ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE OF AFRICA. 29 



'jedtion was razed to the ground and left long desolate ; but 

 the Romans, at length attracted by the view of the fine re- 

 gion which surrounds it, sent thither a colony, who soon 

 elevated it to its former rank as the greatest city of Africa. 



Another territon,', of which the ancients had considerable 

 knowledge, was that which extended upwards along the 

 Nile, the immediate borders of which have always been not 

 only habitable but fertile. Nothing astonished them more 

 than to see this great river, which, after flowing through a 

 region where there did not fall a drop of rain, and where it 

 ■was not fed by a single rivulet, began to swell at a certaia 

 season, rose always higher and higher, till at length it over- 

 flowed its banks, and spread like a sea over Lower Egypt. 

 Some of the hypotheses formed to account for this inunda/- 

 tion deserve to be noticed. The most prevalent opinion 

 ascribed it to the Etesian winds blowing from the north pe^ 

 riodically, and so violently, that the waters of the Nile, 

 thereby prevented from reaching the sea, necessarily spread 

 over the land; butDiodorus clearly shows, besides the rear- 

 eon bemg itself insufficient, that there was no correspond- 

 ence in the periods ; observing also, that the Etesian winds 

 blew up many other rivers without producing this effect. 

 The philosophers of Memphis, it seems, followed even by 

 Mela, the great Latin geographer, surmised that the un- 

 known and inaccessible fountains of the Nile lay on the 

 opposite side of the globe, where during our summer it was 

 winter ; consequently, the greatest rains then fell, and the 

 swollen waters, flowing across the whole breadth of the 

 torrid zone, acquired that soft and mellow taste which made 

 them so agreeable. But the most singular hypothesis is 

 that of Ephorus, who thought that Egypt is full of gaps 

 or chinks which in winter absorb the water, but sweat it out 

 under the influence of the summer heat. Diodorus takes 

 superfluous pains to show that this theory, so absurd in it- 

 self, had no correspondence with the facts of the case. The 

 real cause, arising from the rains which fall on the high 

 mountains in the interior and tropical regions, was men- 

 tioned and otrongly supported by Agatharchides, who wrote 

 a learned work on the Red Sea ; which, however, was far 

 from attaining the favourable reception that it merited. 



The name of Ethiopia was very generally applied by the 

 fuicients to the south of Africa, and even of Arabia, and 

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