(peninsula) formed by the Atbara, the Blue Nile, and the White Nile, a region formerly of great fertility. The Emperor Nero, though the Beast of the Apocalypse, had a certain genial interest in geography. He despatched--or caused to be despatched--an expedition under two centurions in about the year 66 A.D., to discover, if possible, the source or sources of the White Nile. Before dealing with Egypt the Romans had taken over control of the old Greek colonies of the Cyrenaica and on the coast of Tripoli. This had led (A.D. 19) to their having extensive relations with the Berber kingdom of Fezzan, with whom and with the Tawareq people of Garama to the south they maintained friendly relations. Through this friendly co-operation a Roman expedition under Septimus Flaccus had in the year 50 A.D. (perhaps) reached to some trans-Saharan place like Bilma. Much later, about 150 A.D., another expedition under Julius Maternus joined forces with the friendly Berber King of Garama, and actually travelled to the vicinity of Lake Chad, or, as some think, to the oasis of Air or Asben farther to the west. It was a country which they called Agisymba, and abounded in rhinoceroses. From this expedition the Romans derived some inkling of the possibilities, beyond the sandy wastes and sun-smitten rocks of the Sahara Desert, of a fertile Sudan, populated with an excellent material for slaves. But a hundred years earlier they had realised the enormous difficulties which attended any enterprise (in the days before camels were used in Africa) across the Sahara Desert, and this gave them an added desire to follow up the Nile and ascertain its practicability as a waterway into Negro Africa. Nero’s two centurions were passed on by Roman prefects to friendly Nubian chiefs, one of whom ruled the principality of Meroe along the main Nile between Atbara and the Blue Nile confluence. Furnished with boats which they later exchanged for dug-out canoes, they appear to have ascended the Nile above Fashoda, and possibly above the confluence between the Bahr-al-Ghazal and the Kir or White Nile. At any rate they got far enough south to come in contact with the Great Marsh which extends from the vicinity of Fashoda to the frontiers of the Uganda Protectorate. Their passage was stopped by the accumulation of water vegetation which we now know as the “sudd.” Some writers on ancient geography believe that the two centurions penetrated as far south as the sixth degree of north latitude, or the verge of the Bari country. At any rate they got well into the land of the naked Nile Negroes. Their discouraging reports seem to have put an end to any further Roman enterprise in the matter.