Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/438

 404 pliny's kattjeal histoet. [Book V. plans ^ dwell. Beyond^ these are the Nigritse^, nations of Ethiopia, so called from the river Nigris"*, which has been previously mentioned, the Gymnetes^, siirnamed Pharusii, and, on the very margin of the ocean, the Perorsi®, whom we have already spoken of as lying on the boundaries of Mauritania. After passing all these peoples, there are vast deserts towards the east until we come to the Gara- mantes, the Augylse, and the Troglodytse; the opinion of those being exceedingly well founded who place two -^thio- pias beyond the deserts of Africa, and more particularly that expressed by Homer'', who tells us that the ^Ethiopians are divided into two nations, those of the east and those of the west. The river Nigris has tlie same characteristics as the Nile ; it produces the calamus, the papyrus, and just the same animals, and it rises at the same seasons of the year. Its source is between the Tarrselian Ethiopians and the CEcahcae. Magium, the city of the latter people, has been placed by some writers amid the deserts, and, next 1 Or "White Ethiopians," men though of dark complexion, not negroes. Marcus is of opinion that the words " intervenientibus desertis" refer to the tract of desert country lying between the Leucsethiopians and the Liby-Egyptians, and not to that between the Gaetuhans on the one hand and the Liby-Egyptians and the Leucsethiopians on the other. 2 Meaning to the sovith and the south-east of these three nations, accord- ing to Marcus. Kennel takes the Leucsethiopians to be the present Man- dingos of higher Senegambia : Marcus however thhiks that they are the Azanaghis, who dweU on the edge of the Great Desert, and are not of so black a complexion as the Mandingos. 3 Probably the people of the present Nigritia or Soudan. Park and other travellers, as other commentators have supposed ; but that he speaks of the river called Zis by the modern geographers, and which Jackson speaks of as flowing from the south-east towards north-west. The whole subject of the Niger is however enwrapped in almost impene- trable obscurity, and as the most recent inquirers have not come to any conclusion on the subject, it would be httle more than a waste of time and space to enter upon an mvestigation of the notions which Phny and Mela entertained on the subject, ^ From yvfivos, "naked." ^ Mentioned in C. 1 of the present Book. 7 He refers to the words m the Odyssey, B. i. 1. 23, 24. — AiQioTras toi SixOa Sedaidrai, errxo-Toi dvdpojv' Oi fiev ^VfTOfxevov 'YTrepioiws, oi S' dviovros. " The ^Ethiopians, the most remote of mankind, are divided into two parts, the o.ae at the setting of Hyperion, the other at his rising."
 * Marcus is of opmion that Pliny does not here refer to the Joliba of