawn of science had not yet illumined the re- 

 gions of Europe. While Egypt was thus pre-eminent in 

 science and art, Carthage equally excelled in commerce and 

 in the wealth which it produces ; by means of which she 

 rose to such a degree of power as enabled her to hold long 

 suspended between herself and Rome the scales of nniver- 

 sal empire. In that grand struggle Carthage sunk amid a 

 blaze of expiring glory; while Eorypt, after having passed 

 through many ages of alternate splendour and slavery', was 

 also at length included in the extended dominion of Rome 

 Yet, though all Mediterranean Africa thus merged into a 

 province of the Roman world, it was still an opulent and 

 enlightened one ; boasting equally with others its sages, its 

 saints, its heads and fathers of the church ; and exhibiting 

 Alexandria and Carthage on a footing with the greatest 

 cities of the empire. 



While, however, the region along the Nile and the ]\Te- 

 diterranean was thus not only well known, but formed a 

 regular part of the ancient civilized world, the progress of 

 science did not extend beyond the tract bordering on the 

 coast and the river. After proceeding a few journeys into 

 the interior, the traveller found himself among wild and 

 wandering tribes, who exhibited human nature under its 

 rude^and most repulsive forms. On his advancing some 

 whaSprther still, there appeared a barrier vast and awful 

 — -enuless plains of moving sand, without a shrub, a blade 

 cf grass, or a single object by which human life could be 

 cheered or supported. This appalling boundary, which 

 stopped the victorious career of Cambyses and of Alexan- 

 der, arrested much more easily every attempt at civilization 

 and settlement. It secured to the wild and roaming tribe* 



