RELATING TO AFRICA. 
383 
neither in the Red Sea, nor in any of the ports of 
Africa situated on the ocean ; while in India it 
was so far from being an object of import, that 
money is stated as a copious import from Europe. 
There does not seem, therefore, to have been any 
quarter, besides the golden streams of Wangara 
and Manding, from which an adequate supply of 
this precious metal could have been poured into 
the empire. 
We thus find circumstances, which seem to make 
it impossible to place the Libya Interior of Ptolemy 
elsewhere than in the Bled-el Jereede ; and others, 
nearly as strong, fixing it in central Africa. How 
shall this discrepancy be reconciled ? If the Egyp- 
tian traders, in the time of Ptolemy, really pene- 
trated to the banks of the Niger, it must have been 
westward from the Nile, by the way of Darfur and 
Begherme. They thus reached that destination 
without having encountered any portion of the 
great African desert ; the extent of which, it is 
evident, was wholly unknown to Ptolemy. His in- 
formants could furnish no astronomical observa- 
tions, nor accurate data of any kind, by which to 
fix the position of the countries through which 
they travelled. In such cases, the ancient geogra- 
phers, to gratify the natural love of completeness, 
had recourse often to very arbitrary delineations. 
Instances have occurred, and will again occur, in 
which very remote objects were brought into con- 
