28 ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE OF AFRICA. 



it to the husband to be nursed, and immediately resumed 

 her own high and arduous occupations. These gallant vi- 

 ragoes, it is said, not only ravaged all this part of Africa, 

 but passed the Istlmius of Suez, and carried their victorious 

 arms into Syria and Asia Minor. What foundation there 

 may be in fact for this story of the Western Amazons, it is 

 not easy to conjecture ; but the Tuaricks, a numerous na- 

 tive race still found in those regions, treat their females 

 with greater respect and allow them more liberty than is 

 usually granted among their neighbours. These were not 

 the only fierce and warlike females who spread terror through 

 Africa. Diodorus places here the Gorgons, who caused 

 death by the mere hideousness of their aspect, and the ser- 

 pents hissing in the hair of Medusa. Yet, amid all these 

 terrible fables, he gives a just description of the back settle- 

 ments of jVorthern Africa; representing them as thinly in- 

 habited by wandering tribes, as bounded by an extensive 

 unifonn plain resembling the ocean, covered with piles of 

 sand of which the termination was unknown, and which, 

 instead of any object that could cheer the eye or refresh the 

 senses, swarmed with serpents of huge form and magni- 

 tude, that inflicted instant death on the unwary traveller. 

 These reptiles were even reported to have once invaded 

 Egypt, and driven before them a crowd of its terrified inha- 

 bitants. 



Strabo, who wrote after the Roman sway was fully esta- 

 blistied over Africa, gives a much nwre sober report of its 

 western regions. Extending his view beyond the Atlas, 

 he describes the Mauri, peopling a rich territory on the At- 

 lantic coast capable of yielding the most copious harvests ; 

 but nothing could wean the nation from the wandering life 

 in which they delighted, moving continually with their tents 

 from place to place, wrapped in the skins of wild beasts, riding 

 without saddle, and often without bridle, on small, swift, ac- 

 tive horses. He represents them as fighting with sword and 

 fipear, not with the poisoned arrows imputed to them by Ho- 

 race, which, however, are really used at present in Central 

 Africa. Eastward, around Carthage, he finds the Massae- 

 fiyli, who followed once the same wandering life, and were 

 called Nomades or Numidians; but Masinissa had already 

 inured them to the practice of agriculture, and to some of 

 the refinements of polished life. Carthage at its first sul> 



