Chap. 10.] ACCOUNT Or COUNTEIES, ETC. 411 snows and rains of Mauritania increase. Pouring forth from this lake, the river disdains to flow through arid and sandy deserts, and for a distance of several days' journey conceals itself; after which it bursts forth at another lake of greater magnitude in the country of the Massaesyli^ a people of Mauritania Caesariensis, and thence casts a glance around, as it were, upon the communities of men in its vicinity, giving proofs of its identity in the same peculiarities of the animals which it produces. It then buries itself once again in the sands of the desert, and remains concealed for a distance of twenty days' journey, till it has reached the confines of ^Ethio- pia. Here, when it has once more become sensible of the pre- sence of man, it again emerges, at the same source, in all pro- bability, to which writers have given the name of Niger, or Black. After this, fonning the boundary-line between Africa and Ethiopia, its banks, though not immediately peopled by man, are the resort of numbers of vrild beasts and ani- mals of various kinds. Giving birth in its course to dense forests of trees, it travels through the middle of ^Ethiopia, under the name of Astapus, a word which signifies, in the language of the nations who dwell in those regions, " water issuing from the shades below." Proceeding onwards, it divides^ innumerable islands in its course, and some of them of such vast magnitude, that although its tide runs with the greatest rapidity, it is not less than five days in passing them. When making the circuit of Meroe, the most famous of these islands, the left branch of the river is called Astobores^, or, in other words, " an arm of the water that issues from the shades," while the right arm has the name of Astosapes^, which adds to its original signification the ^ A district which in reahty was at least 1200 or 1500 miles distant . from any part of the Nile, and probably near 3000 from its real source. 2 " Spargit." It is doubtful whether tliis word means hero " waters," or " divides." Probably however the latter is its meaning. 3 This is the third or eastern branch of the river, now known as the Tacazze. It rises in the higlilands of Abyssinia, in about 11° 40' north lat. and 39° 40^ east long., and joins the main stream of the Nile, formed by the union of the Abiad and tlie Azrek, in 17° 45' north lat. and about 34° 5' east long. ; the point of junction being the apex of the island of Meroe, here mentioned by Phny.
- Possibly by this name he designates the Bahr-el-Abied, or White
Eiver, the main stream of the Nile, the sources of which have not been
