4 
THE NASAMONES DISCOVER THE NIGER. 
could make any further discoveries than others had 
done. 
“ The young men chosen by their companions to 
make this expedition, having furnished themselves with 
water and other necessary provisions, first passed through 
the inhabited country ; and when they had likewise 
traversed that region which abounds in wild beasts, they 
entered the Deserts, making their way towards the south- 
west. After they had travelled many days through the 
sands, they at length saw some trees growing in a plain ; 
and while they were eating the fmit they found on the 
branches, divers little men, less than those we account of 
a middling stature, came up to them, speaking a 
language which the Nasamones understood not ; neither 
did they understand the speech of the Nasamonians. 
However, they conducted them over vast morasses to a 
city built on a great river; running from the west to 
the east and abounding in crocodiles, where the Nasamo- 
nians found all the inhabitants black, and of no larger 
size than their guides. 
“The Nasamonians all returned safe, and said that 
the little men were all enchanters. But for the river 
which passes by their city, he thought it to be the Nile ; 
and his opinion is not unreasonable.”* 
No task could be more hopeless than the attempt to 
identify any geographical position by an account so 
Herodotus, Euterpe, p. 155 , Littlebury’s translation. 
