\ 
PLINY — MELA* 
409 
it issues anew from another lake in Mauritania 
Caesariensis. Finding itself again among sands, 
it plunges a second time beneath them, and con- 
tinues hid during the whole extent of a desert 
space of twenty days' journey. On reaching the 
country of the Ethiopians, it again emerges, and, 
as Ptolemy supposes, from the fountain Nigris ; 
when, continuing to flow, it divides the Africans 
from the Ethiopians. 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 immense desert, and in the 
country of the Ethiopians, 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 advocate 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 
Ethiopians. There rises the river Nuchul, on / 
which he makes the striking remark, that, " while 
* I,ib. iii, 9. 
