400 THEORIES RESPECTING THE NIGER. 
der ground for several days, afttr which it issues 
anew from another lake in Mauritania Caesariensis. 
Finding itself again- among sands, it plunges a 
second time beneath them, and continues hid du- 
ring the whole extent of a desert space of twenty 
days' journey. On reaching the country of the 
Ethiopians, it again emerges, and, as Ptolemy sup- 
poses, from the fountain Nigris ; when, continuing 
to flow, it divides the Africans from the Ethiopi- 
ans. In a subsequent part of its course, it assumes 
the name of Astapus, evidently the river of Nubia, 
In this succession of rivers, so fancifully united to 
form one Nile, it seems clear, that the two first 
are streams of the Bled-el-Jereede ; but in respect 
to the other, situated on the other side of an im- 
mense desert, and in the country of the Ethiopi- 
ans, whom it separates from the Africans, there 
seem fair grounds for believing it to be the Niger 
itself. We then find Pliny to be the strenuous adr 
vocate for the ancient system, by which the Nile 
and the Niger were viewed merely as successive 
portions of the same great river. 
Mela leans to the same opinion.* He describes 
very distinctly, to the south of Mauritania, the 
great desert, and beyond it the country of the Ethi- 
opians. There rises the river Nuchul, on which 
he makes the striking remark, that, " while all 
others direct their course towards the ocean, this 
one flows towards the east, and the centre of the 
* Lib. III. 9. 
