The Niger River had been vaguely known to classical geographers for two or three centuries before and two centuries after the commencement of the Christian era. These writers, as far back as the time of Herodotos, recorded legends of Libyan adventurers from southern Tunisia who penetrated through the Sahara Desert to lands of running rivers, open waters, and tropical vegetation. The Senegal River, under the name of Bambotus, is described by Polybius (about 140 B.C.) as a great stream far beyond the Sahara Desert which contained crocodiles and hippopotami. To such a river, or even, it may be, to this dimly realized Niger, was applied a Berber name for a stream, Gir, or Ni-gir. I have already mentioned the Gir River which rises to the south of the Great Atlas range in Morocco, and which was discovered by the Roman general Suetonius Paulinus about the year 50 A.C. This was confused with the real Nigir or Niger, of which it may have been a million years ago one of the ultimate tributaries. Lamps of Roman design in metal penetrated as far into the interior of Africa as the Northern Cameroons, as did also imitations in clay architecture of Greek or Roman fortresses. But the remarkable clay architecture now associated with the Fulas and which is ascribed in its origins to the Songhai of Agades, would seem rather to have come from Egypt than across the Sahara Desert from Roman Africa. Actual posts erected and even garrisoned by Roman soldiers may have extended as far south as Ghadames (Cydames) or Murzuk (Phazania). Direct Roman rule, however, was chiefly notable in what is now the Regency of Tunis and in Egypt. Tunisia and western Tripoli almost surpass Italy in the number and magnificence of their Roman remains. All along the actual coast of Algeria and Northern Morocco existing ruins testify to the great number of Roman cities which once flourished there. Eastern Algeria shared with Western Tunisia a most notable degree of Roman civilization. The present writer has been much impressed with the fact that from Gafsa in the south of Tunis to Tebessa in Algeria the traveller can ride along about a hundred miles of ancient Roman road scarcely ever out of sight of the ruins of former cities, some of which must have been of great magnificence, though their culmination of splendour was not attained until the rule of Byzantium had replaced that of Rome. ---------------------------------------------------------------- AFRICA AS KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS BEFORE THE MUHAMMADAN INVASION OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY, B. C. Plate I. [Illustration] Sir H.H. Johnston del^t  W. & A.K. Johnston Limited Edinburgh & London Explanatory Note