26 ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE OF AFRICA. 



IS with reluctance that reference is here made to what tha 

 venerable father of history has related respecting the con- 

 duct of the young ladies in this region ; and we should 

 hope that scandal on this subject may have been as busy 

 in the coteries of Sais and of On, as in some modem cir- 

 cles. Can it be beUeved, that among the Gindanes they 

 should form threads of skin, and tie a knot on it for every 

 lover who had sought and won their favour, measuring their 

 hnportance by the number of these knots ; or is it probable 

 that, at the marriage of the Nasamones, the favour of the 

 bride should have been shared by all the guests equally with 

 the husband] Nor is there much to admire in the annual 

 festival celebrated by the virgins of the Auses, when their 

 fair hands were employed in throwing stones against each 

 other with such fury, that several were commonly left dead 

 on the spot. The fate of these sufferers was peculiarly 

 hard, since it was supposed to justify the most unfavour- 

 able suspicions respecting their previous life. After all, 

 this rough sport of the Libyan belles is not much ruder 

 than one which we shall find still practised among the most 

 distinguished dames of Bornou. 



""Proceeding farther westward, Herodotus finds a tribe of 

 the Auses, called Maxyes, who cultivated the ground ; and 

 he is now on the border of the Carthaginian territory, of 

 which, for reasons that Major Rennel cannot fiilly compre- 

 hend, he forbears to treat. He follows the direction of the 

 interior, from the Garamantes, beyond whom were Ethio- 

 pians dwelling in caves, and running so swiftly that the 

 fonner people were obliged to hunt them in chariots, — a 

 proceeding very unsuitable to the meek character elsewhere 

 ascribed to them, and which, we fear, may have been prac- 

 tised with the evil intent of carrying off these poor victims 

 as slaves. Our author comes next to the Atlantes, and re- 

 lates several things which with better knowledge he would 

 probably have omitted. He pretends, for example, that 

 none of them bear proper names ; that they neither eat ani- 

 mal food nor dream dreams ; and, what is not quite so im- 

 probable, that on seeing the sun rise, they pour repioaches 

 and execrations on him for the manner in which he bums 

 and destroys their land. Behind them rises the long and 

 lofly range of Atlas, whose head is said to remain for ever 

 invisible ajid wrapped in c'ouds, and which the natives believe 



