Next follow the +Dromoi+ or Courses of +Azania+, the first called that of +Serapiôn+ and the other that of +Nikôn+. Ptolemy interposes a bay between the Great Coast and the port of +Serapiôn+, on which he states there was an emporium called +Essina+—a day’s sail distant from that port. Essina, it would therefore appear, must have been somewhere near where +Makdashû+ [Magadoxo, lat. 2° 3´ N.] was built by the Arabs somewhere in the eighth century A.D. The station called that of +Nikôn+ in the _Periplûs_ appears in Ptolemy as the mart of +Tonikê+. These names are not, as some have supposed, of Greek origin, but distortions of the native appellations of the places into names familiar to Greek ears. That the Greeks had founded any settlements here is altogether improbable. At the time when the _Periplûs_ was written all the trade of these parts was in the hands of the Arabs of +Mouza+. The port of +Serapiôn+ may be placed at a promontory which occurs in 1° 40´ of N. lat. From this, +Tonikê+, according to the tables of Ptolemy, was distant 45´, and its position must therefore have agreed with that of +Torre+ or Torra of our modern maps. Next occurs a succession of rivers and roadsteads, seven in number, which being passed we are conducted to the +Puralaän+ Islands, and what is called a canal or channel (διώρυξ). These islands are not mentioned elsewhere. They can readily be identified with the two called +Manda+ and +Lamou+, which are situate at the mouths of large rivers, and are separated from the mainland and from each other by a narrow channel. Vincent would assign a Greek origin to the name of these islands. “With a very slight alteration,” he says, “of the reading, the Puralian Islands (Πῦρ ἁλιον, _marine fire_,) are the islands of the Fiery Ocean, and nothing seems more consonant to reason than for a Greek to apply the name of the Fiery Ocean to a spot which was the centre of the Torrid Zone and subject to the perpendicular rays of an equinoctial sun.” [The Juba islands run along the coast from Juba to about Lat. 1° 50´ S., and Manda bay and island is in Lat. 2° 12´ S.]