These seas contain not so very many islands. The most famous among them is Meninx[3463], twenty-five miles in length and twenty-two in breadth: by Eratosthenes it is called Lotophagitis. This island has two towns, Meninx on the side which faces Africa, and Troas on the other; it is situate off the promontory which lies on the right-hand side of the Lesser Syrtis, at a distance of a mile and a half. One hundred miles from this island, and opposite the promontory that lies on the left, is the free island of Cercina[3464], with a city of the same name. It is twenty-five miles long, and half that breadth at the place where it is the widest, but not more than five miles across at the extremity: the diminutive island of Cercinitis[3465], which looks towards Carthage, is united to it by a bridge. At a distance of nearly fifty miles from these is the island of Lopadusa[3466], six miles in length; and beyond it Gaulos and Galata, the soil of which kills the scorpion, that noxious reptile of Africa. It is also said that the scorpion will not live at Clypea; opposite to which place lies the island of Cosyra[3467], with a town of the same name. Opposite to the Gulf of Carthage are the two islands known as the Ægimuri[3468]; the Altars[3469], which are rather rocks than islands, lie more between Sicily and Sardinia. There are some authors who state that these rocks were once inhabited, but that they have gradually subsided in the sea. CHAP. 8. (8.)—COUNTRIES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF AFRICA. If we pass through the interior of Africa in a southerly direction, beyond the Gætuli, after having traversed the intervening deserts, we shall find, first of all the Liby-Egyptians[3470], and then the country where the Leucæthiopians[3471] dwell. Beyond[3472] these are the Nigritæ[3473], nations of Æthiopia, so called from the river Nigris[3474], which has been previously mentioned, the Gymnetes[3475], surnamed Pharusii, and, on the very margin of the ocean, the Perorsi[3476], whom we have already spoken of as lying on the boundaries of Mauritania. After passing all these peoples, there are vast deserts towards the east until we come to the Garamantes, the Augylæ, and the Troglodytæ; the opinion of those being exceedingly well founded who place two Æthiopias beyond the deserts of Africa, and more particularly that expressed by Homer[3477], who tells us that the Æthiopians are divided into two nations, those of the east and those of the west. The river Nigris has the same characteristics as the Nile; it produces the calamus, the papyrus, and just the same animals, and it rises at the same seasons of the year. Its source is between the Tarrælian Æthiopians and the Œcalicæ. Magium, the city of the latter people, has been placed by some writers amid the deserts, and, next to them the Atlantes; then the Ægipani, half men, half beasts, the Blemmyæ[3478], the Gamphasantes, the Satyri, and the Himantopodes.