386 
MILITARY EXPEDITIONS. 
ible, and especially in the arrangement of their govern- 
ments. 
ranean, near Lebeda, do not appear to have reached the Niger in 
Ptolemy’s time, but to have rested in their progress on the northern 
frontier of the Negro Kingdom of Asben, It appears that the 
Arabs, whom Pliny and more ancient writers affirmed to have settled 
from Syene as far up as Meroe, have since that time penetrated south- 
westward into the inteinor of Ethiopia; for in the accounts and 
MSS. charts which I have i‘eceived from the natives, Wadey was 
always distinguislied as the first Arab dominion, and its inhabitants 
were said to tise a different diet, and their ambition only to be 
repressed by the great power of the Emperor of Boraou. This pro- 
gress of the Arabs inland must have contributed to the dislocation of 
the Ethiopic or Negro Nations. 
“ The expedition of Cornelius Balbus (the last Roman general who 
enjoyed the honour of a triumph,) who reached the Niger, and 
inarched for some time on its northern bank, (apparently where the 
modern Negro kingdoms of Noofee, Yaoora, and Fillani, are now 
situated,) must doubtless have disturbed many of the colonies and 
aborigines, and induced movements to the south of the Niger. The 
pi-evious expedition of Seutoiiius Paulinus, (who seems to have passed 
near where Park understood the source of the Niger to be, into the 
country of the Peiwsi, placed by Ptolemy between the Gambia and 
the coast,) must also have contributed to the secondary movements of 
the Ethiopians. 
“Septimius Flaccus, according to Marinus of 'Tyre, made a three 
months’ expedition into the interior of Africa, proceeding from the 
country of the Garainantes into Ethiopia, and traversing Libya. 
Julius Maternus, according to the same author, was employed four 
months in a similar enterprise, having departed from Leptis Magna, 
or the modern Lebeda, to join the Garamantes at Garama, in order to 
invade Agysimba, the country of the rhinoceroses. Ptolemy objects 
to the unreasonable length of time allotted to these marches, without 
reflecting that they were neither likely to be direct, long, or rapid. 
As no great lake, or considerable river, is mentioned as existing in 
Agysimba, it has been concluded that they neither reached the Niger 
