EARLIEST EXPLORERS. 
3 
like the Egyptians should have been settled in the 
valley of the Nile for such an immense period and not 
have sought to explore the mystery of their great river. 
That was left for Englishmen, and for the present 
century ; almost, we might say, the present generation. 
Yet surely some news came out from the interior ; some 
travellers or traders must have gone up and down the 
valley ; some scraps of information about the great 
lakes and the snowy mountains must have filtered 
down to Meroe and Thebes. Herodotus, the most 
extensive of pre-christian travellers, indeed, did hear at 
PHCENICIAN GALLEYS. 
Meroe of the fountains of the Nile, but it is difficult to 
make out now what it meant. But Herodotus heard 
other stories of central African exploration which are 
worth briefly recalling. There is no inherent improba¬ 
bility in these stories, and many critical geographers 
now accept them as essentially true. One of them 
actually tells of the first circumnavigation of the Dark 
Continent, about the year 600 b.c. 
One of the most illustrious of the native Kings of 
Egypt was Neclio, wdiose name ranks second only to that; 
of Sesostris, and who lived about 200 years before the 
historian. Neclio, we are told, eagerly sought the solu- 
B 2 
