160 Notes on the Congo River . 
from west to east, whose crocodiles showed it to 
be the Nile, must have been the Niger. The 
ancients knew middle Ethiopia to be a country 
watered by lakes and streams : Strabo (xvii. 3) 
tells us that “some suppose that even the Nile- 
sources are near the extremities of Mauritania.” 
Hence, too, the Nilides, or Lake of Standing 
Water in Pliny (v. 10). For the most part they 
made a great central river traverse the northern 
continent from west to east, whereas the Arabian 
geographers of the middle ages, who were followed 
by the Portuguese, inverted the course. Both may 
be explained by the lay of the Quorra and the 
Biniiwe, especially the latter; it was chronically 
confounded with the true Nile, whose want of 
western influents was not so well known then as 
now. 
The generation which has discovered the 
“ Moabite Stone,” the ruins of Troy (Schlie- ; 
mann), and the key to the inscriptions of Etruria 
(Corssen), need not despair of further progress. 
It has been well remarked that, whereas the 
course of modern exploration has generally been 
maritime, the ancients, whose means of naviga¬ 
tion were less perfect, preferred travelling by 
land. We are, doubtless, far better acquainted 
with the outlines of the African coast, and the 
immediately maritime region, than the Egyptians, 
the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. But 
