“Eratosthenes compared Africa to a trapezium, of which the Mediterranean coast formed one side, the Nile another, the southern coast the longest side, and the western coast the shortest side. So little were the ancients aware of its extent that Pliny pronounced it to be the least of the continents, and inferior to Europe. Upon the Nile, therefore, they measured the habitable world of Africa, and fixed its limit at the highest known point to which that river had been ascended. This is assigned about three thousand stadia (three or four hundred miles) beyond Meroe. They seem to have been fully aware of two great rivers rising from lakes and called the Astaboras and Astapus, of which the latter (White Nile) flows from the lake to the south, is swelled to a great height by summer rains and forms then almost the main body of the Nile.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE NILE BASIN. 1819. A.D.]
“Equal in fame with the Geographical School of Eratosthenes was that of Ptolemy. This school displays an increase of actual knowledge which was not, however, always accompanied by sounder views respecting undiscovered regions. Ptolemy appears to have been the first who formed a correct idea of the whole course of the Nile, and assigns to its fountains a place in the vast range of the Mountains of the Moon. But he places his Ethiopia interior much further south beyond the equator, nearly in the latitude of Raptum” (Kilwa?).
The Prior of Neuville les Dames et de Prevessin, who published extracts from Father Lobo, the Portuguese Jesuit, launches into a fine dissertation on the Nile, some portions of which are as follows:--
“The greatest men of antiquity have passionately endeavoured to discover the sources of the Nile, imagining, after a career of conquest, that this discovery was only needed to consummate their glory. Cambyses lost many people and much time in this search.”
“When Alexander the Great consulted the oracle of Jupiter of Ammon the first thing he desired to know was whence the Nile sprang, and having camped on the Indus he believed that he had at last succeeded.”
“Ptolemy Philadelphia waged war on Ethiopia with a view to ascend the Nile. He took the town of Axum, as may be seen by the inscriptions that Cosmos Indoplustes has preserved, which he copied during the reign of Emperor Justin I.”