EARLIEST EXPLORERS. 
5 
palm trees. This district lay to the south of what is 
now Barca. According to Herodotus, then, five young 
Nassamonians of distinction formed themselves into an 
African association, personally to explore what was still 
unknown in the vast interior of this continent. They 
passed, first, the region inhabited by man ; then that 
which was tenanted by wild beasts ; lastly, they reached 
the immeasurable sandy waste. Having laid in a good 
stock of water and provisions, they travelled many days 
partly in a western direction, and attained at length one 
of the oases or verdant islands which bespangle the 
desert. Here they saw trees laden with agreeable fruit, 
and had begun to pluck, when there suddenly appeared 
a band of little black men, who seized and carried them 
off as captives. They were led along vast lakes and 
marshes to a town situated on a large river flowing from 
west to east, and inhabited by a nation all of the same 
size and colour with the strangers, and strongly addicted 
to the arts of necromancy. It is not said how or by 
what route they returned ; but, since they supplied this 
relation, they must by some means have reached home. 
Herodotus concludes this great river to be the Nile flow¬ 
ing from the westward; while Major Rennel conceives 
it to be the Niger of Park, and the city to be Timbuctoo ; 
