Notes on the Congo River . 161 
it is still doubtful whether their information 
respecting the interior did not surpass ours. 
Eratosthenes, librarian of Alexandria (b. c. 276- 
196) expresses correct notions concerning the 
upper course of the Nile; Marinus of Tyre 1 had 
the advantage of borrowing from the pilot, Dio¬ 
genes, who visited the Nile reservoirs of central 
inter-tropical Africa, and Ptolemy has been justi¬ 
fied in certain important points by our latest 
explorations. 
No trace of the Nzadi or Congo is to be found 
in the Pelusian geographer, whose furthest point 
is further north. In the “ Tabula Rotunda Roge- 
riana” of a. d. 1154 (Lelewel, No. X.) two lakes 
are placed upon the equator, and the north-western 
discharges to the Atlantic the river Kauga or 
Kanga, which the learned Mr. Hogg suspected to 
be the Congo. Marino Sanudo (1321), who has 
an idea of Guinea (Ganuya) and of Zanzibar (Zin- 
ziber), here bends Africa to the south-east, and 
inscribes, “ Regio inhabitabilis propter calorem.” 
Fra Mauro (1457) reduces “ Ethiopia Occidentalis 
et Australis ” to the minimum, and sheds the 
stream into the F. Xebe (Webbe or Galla-Somal 
River). Martin von Behaim of Nlirnberg (1492) in 
whose day Africa began to assume her present 
1 See “ Zanzibar City, Island, and Coast/’ vol. i. p. 5. 
“ Marinus of Tyre” became by misprint “ mariners of Tyre.” 
M 
II. 
