this to be a mere exaggerated description of some animals of the desert. We must still follow him, however, to the western coast beyond the straits, where the Carthaginians, he was informed, carried on trade with the natives in a peculiar manner: The parties did not see each other, but, after a signal made by smoke, one laid down his proffer, went away, and left room for the other to do the same; when the first came, and either accepted or rejected the bargain, till the terms were adjusted. There have been reports in various quarters of this mode of traffic, but all, we suspect, exaggerated representations of the timid manner in which civilized traders made their approaches to those savage people who possessed any valuable commodities. The product sought upon this shore was gold: and, as it does not exist in any latitude north of the Senegal, it is probable that the trade of Carthage extended to that distant river. The interior of Africa could not fail deeply to attract the curiosity of Herodotus. The part already noticed as described by him forms only a belt along its northern coast, and includes none of the vast inland tracts. On this subject, however, he has only one tale to tell. Several Nasamonian youths of distinction, seized with that desire to penetrate the continent which has prevailed throughout all ages, departed on an expedition to the southward. They traversed three successive belts: first, the cultivated, or at least verdant and inhabited tract along the sea-shore; ther, another occupied only by wild beasts; and, lastly, a region arid and desolate. Here, while plucking fruits, they were surprised by some men of small stature, who carried them by the way of very great lakes to a city inhabited by blacks, and situated on a large river flowing from west to east. This river Herodotus naturally enough, judges to be the Nile; but from late discoveries, there can scarcely be any hesitation in fixing it as the Yeou, which rolls through Bornoo, while the Tchad may be identified with the great lakes along which the expedition was conducted. Notwithstanding the superior advantages possessed by Greece, and the many accomplished scholars who have rendered that country illustrious, it is evident that but little progress was made in developing scientific geography until after the formation of the Greek kingdom in Egypt under the Ptolemies. The intestine wars in which the different tribes were almost constantly engaged, or the more glorious defensive struggles against foreign invasion, confined their views mainly within the limits of their own territory and its neighboring coasts and islands. But that the more learned Grecians had a pretty accurate idea of Asia and its resources, (probably acquired from traders and travelers,) is unquestionable; for Aristotle, during his second stay at Athens, before Alexander had passed the Granicus, thus speaks of the people of that country in his Politica: "The Asiatic nations are not deficient in activity of mind and artistic ingenuity; yet they live in subjection and servitude, without evincing the courage necessary for resistance, while the Grecks, valiant and energetic, living in freedom, and therefore well governed, might, if they were united into one state, exercise dominion over all barbarians." These dogmas of the Stagirite-however contrary to nature he may have professed to consider an unlimited dominion -no doubt made a more vivid impression on the mind of his royal pupil, than the fantastic narrations of Ctesias respecting India, and possibly determined his future operations. Be this as it may, his invasion of India certainly did much towards expanding the minds of his people, by opening a large and beautiful portion of the earth to their influence and culture. Humboldt considers the Macedonian campaign as "a scientific expedition, in the strictest sense of the word,” and,“ moreover, as the first in which a conqueror had surrounded himself with men learned in all departments of science-naturalists, geometricians, historians, philosophers, and artists. Among these shone preeminently Callisthenes of Olynthus, a near kinsman of Aristotle, who had previously composed a work on botany, and a treatise on the organs of vision." Aided by the co-operation of chosen men of the Aristotelian school, he gave a higher direction to the investigations of his companions in the extended sphere of observation now first opened to them. The richness of vegetation, and the diversity of animal forms-the configuration of the soil, and the periodical rising of great rivers no longer sufficed to engage exclusive attention: for the time was come when man, and the different races of mankind, in their manifold gradations of color and of civilization, could not fail to be regarded, according to Aristotle's own expression, "as the central point and the object of all creation, and as the beings in whom the divine nature of thought was first made manifest." From the little that remains to us of the narratives of Onesicritus, we find that the Macedonians were astonished, on penetrating far to the East, to meet with no African, curly-haired negroes, although they found the Indian races spoken of by Herodotus as "darkcolored, and resembling Ethiopians." The influence of the atmosphere on color, and the different effects produced by dry and moist winds, were carefully noted. In the early Homeric ages, and even long after that period, the dependence of the temperature of the air on latitude was wholly unknown, and the relations of east and west then constituted the whole thermic meteorology of the Greeks. The countries lying to the east were regarded as near the sun-"sun-lands"—and the inhabitants as “colored by the near sun-god in his course with a sooty lustre, and their hair dried and crisped with the heat of his rays." Northern tracts of land were considered to lie more towards the west, and southern countries to the east. The indefinite meaning of the word Indies, even at that age, as connected with ideas of position, of the complexion of the inhabitants, and of precious products, contributed to the extension of these meteorological hypotheses: for Western Arabia, the countries between Ceylon and the mouth of the Indus, Troglodytic Ethiopia, and the African myrrh and cinnamon lands south of Cape Aroma, were all termed India. Alexander's campaigns first gave occasion to a comparison, on a grand scale, between the African races which predominated so much in Egypt with the Arian races beyond the Tigris and the ancient Indian Aborigines, who were very dark-colored, but not woolly-haired. The classification of mankind into varieties, and their distribution over the surface of the earth, which is to be regarded rather as a consequence of historical events than as the result of protracted climatic relations (when the types have been once firmly fixed), together with the apparent contradiction between color and places of abode, were subjects that could not fail to produce the most vivid impression on the minds of thoughtful observers. We still find, in the interior of the great Indian continent, an extensive territory, which is inhabited by a population of dark, almost black aborigines, totally different from the lighter-colored Arian races, who immigrated at a subsequent period. Among these we may reckon, as belonging to the Vindhya races, the Gonda, the Bhilla in the forest districts of Malava and Guzerat, and | bothra, capital of the great Indian kingdom situthe Kola of Orissa. The accute observer Lassen ated on the Ganges, from which the ancients regards it as probable that, at the time of Herodo- derived a more accurate knowledge of these easttus, the black Asiatic races, "the Ethiopians of ern parts of the world than they had previously the sun-rising," which resembled the Libyans in possessed. the color of their skin, but not in the character of their hair, were diffused much further toward the north-west than at present. In like manner, in the ancient Egyptian empire, the actual woollyhaired negro races, which were so frequently conquered by other nations, moved their settlements far to the north of Nubia.-In addition to other advantages, this expedition added to the science of the Greeks those materials yielded by the longaccumulated knowledge of more anciently-civilized nations and, with an increased conception of the earth and its productions, they likewise obtained from Babylon a considerable accession to their knowledge of the heavens, as has been found from carefully-conducted investigations. After the death of Alexander, Seleucus, who succeeded to the dominion of Syria and the East, employed his admiral (Patrocles) to make a survey of the Caspian Sea, but the information which he gained was very incomplete. The same admiral also attempted to circumnavigate Asia, but the assertion, which obtained credit in that age, that he had sailed round from India to the Caspian, sufficiently attests the failure of the enterprise. Seleucus, also, finding, probably, that the inroad of Alexander into India had been of very transient result, undertook a military expedition, the details of which are little known, and which enabled him to establish no permanent footing in the country; but he collected some further materials for the geographer, and the record of his marches appears to have been of important service to Pliny. He sent also an embassy under Megasthenes to Pali Eratosthenes, a celebrated mathematician and astronomer, born at Cyrene, 276 B. C., was the first person who attempted to measure the magnitude of the earth. After receiving a liberal education at Athens, where he was under the tuition of Lysanias of Cyrene, Ariston of Chios, and Callimachus the poet, he was invited to Egypt by Ptolemy Evergetes, and appointed to succeed Euclid in the care of the Alexandrian library. Here of course he had access to all the materials collected by Alexander, his generals and successors, and also to the immense mass of documents which had been previously accumulated. In his attempts to measure the earth's circumference he brought forward and used the method which is employed to the present day, and introduced into his maps a regular parallel of latitude; but he did not attend to the grand original divisions of the equator, the pole, or even the tropics. The line which formed the basis of his geography, and generally of that of the Alexandrian schools, was a parallel drawn across the Mediterranean, (passing through the latitude of Rhodes,) and thence prolonged through Asia. The points through which he placed this parallel were the Sacred Promontory of Iberia (Cape St. Vincent), the Pillars of Hercules, or Straits of Gibraltar, the Sicilian Straits, Capes Tauarus and Sunium in Greece, Issus, and the Caspian Gates, to the mountains of India. Although this will be found, on comparison with modern maps, to be erroneous, yet his measurements along this line will give the length |