HERODOTUS. SSB 
this great river came from the west, seems clearly 
to point it out as the true Nile, or Bahr-el-Abiad 
of the moderns. Proceeding westward from 
Egypt, Herodotus* knew with very tolerable pre- 
cision all the nations who inhabited the coast of 
the Mediterranean, as far as the Straits. He 
knew also the line through the Libyan desert, by 
Ammon (Siwah) and Aegila (Augila) to Fezzan, 
which Major Rennell has clearly recognized in 
the country of the Garamantes. From thence a 
chain of positions seems to carry us to that lofty 
point of the Atlas, which separates the plains of 
Morocco from Tafilet. Africa, to a certain depth, 
was therefore pretty fully explored. His char- 
acter of its three successive belts ; the first fertile 
and cultivated ; the second rude and inhabited 
by wild beasts i and the third an expanse of 
sandy desert, is perfectly correct and appropriate. 
The regions deeper in the interior were known 
to him only by the very short narrative of the ex- 
cursion of the Nasamones, which we have already 
reported, t There seems considerable presump- 
tion, that the river flowing to the eastward, to 
which these travellers were carried, must have 
been the Niger. It has been suggested, indeed, 
that it might rather have been one of those rivers 
which descend from the Atlas, and water the 
* Lib. IV. t Vol. L p. SOL 
B3 
