Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/169

Rh ascertaining. In 2466 B.C. Nubia was conquered by Egypt, and again in 2433 and 2333. The Nubians, however, were certainly not near relatives of the Bantu.

There can be very little doubt that the eastern coast of Africa as far down perhaps as Cape Correntes was known to the inhabitants of Southern Arabia several thousand years ago. That they carried on commerce with India by sea is certain from various passages in the old testament, and it is most unlikely that they would expend all their energy on voyaging eastward and neglect at least to examine another coast quite as easy of access.

They brought the spices to Egypt that were used in embalming the dead, and the great city of Thebes owed its grandeur largely to its being the distributing centre for Indian products brought in ships to the shore of the Red sea and thence conveyed overland by caravans of camels. In the very earliest times of this commerce probably a complete land route was followed, but people so far advanced as to carry on such traffic would speedily see the advantage of ocean transport, and creeping along the coast for short distances at first, they would soon learn to make use of the monsoons and steer boldly over from shore to shore. There is no other sea in the world that offers such facilities for safe navigation by small and crudely built vessels, nor one where facilities are so apparent to the people living on its shores. A single accident, such as a vessel being blown out to sea before the monsoon, would make the coast of Africa known to the people of India, and many accidents of this kind must have occurred. So it may be taken for certain that long before the dawn of written history Indians and Southern Arabians were well acquainted with the East African coast.

That there was little to be obtained in trade on that coast below the tenth degree of north latitude, compared with the products of India, is true, and there may have been nothing at all, for it is in the highest degree improbable that a race more advanced than Bushmen then inhabited the adjoining part of the continent. But if there was no trade, there was ivory to be