4 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
tion of the grand mystery regarding the form and 
termination of the African continent, for there was not 
then, nor indeed for long after, any certain knowledge 
beyond the Sahara. He was obliged to employ, not 
native, but Phoenician navigators, of whose voyage Hero¬ 
dotus received an account from the Egyptian priests. 
Proceeding over the Red Sea, they entered the Indian 
Ocean, and in three years made the circuit of the 
continent, passing through the Pillars of Hercules, and 
up the Mediterranean to Egypt. They related that in 
the course of that very long voyage they had repeatedly 
to draw their boats on land—and such comparatively 
tiny boats they must have been—sowed grain in a 
favourable place and season, waited till the crop grew 
and ripened under the influence of a tropical heat, then 
reaped it, and continued their progress. They added 
that in passing the most southern coast of Africa, they 
were surprised by observing the sun on their right 
hand—a statement which the historian himself rejects 
as incredible. This simple story has given rise to 
volumes of controversy. The tendency runs, if not to 
believe in its absolute truth, at least in its probability. 
AVe are too apt to underrate the intelligence, the enter¬ 
prise, and the performances of our predecessors, although 
we are sometimes struck with wonder at what they have 
left behind them, even some of those that we account 
to have been barbarians. The circumstance that seemed 
incredible to Herodotus, who knew nothing of a 
southern hemisphere—that the voyagers had the sun on 
their right hand—only helps to increase the probability 
of the story. At all events, it shows that even at that 
early period, the strange continent had drawn the 
curiosity of civilised humanity. 
Herodotus tells another story of adventure which 
we may fairly accept as essentially true. Ten days’ 
journey west of the shrine of Ammon, which lay to the 
west of Egypt, was the country of AEgila, occupied by 
the Nassamones, a numerous people, who in winter fed 
their flocks on the sea coast, and in summer repaired to 
collect their oats, which grew in extensive forests of 
