V.] INTERIOR OF AFRICA. 95
of Hercules, which the Carthaginians are wont to visit, where
they no sooner arrive but forthwith they unlade
their wares, and, having disposed them after an m°c™b Com"
orderly fashion along the beach, leave them, and,
returning aboard their ships, raise a great smoke. The natives,
when they see the smoke, come down to the shore, and, laying
out to view so much gold as they think the worth of the wares,
withdraw to a distance. The Carthaginians upon this come
ashore and look. If they think the gold enough, they take it and
go their way; but if it does not seem to them sufficient, they go
aboard ship once more, and wait patiently. Then the others
approach and add to their gold, till the Carthaginians are content.
Neither party deals unfairly by the other: for they themselves
never touch the gold till it comes up to the worth of their goods,
nor do the natives ever carry off the goods till the gold is taken
away1."
The historian's information also concerning the interior of
Africa to the southward of the countries that border
on the Mediterranean contains a surprising amount
of truth, when we consider how difficult it has been
in all ages to penetrate that region. He divides the entire area into
three tracts or zones, stretching across from west to
east \ the first of these was the inhabited tract in the
neighbourhood of the sea-coast; the second a region
infested by wild beasts j the third an uninhabited tract of sandy
desert2. The first zone is that which has been already described,
reaching as far inland as the chain of the Atlas and the low hills
that form its easterly continuation; the second, or "wild beast
tract," which lies to the southward of this towards the interior,
was, at least in its western portion, the Gaetulia of the Romans,
and was called by the Arabs the "Land of Dates"; the third
region, which lay beyond this again, is the true Sahara desert
In addition to this general outline of the country, Herodotus
1 4. 196, Rawlinson's translation; to which work I am indebted in other
passages which I have quoted.
a 2. 32; 4. 181—185. Mr Macan observes that these 'zones' suit the
western part of this district of Africa better than the eastern; 8erodahts%
vol i. pp. xcviii and 130.