The historical colonization of Africa by alien peoples (if we regard the dynastic Egyptians as autochthonous) commences with the exploits of the Phoenicians in Mauretania. This remarkable Semitic people, no doubt akin to the ancestors of the Jews in race and language, is believed to have originated on the S.W. shores of the Persian Gulf, and at a period of some remoteness—perhaps four thousand years ago—to have made its way up the Euphrates and across the Syrian Desert to the coast of the Mediterranean, where eventually the great trading cities of Tyre (Tsur or Ṣor), Akko, Saida or Sidon, Sarepta, Arvad or Ruad, Biruta or Biruna (Beirūt), etc., were established mostly on islets off the Syrian coast which eventually grew into peninsulas. From these strongholds their galleys ranged the Mediterranean and reached the North African coast, the Straits of Gibraltar, and the open Atlantic Ocean. By about the twelfth century before Christ the Phoenicians from Sidon had established trading stations at Utica (Atiqa) at the mouth of the Majerda River in North-East Tunisia, and at Lixus on the coast of Morocco (perhaps mouth of River Draa, opposite to the Canary Islands). At the same period—perhaps earliest of all—Gades (Cadiz) was founded as a Sidonian colony at the mouth of the Guadalquivir in Southern Spain. Carthage (Kart-hadshat or Kart-hadasht = the New City), afterwards the Phoenician metropolis in North Africa, did not come into existence till about 822 B.C. It was a settlement of the Tyrians on the west side of the Gulf of Tunis not far from Utica on the Majerda River, and was called the New City in contrast to Utica the “Ancient” (Atiqa). The Tyrians and perhaps the Phoenicians from other sea-cities also created trading depôts on the Cyrenaic and Tripolitan coast, thus coming into contact with the Egyptians. But from the seventeenth to the twelfth century before Christ the Phoenicians had been under the overlordship of Egypt; and it was only when the Egyptian power began to weaken that the great ships built at Sidon and at Tyre from the timber of Cyprus and the Lebanon dared to found African colonies immediately to the westward of Egypt.

Long afterwards, in the days when the strength of the Phoenicians was itself to decline in the grip of the Assyrian kings, these bold navigators hired themselves and their ships to the rulers of Egypt for naval transport and geographical discovery. In about 600 B.C., according to the story of Herodotos, the last but three of the native Egyptian Pharaohs, Niku (Necho) II, summoned a captain of the Phoenicians whose ships were stationed in the Gulf of Suez (perhaps conveyed thither from the Mediterranean through some canal between the Nile and the Bitter Lakes), and despatched him in command of an expedition of two or three vessels, with the order to attempt to sail round the peninsular continent of Africa and through the Straits of Gibraltar back to the Nile Delta. Very likely the ship-masters from South Arabia had already spread the news that the east coast of Africa trended steadily westwards beyond the equator, and had guessed that Africa was circumnavigable from the land of the negroes on the east back to that land of black men on the west of which the Carthaginians were beginning to spread some dim foreknowledge from their journeys southward along the Morocco and Sahara coasts.

This Phoenician expedition accordingly set out, and in about three years’ time had circumnavigated Africa and re-entered the Mediterranean through the strait which separates Morocco from Spain. Somewhere off the southern coast of Africa they had landed, sown grain and waited in the southern summer (our winter) till it matured and ripened. Then they reaped their harvest and continued the voyage, not willingly losing sight of the coast, no doubt, yet landing as seldom as possible (we may imagine) in their justifiable terror of savage tribes and fierce wild beasts. The account given in Herodotos is very bare. Only one experience of these Phoenician pioneers is given, other than the corn-growing; they are said during the (northern) summer season to have had the sun on their right hand—that is to say, in the north of the sky at mid-day. This observation shows at any rate that these Phoenicians had sailed far enough south to have reached the south temperate zone wherein the sun would always be in the northern sky at mid-day; while the ship’s general east-to-west course round the southern extremity of Africa would place the sun on the right hand of a spectator facing the west.

All the minor geographical discoveries of this expedition have been lost to us, if any were recorded. No mention is made of the gold of south-east Africa, of any Arab settlements along the east coast, of the negro inhabitants of these wild regions, or the means by which the Phoenician mariners supplied themselves with food to supplement the corn which they grew and reaped. It would not have been difficult for them, coming from the east, to reach the southern extremity of Africa, and still less difficult if there really were Arab stations at which they could recruit in the vicinity of Sofala and Inyambane. The story, by no means an incredible one, rests almost entirely on a statement of Herodotos, but was thought to have received fresh support from records of the events of the reign of Niku II which were said to have been discovered in the collection of a French Egyptologist. These inscribed scarabs are however now believed to be clear forgeries^[15]. There is nothing improbable about this legend of the Phoenician east-to-west circumnavigation of Africa. The winds and currents, be it observed, would make it much easier for sailing ships to circumnavigate Africa from the east coast round to the west coast, and then north, than in the reverse direction; and it is curious to note, among other shreds of historical record, that a Persian nobleman of Egypt in the sixth century B.C. and the Carthaginians of the same period both tried to sail round Africa from Morocco past the West coast, and gave up the enterprise as too difficult and tedious.

There has been transmitted to us through the diligence of ancient Greek geographers the Greek version of what is supposed to be the original description in Punic of the voyage of Hanno the Carthaginian. This Punic explorer started from Carthage some time in the sixth century before Christ (perhaps about 520 B.C.) with a fleet of 60 ships, and a multitude of men and women (said to have been 30,000 in number), on a voyage of discovery mainly, but also for the purpose of replenishing with settlers the Carthaginian stations along the coast of Morocco. In the account given of the journey it is stated that, after passing the Straits of Hercules and stopping at the site of the modern Sebu, they rounded Cape Cantin and came to a marsh in which a large number of elephants were disporting themselves^[16]. They then continued their journey along the coast till they came to the river Lixus, which has been identified with the river Draa. From here they coasted the desert till they reached what we now call the Rio de Oro, and on an islet at the head of this inlet they founded the commercial station of Kerne. From Kerne they made an expedition as far south as a river which has been identified as the river Senegal, having first visited the Lagoon of Teniahir. Once more setting out from Kerne, they passed Cape Verde, the river Gambia, and the Sierra Leone coast as far as the Sherboro inlet, which was the limit of their voyage of discovery. Here they encountered “wild men and women covered with hair”—probably the chimpanzees, which are found there to this day, and not the gorilla, which is an ape, restricted in its westward range to the Cameroons. As Hanno’s interpreter called these creatures “gorilla,” that name was fancifully given in the nineteenth century to the huge anthropoid ape discovered by American missionaries in the Gaboon. When Hanno’s expedition visited the neighbourhood of the Senegal river they were attacked by the natives, who were described as “wild men wearing the skins of beasts and defending themselves with stones.” So far as we know, this was the first sight that civilized man had of his wild Palaeolithic brother since the two had parted company in Neolithic times, except for glimpses of the Troglodytes, whom the Carthaginians appear to have met with in the valley of the river Draa^[17].

At Kerne and other trading stations on the coast to the south of Morocco, the Carthaginians did no doubt a little trade with the Berber natives in the produce of the Sudan, south of the Sahara, but after a time the weakening of the power of Carthage and the attacks of the natives must have destroyed most of these West African settlements; for the Romans in replacing the Carthaginians do not seem to have gone further south than the river Draa.

During the eighth century before the Christian era the Tyrian and Sidonian colonies in North Africa and Spain began to detach themselves from any political submission to the Phoenician State in Syria, a kingdom then much harassed by the Assyrians and henceforth doomed to lose its independence under the alternate sway of Egypt, Assyria, Chaldaea, Persia, and Macedonia. Carthage became the metropolis of Western Phoenicia, of the Canaanite^[18] settlements in Berberland and Iberia. The North African coast was dotted at frequent intervals, from Leptis (Lebda) in Tripoli to the mouth of the Draa on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, with Canaanite trading or governing cities. More especially was the Tunisian or African^[19] coast under their domination, from the Island of Meninx-Jerba (the land of date-palms and Lotos-eaters) to what is now called Bona in Algeria; this last being one of the several towns anciently named Ubbo or Hippo. One such was the modern Benzert (Bizerta), the Hippo-Diarrhytos of the Greeks and the Hippon-Zaryt of late Roman and Byzantine times.

From Carthage, the metropolis, there ran a causeway, of which traces still remain, up the valley of the Majerda river (the Bagradas of old times) to the date-palm country, the fruitful land of the shallow salt-lakes and the hot springs—a region which is some day going to be of the greatest importance in North Africa for its medicinal waters, its never-failing springs of sweet water, its fertile soil and genial climate. The Carthaginians also held from time to time desert cities of commanding position in what is termed the Matmata country, between the land of the “Shatts” or lakes and the Tripolitan frontier. But it is doubtful even here if Carthaginian rule extended as much as 100 miles inland; and elsewhere in North Africa, away from Tunisia, the Carthaginians only held what they occupied. At the least weakening of their power the Berber tribes were ready to revolt and take part with their enemies. The Carthaginian troops were mainly recruited in Barbary, and were mercenaries. They frequently mutinied and turned against their Syrian employers. Yet occasionally Carthage produced a man like Hannibal who could win the confidence of these Berber soldiers and lead them to fight the battles of Carthage in Spain, Sicily, and Italy. But in the outlying districts of North Africa, especially in Morocco, tradition states that the Berbers occasionally rose as a nation and destroyed the Carthaginian settlements.

The Phoenicians introduced Syrian ideas of religion into North Africa, more especially the worship of Baal-hammana (the Lord Ammon) or Milk (Moloch, the “King”), to whom human sacrifices were offered; Tanit, the “Face of Baal,” the virgin goddess of the moon, a variant of the Syrian Astarte; Ashmun, the God of Healing (Æsculapius); Rashūf, the Flame, Fire, or Lightning God (= Apollo); Baal Milkkart, the “King of the City” identified with Hercules; Tammuz or Adonis (a beautiful young man); Pateχ, a hideous dwarf god; Rabbat Amma, the “Lady Mother,” a goddess like the Greek Cybele. These religious ideas became associated in southern Tunis and Tripoli with the worship of the phallus as a symbol of life-giving, creative power, and so powerfully tinged the mentality of the indigenes of this region that down to the present day there are schismatics in Islam (especially in the Island of Jerba) that erect small phallic temples and shrines, or crown with a phallic symbol every minaret. It is here, as well as in the fifth- and sixth-century buildings of south-eastern Syria, dating from the early days of Byzantine architecture, that one may trace the evolution of the mahrab (mihrab) or holy shrine of the Muhammadan mosque from the hollow phallus, into which the country people of Jerba enter to say their prayers. This cult once existed in western Arabia, and it is remarkable to find such distinct traces of it in the ruins of Zimbabwe in south-east Africa.

The Phoenicians being used to the tamed “Indian” elephant in Syria—a region in which there were wild Indian elephants down to about the time of the Phoenician settlement of the Syrian coast—brought about the taming of the smaller African elephant in North Africa. Probably they also introduced Syrian breeds of horses, cattle, and pigs, though the sheep and goats of Mauretania seem rather to have been derived from Spain. They brought thither the Syrian greyhound and perhaps some other breeds of dogs; but not the white, wolfish dog of the Berber nomads, which came from Europe. To these beauty-loving Tyrian mariner-merchants is due the early introduction of the peacock into North Africa. It is still a common domestic bird in Tunisia, and figures on old inscribed stones, even far away in the desert, which date, seemingly, back to Carthaginian times. The Phoenicians probably brought with them, likewise from Syria, the cultivated vine, olive, fig, and pomegranate.

Compared with the Romans, the Carthaginians did little to open up the interior of North Africa, except in what is now called Tunisia. Trade with the outer world was restricted by jealous monopolies; but the Phoenician language was nevertheless much impressed on North Africa, and became the accepted means of intercommunication among the more civilized tribes between Tripoli and Western Morocco. Indeed the Phoenician tongue, closely akin to Hebrew and not very far removed from Arabic, is believed to have lingered all through the subsequent Roman occupation of Africa and only to have disappeared completely under the invasion of Arabic, the immediate consequence of the Arab conquest in the seventh century of our era. Even then it is considered that some Phoenician words remain incorporated in the Arabic dialects of Tripoli and Tunis and especially in Maltese; Malta having also been occupied by the Carthaginians. The Jews, who settled so abundantly in North Africa both before and after the fall of Jerusalem, brought thither the influence of Hebrew and of Aramaic, and contributed to Semiticise North Africa in language and religion. So that Carthaginian rule paved the way for the Judaizing of certain tribes, before and after the Roman empire ousted Syria for a time as a colonizing agency; and the use of the Phoenician tongue down to the seventh century A.C. in the villages and smaller towns of the Tunisian coast-belt undoubtedly prepared the way for the rapid and wide-spread acceptance of Arabic a hundred years later. Amid all their wrangles, throughout all the recorded history of North Africa, Berber and Semite seem unconsciously to have recognized that by descent and language they had more kinship with each other than with the Aryan peoples.

The Jews, after the first century of the Christian era, settled numerously in North Africa from Cyrenaica to Western Morocco. They are believed to have preceded the Berbers in settling the oasis of Twat in mid-Sahara, and other oases of the desert also; though they probably found these habitable regions still retaining a negroid population.

The earliest historical connection between Aryan Europe and Africa was brought about by the Greeks, commencing some 600 years B.C.^[20], who settled in the country of Kurene (Cyrene), the modern province of Barka. After the repulse of the Persians there was a great expansion of Greece. Prior to the historical establishment of settlements in the Ionian Islands, in Sicily, at Marseilles and on the east coast of Spain, Greek seamen had no doubt ranged the coasts of the Mediterranean; and from their adventures were evolved the fascinating stories of the Argonauts and Ulysses. Prehistoric settlements of Greeks on the coast of Tunis are believed by modern French ethnologists to have taken place, on the strength of the well-marked Greek type to be found amongst the present population, for instance, in the Cape Bon peninsula; but these Greek types may also be descended from the Byzantine occupation of the country in the Christian era. The Island of Lotos-Eaters, of Greek mythology, would seem with likelihood to take its origin in the island of Jerba, where the date palm is indigenous^[21]. But about 631 B.C. an expedition of Dorians from the island of Thera^[22] founded the colony of Kurene on the north coast of Africa, where that continent approaches closest to the Greek Archipelago. The settlement of Kurene was situated about ten miles from the sea at an altitude of nearly 1800 ft. on the forest-clad Aχdar mountains. Around Kurene (a name corrupted to Grenna by the Arabs) were grouped four other cities—Barke, Teuχeira, Euesperides, and Apollonia. This Greek colony continued to exist with varying fortunes—threatened at times with dissolution through the civil wars of the colonists and the intermittent attacks of the Berbers—till it came under the control of Rome 100 years before Christ. It was occasionally dominated by the Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt. Though the civilization of the Cyrenaica was finally extinguished by the disastrous Arab invasion in the seventh century of the Christian era, it had nevertheless received a death-blow in 117 A.C. by an uprising of the Jewish settlers, who attacked the Graeco-Roman colonists with the help of the native Libyans and slew more than 200,000 of the descendants of the Greek and Italian invaders. The Jews in their turn were massacred, and after that most of the Cyrenaic cities fell into decay.

In the adjoining country of Egypt the Greeks began to appear as merchants and travellers in the seventh century B.C. A Pharaoh, Psammetik I, the father of the Niku who sent Phoenician ships to circumnavigate Africa, had employed Greek mercenaries to assist him in establishing his claims to the throne of Egypt. He rewarded their services by allowing their countrymen to trade with the ports of the Nile delta. The city of Naukratis was founded not far from the modern Rosetta, and became almost a Greek colony. Nearly 200 years later Herodotos, a native of Halikarnassos (a Greek settlement in Asia Minor), visited Egypt and Kurene. It is probable that he ascended the Nile as far as the First Cataract. He found his fellow-countrymen settled as merchants and mechanics and also as soldiers in the delta of the Nile, and he records that the whole coast of Cyrenaica between Dernah, near the borders of Egypt, and Benghazi (Euesperides) was wholly occupied by Greek settlements.

Through Herodotos and even earlier Greek writers, like Hekataios (who derived his information from the Phoenicians), vague rumours reached the Greek world of the Niger River, of ostriches^[23], the dwarf races of Central Africa (then perhaps lingering about the Bahr-al-Ghazal and Nigeria), and baboons, described as “men with dogs’ heads^[24].”

The great development of the Persian Empire under Cyrus brought that power into eventual conflict with Egypt; and under Kambujiya (Cambyses) the Persians conquered Egypt (in 525 B.C.), besides then and subsequently dominating the western and southern parts of Arabia, from which they occasionally meddled with Ethiopia. The Persians were followed more than two hundred years later by their great conqueror, Alexander of Macedonia, who added Egypt to his empire in 332 B.C., and founded in that year in the westernmost reach of the Nile delta the great city which bears his name, and which has been at times the capital of Egypt. Alexander’s conquest was succeeded in 323 by the rule of his general, Ptolemaios Soter, who founded in 308 the famous Greek monarchy of the Ptolemies over Egypt, which lasted till near the commencement of the Christian era, when it was replaced by the domination of Rome.

Subsequently the sceptre passed from Rome to Byzantium, and Egypt again became subject to Greek influence. During the Ptolemies’ rule Abyssinia was Egyptianized, and much Greek influence penetrated that country of Hamites ruled by Semites, resulting in the foundation of the semi-civilized kingdom of Axum in north-eastern Abyssinia with a port (Adulis) on Annesley Bay. This Hellenized and, later on, Christian State flourished for about six centuries from the commencement of the Christian era, and conquered in the 6th century the opposite Arab country of Yaman. Under the Roman and Byzantine Empire the Red Sea, the coast of Somaliland, and Equatorial East Africa were much more carefully explored and even charted; and it is said that the Greeks settled on the island of Sokotra. The extent of knowledge which the Roman world possessed at the beginning of the Christian era is displayed by the celebrated Periplus of the Red Sea, written by a Greek merchant of Alexandria about 80 A.C. This work shows that Greek commerce extended to Zanzibar and Dar-es-Salaam; for by Rhapta is obviously indicated a port on the east coast of Africa which can only be Dar-es-Salaam, the modern capital of German East Africa. Opposite to this was the Island of Menouthias, intended (as described in the Periplus) for Zanzibar, and mentioned even then as being a region under the suzerainty of the Kings of Yaman, and much resorted to by Arab merchants from the port of Muza, no doubt the abandoned harbour of Uda, some distance north of Mokha. Beyond this the knowledge of the Greek writer of the Periplus did not extend; but further allusions to Menouthias or other islands near the east coast of Africa, to be found in later Greek and Latin writers on geography, seem to apply much more to Madagascar than to Zanzibar.

Among the Greek merchants of the first century trading with India was a certain Diogenes, who may have supplied the unknown Alexandrian author of the Periplus with some of his information. Diogenes, returning from a voyage to India in about 50 A.C., landed at Rhapta or Rhaptum. From some such point—Rhaptum in this instance may be distinct from Rhapta and equivalent to Pangani, a trading-post at the mouth of the Rufu River, opposite Pemba Island—Diogenes travelled inland for twenty-five days—so, at least, he stated—and arrived in the vicinity of two great lakes and a snowy range of mountains whence the Nile drew its twin sources. Twenty-five days’ journey might have brought a Greek traveller easily within sight of Kilimanjaro, but certainly not of the Victoria Nyanza. It is more likely that Diogenes saw Kilimanjaro and added to his impressions, of that mighty dome of snow and ice the statements of the Arab traders who may at that period have penetrated inland as far as the Victoria Nyanza and even ascertained the existence of Ruwenzori and the Albert Nyanza. If pre-historic Arab trade permeated these countries at that time, it was no doubt afterwards driven back to the coast by the tumultuous movements of the Bantu and Nilotic negroes.

Though the information of Diogenes may have reached the author of the Periplus, it was, so far as the semi-legendary history goes, told to a Syrian geographer, Marinus of Tyre, who published it at Alexandria about the same time that the Periplus was being written. The writings of Marinus disappeared with the dispersal of the Alexandrian Library. But that portion dealing with the sources of the Nile was quoted almost word for word by a later writer, Claudius Ptolemaeus, a latinized Egyptian-Greek who resided in Alexandria. Ptolemy (as he is commonly called in English) wrote his works about the year 150 A.C.; and to him is commonly attributed the first clearly expressed theory as to the main origin of the White Nile. He believed that this mysterious river found its ultimate source in two great lakes, the waters of which were derived from a great snowy range called the Mountains of the Moon. It is, however, clear from the writings of Eratosthenes (an African Greek who published his geographical works about 200 B.C.) and Pliny the Elder (Caius Plinius Secundus, whose principal book was published in 77 A.C.) that before the Christian era a glimmering of the geography of the Upper Nile basin had already reached Greek Egypt. Perhaps earlier still it had come to the knowledge of the Persian rulers of Egypt, and may have been brought to them by Ethiopian slave and ivory traders, akin to the modern Abyssinians and Galas, who at that period seem to have freely penetrated through the lands of the negro savages.

Not long after the Romans had annexed Egypt to their Empire, they had begun to push their control of the Nile beyond the First to the Second Cataract. Ahead of them went Greek explorers, mainly from Kurene or Asia Minor, who traced the Nile upstream about as far as Khartum, perhaps even beyond. All this region beyond the Second Cataract was known either as the Nubian Kingdom of Napata (which was then peopled by Ethiopians speaking Hamitic languages) or as Meroe (Merawi). The term Meroe applied not only to a city but also to the supposed island, a considerable tract of land nearly enclosed by the courses and tributaries of the Blue Nile, White Nile, and Atbara, a region formerly of great fertility which played a considerable part in the civilizing of Inner Africa, especially westwards towards Lake Chad. The Emperor Nero was temporarily interested in the mystery of the Nile sources and despatched an expedition under two centurions about the year 66 A.C., to discover the origin of the White Nile. This Roman expedition was organized in the principality of Meroe and furnished with boats and men by the Nubian or the Ethiopian chiefs. These boats were subsequently exchanged higher up the Nile for dug-out canoes; and in these the two centurions apparently travelled as far south as the confluence of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and the Kir or White Nile. Their further explorations seem to have been stopped by the accumulation of water vegetation called the sudd. Discouraged by the natural obstacles to their penetration of this desolate region, by the hostility of the naked Nile negroes, and no doubt also by the unendurable attacks of the mosquitoes, the two centurions returned to Egypt; and their discouraging reports apparently put an end to further Roman enterprise in this direction.

The wars with Carthage in the second century before the Christian era drew the Romans into the occupation of Tunisia. They were enabled finally to conquer and destroy Carthage by allying themselves with the Numidian and Mauretanian kings, who, in their desire to establish complete home rule in North Africa, were anxious to destroy the Carthaginian power. But after the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. Rome picked quarrels, first with the Kings of Numidia, and next with those farther west in what are now called Algeria and Morocco, with the result that between 104 and 50 B.C. the region equivalent to Tunisia and western Tripoli became the Roman province of Africa; while all the coast region of Algeria and Morocco was annexed to the Roman Empire in 46 B.C. and 42 A.C. respectively. Some time previous to this, in 96 B.C., the Romans had annexed the old Greek colonies in Cyrenaica, to which—as a Roman province—was added Egypt in 30 B.C.; while Roman armies established Roman influence in Fezzan by 19 B.C. Consequently, by the middle of the first century of the Christian era, the Roman power was predominant over the whole coast-belt of North Africa. Roman explorers even penetrated far into Morocco, examined the High Atlas range, and crossed it into the Sahara Desert near Figuig; in fact, a Roman general, Suetonius Paulinus, afterwards a conqueror of Britain, penetrated in 50 A.C. to the palm-fringed river valleys south of the Atlas range, which would seem to have been in Pliocene times the head-waters of streams flowing far south into the Niger basin. One such stream was called by Roman geographers the Ger, and is still known as Gir by the Berbers.

Even before the Christian era began—if we may place any reliance on the stories collected by Marinus Tyrius and cited in the works of Ptolemy the Alexandrian—the Romans had despatched in 19 B.C. an expedition from Fezzan (then a semi-civilized kingdom of the Tibus or Garamantes, far to the south of Tripoli) to reach the country of the Blacks, reports of which, together with some of its products, had come under Roman notice even before the conquest of Carthage. Setting out from Garama (Jerma, in Fezzan) and escorted by Tibu chieftains and their men, a Roman general named Septimus Flaccus is said to have reached the black man’s country across the Desert in three months’ marching. It is possible that camels were already employed on this expedition, but horses would also have been available; and even oxen seem to have been used as late as this period by the desert peoples to draw carts. It is very probable that 1800 years ago this portion of the Sahara was much less arid, and that there were more numerous wells and sources of water supply and a greater amount of forage. What happened to Septimus Flaccus, and whether he really reached the land of the negroes, afterwards to be known by an Arab name, Sudan, we are not told; but about the beginning of the Christian era another Roman explorer, Julius Maternus, also started from Garama and reached a land which he named Agisymba, after a march of four months. This was possibly Kanem, or even Bornu near Lake Chad, and is described as a country swarming with rhinoceroses—beasts still to be found there, though in much reduced numbers.

These are the only recorded attempts of the Romans to reach the Sudan across the Sahara Desert; but that intercourse had been going on for hundreds, if not thousands, of years between the Libyans and Hamites of Northern and North-Eastern Africa on the one hand, and the negroids and negroes of the Lake Chad and Benue regions and of the whole Niger basin on the other, there can be little doubt, from a variety of evidence^[25]. Roman beads are dug up in Hausaland and are obtained even from the graves of Ashanti chiefs; and some of these differ but little from Roman beads found in the mud of the Thames or amidst the ashes of Pompeii. Even ideas of Roman and Greek Christianity filtered through the Libyan and Sahara Deserts and reached countries beyond the Niger.

The Niger River had been vaguely known to classical geographers for two or three centuries before and two centuries after the commencement of the Christian era. These writers, as far back as the time of Herodotos, recorded legends of Libyan adventurers from southern Tunisia who penetrated through the Sahara Desert to lands of running rivers, open waters, and tropical vegetation. The Senegal River, under the name of Bambotus, is described by Polybius (about 140 B.C.) as a great stream far beyond the Sahara Desert which contained crocodiles and hippopotami. To such a river, or even, it may be, to this dimly realized Niger, was applied a Berber name for a stream, Gir, or Ni-gir. I have already mentioned the Gir River which rises to the south of the Great Atlas range in Morocco, and which was discovered by the Roman general Suetonius Paulinus about the year 50 A.C. This was confused with the real Nigir or Niger, of which it may have been a million years ago one of the ultimate tributaries. Lamps of Roman design in metal penetrated as far into the interior of Africa as the Northern Cameroons, as did also imitations in clay architecture of Greek or Roman fortresses. But the remarkable clay architecture now associated with the Fulas and which is ascribed in its origins to the Songhai of Agades, would seem rather to have come from Egypt than across the Sahara Desert from Roman Africa.

Actual posts erected and even garrisoned by Roman soldiers may have extended as far south as Ghadames (Cydames) or Murzuk (Phazania). Direct Roman rule, however, was chiefly notable in what is now the Regency of Tunis and in Egypt. Tunisia and western Tripoli almost surpass Italy in the number and magnificence of their Roman remains. All along the actual coast of Algeria and Northern Morocco existing ruins testify to the great number of Roman cities which once flourished there. Eastern Algeria shared with Western Tunisia a most notable degree of Roman civilization. The present writer has been much impressed with the fact that from Gafsa in the south of Tunis to Tebessa in Algeria the traveller can ride along about a hundred miles of ancient Roman road scarcely ever out of sight of the ruins of former cities, some of which must have been of great magnificence, though their culmination of splendour was not attained until the rule of Byzantium had replaced that of Rome.

Nevertheless, all through the period between 146 B.C. and 415 A.C., when the Vandals invaded Roman Africa^[26], the Romans were constantly warring with the Berbers, who no doubt to a great extent were pushed out of Tunisia by colonists more or less of Italian origin. The most prosperous and brilliant period of Roman rule was between 50 A.C. and 297 A.C. In 297 A.C. began the establishment of definite Christianity. Between about 50 and 530 A.C., Latin replaced Punic as the tongue most commonly spoken in the Roman province of Africa and even in the coast-lands of Algeria and Morocco. Still the Berbers were there all the time. Only a few became Christianized, the bulk of the indigenous tribes showing disgust at the way in which the different Christian sects attacked and slew each other. The Jews, having settled numerously in North Africa, won over a number of Berber chieftains to the Jewish religion. Hatred of Roman rule and of Roman Christianity impelled the Berbers of Morocco and Algeria to make common cause with the invading Vandals, and led to the rapid overthrow of Roman rule and Roman civilization. But in 531 A.C. Byzantine generals from Constantinople conquered the Vandals and established the rule of the Eastern Empire over Roman North Africa from Tangier (Tingis) to Egypt. There was once again a revival of Mediterranean civilization throughout all this region, though the Berber tribes still remained recalcitrant.

Abyssinia between 350 and 500 A.C. accepted Christianity from the teaching of Egyptian Greek missionaries, and developed a considerable degree of strength from the civilization which followed in the track of the Christian faith. Not only did Abyssinian kings rule over the opposite parts of Western Arabia, but their armies and slave raids penetrated far south from Galaland towards Equatorial Africa. A debased edition of the Christian faith was carried almost to the shores of Lake Rudolf; while the kingdom of Merawi, before the Arab invasions of this stronghold of the Ethiopian negroids, became a Christian state, which retained its Christianity well into the 12th century of our era. Through the Abyssinian traders, Graeco-Roman commerce began again to get indirectly into touch with the Upper Nile and East Africa. But the Christian-Abyssinian conquest of South-west Arabia seems to have arrested for a time the Arab trade with Madagascar and the East African coast, and may have contributed to the overthrow (by the invading hordes of Bantu negroes) of the Zimbabwe civilization of South-east Africa. It was however just as Graeco Roman rule in northern Africa was coming to an end that its effects on Negro Africa became apparent. The great racial movements in the northern Sudan, which led to the creation of the Mandingo, Songhai, and Bornu kingdoms of the 8th century, were undoubtedly due to impulses coming across the desert from Greek or Roman Egypt, Tripoli, or Tunis. Christianized Berbers from North Africa even carried Jewish and Christian ideas of religion as far into the Dark Continent as Borgu, to the west of the Lower Niger.