"Thus it appears," concludes Pliny, "that the seas flow completely round the globe and divide it into two parts."
How Balbus discovered and claimed for the Empire some of the African desert is related by Pliny. He tells us, too, how another Roman general left the west coast of Africa, marched for ten days, reached Mt. Atlas, and "in a desert of dark-coloured sand met a river which he supposed to be the Niger."
The home of the Ethiopians in Africa likewise interested Pliny.
"There can be no doubt that the Ethiopians are scorched by their vicinity to the sun's heat, and that they are born like persons who have been burned, with beard and hair frizzled, while in the opposite and frozen parts of the earth there are nations with white skins and long light hair."
Pliny's geography was the basis of much mediæval writing, and his knowledge of the course of the Niger remained unchallenged, till Mungo Park re-discovered it many centuries after.
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A ROMAN GALLEY, ABOUT 110 A.D. From Trajan's Column at Rome. |