Note 154 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 4)

(p. 191). The marvels of the Nile.—[So great was the influence of the systematic geography of the ancients upon the imagination of the Portuguese of the fifteenth century, that, on arriving at the Senegal, and seeing that the water was sweet very near to the mouth, and very clear, in the same manner as the Nile (Nulli fluminum dulcior gustus est, said Seneca), and observing the same phenomena, they did not doubt for a moment that they had discovered the Nile of the Negroes. In these two chapters we see something of the vast erudition of Azurara, and at the same time something of the historical and cosmographical knowledge of our first discoverers. Moreover, we must call the attention of the reader to a very important detail, namely, that while Azurara shows himself imbued with the reading of the ancient authors on these matters, in the same way as our mariners, the latter, if we study the spirit of their words, show that they had some knowledge of the system of the Arab geographers in this respect. These latter applied the same terms (as our first Portuguese explorers) to the two rivers, distinguishing the Nile of Egypt and the Nile of the Negroes. This opinion of the Niger being an arm of the Nile was even maintained in our own day by Jackson, in his work entitled, An Account of the Empire of Marocco and the District of Suze. In vol. xiv of the Annales des Voyages, by Malte-Brun, 1811, and in vol. xvii of the same work, p. 350, we meet with a curious analysis of this work of Jackson's on the identity of the two rivers.]—S.

What Azurara says here about the Nile, etc., is largely borrowed from Solinus, Collectanea, xxxii; Pliny, Natural History, v, 51-59; viii, 89-97; Pomponius Mela, iii, viii, 9. We may also (for mediæval ideas on the Nile, etc.) cf. Dicuil, De Mensura Orbis Terrae, vi, 4, 7, etc.; ix, 6 (on Mount Atlas); St. Basil, Hexaemeron, iii, 6; Vibius Sequester; Procopius, De Bell. Goth., ii, 14, 15; iv, 29; St. Isidore, Origins, xiv, 5; Ven. Bede, De Natur. Rer.; and above all, Edrisi (Jaubert), i, 11-13, 17-19, 27-33, 35, 37, 297, 301-5, 312, 315, 320-325, ii, 137; Masudi, Meadows of Gold, ch. xiv (see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. xliv-l, and Dawn of Modern Geography, pp. 267-8, 323-6, 367, 462-3, 348, 363, 365.)