Upper Senegal and Niger, Vol. 2

antiquity, the Negroes were distinguished from the Whites by ten principal characteristics: their kinky hair, their sparse beards, their wide nostrils, their thick lips, their sharp teeth, their bad-smelling skin, their black color, the wide spacing of their fingers and toes, the length of their virile member, and their great love for merrymaking. This succinct portrait is not poorly drawn and has not lost its value with age, but it is not enough to enlighten us on the state of the Sudan in the time of Galen.

At most, one can glean, here and there, from the authors of antiquity, a vague piece of information relating to the populations of the extreme North of the Sudan. But, aside from meager indications relating to some Berber tribes of the Sahara, or vague or erroneous geographical data, there is nothing to be drawn, I believe, concerning the French Sudan, from Greek and Latin historians, any more than from the papyri of ancient Egypt.

All that these sources of information teach us is that, before Christ as well as since, the Sudan supplied the Mediterranean countries with slaves and gold dust. But we do not even know how these two products reached Europe or even North Africa, nor which population went to seek them. Herodotus tells us indeed (1) that the Carthaginians traveled by sea to a country located beyond the Columns of Hercules the ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar, for the purpose of buying gold there from the natives: it is likely that this country, discovered no doubt by Hanno, was located between present-day Morocco and Senegal, perhaps even at the mouth of this latter river; but it is improbable that the Carthaginians ever left their ships to advance into the interior of the lands and that they penetrated the region that we call the Sudan today. Moreover, their commercial procedures, which Herodotus described, do not allow us to assume that they had any contact whatsoever with the natives, even with those on the coast: upon their arrival, the Carthaginians would take the goods brought from their country out of their ships, arrange them

(1) Book IV, 196.