Even before the Christian era began—if we may place any reliance on the stories collected by Marinus Tyrius and cited in the works of Ptolemy the Alexandrian—the Romans had despatched in 19 B.C. an expedition from Fezzan (then a semi-civilized kingdom of the Tibus or Garamantes, far to the south of Tripoli) to reach the country of the Blacks, reports of which, together with some of its products, had come under Roman notice even before the conquest of Carthage. Setting out from Garama (Jerma, in Fezzan) and escorted by Tibu chieftains and their men, a Roman general named Septimus Flaccus is said to have reached the black man’s country across the Desert in three months’ marching. It is possible that camels were already employed on this expedition, but horses would also have been available; and even oxen seem to have been used as late as this period by the desert peoples to draw carts. It is very probable that 1800 years ago this portion of the Sahara was much less arid, and that there were more numerous wells and sources of water supply and a greater amount of forage. What happened to Septimus Flaccus, and whether he really reached the land of the negroes, afterwards to be known by an Arab name, Sudan, we are not told; but about the beginning of the Christian era another Roman explorer, Julius Maternus, also started from Garama and reached a land which he named Agisymba, after a march of four months. This was possibly Kanem, or even Bornu near Lake Chad, and is described as a country swarming with rhinoceroses—beasts still to be found there, though in much reduced numbers. These are the only recorded attempts of the Romans to reach the Sudan across the Sahara Desert; but that intercourse had been going on for hundreds, if not thousands, of years between the Libyans and Hamites of Northern and North-Eastern Africa on the one hand, and the negroids and negroes of the Lake Chad and Benue regions and of the whole Niger basin on the other, there can be little doubt, from a variety of evidence[25]. Roman beads are dug up in Hausaland and are obtained even from the graves of Ashanti chiefs; and some of these differ but little from Roman beads found in the mud of the Thames or amidst the ashes of Pompeii. Even ideas of Roman and Greek Christianity filtered through the Libyan and Sahara Deserts and reached countries beyond the Niger.