PTOLEMY. 
391 
the stream of the Niger east and west, while all 
the rivers of Sigilmessa run from north to south. 
Finally, unless some communication had been 
opened in that age with this part of central Africa, 
it seems difficult to discover how the Roman em- 
pire could have been supplied with the precious 
commodity of gold, which must have been in ex- 
tensive demand, and of w^hich no peculiar want 
seems to have been felt. The Peripl us * proves 
it to have been obtained 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, there- 
fore, to have been any quarter, besides the golden 
streams of Wangara and Handing, from which 
an adequate supply of this precious metal could 
have been poured into the empire. 
We thus find circumstances, which seem to 
iTGiake 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 reconcil- 
ed? If the Egyptian traders, in the time of 
Ptolemy, really penetrated to the banks of the 
Niger, it must have been westward from the Nile, 
by the way of Darfur and Begherme. They thus 
* Geog. Grsec. Minor. I. 4. 10. 31. 
