AFRICA OF THE ANCIENTS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—If we are to admit the hypothesis that the ships of the Carthaginians performed their circumnavigation by passing through a Mediterranean Sea, which, at the time of their voyage, would have bisected the African continent, we must also face the infer- ence that such a channel would also have bisected the river-courses at present existing, an admission which would involve many highly material modifications in the features of physical geography, which we have no authority for supposing have been very mate- rially changed since the time of Herodotus.
Elevation and depression are well-recognised geological forces. No modern landscape has been produced without their influence. The Great Desert has ceased to be the bed of the ocean. This, however, did not affect the Carthaginians, for at this long-distant epoch Lower Egypt must also have been covered by salt water, and those fresh waters which afterwards became the Nile have dis- charged their overflow, not into the Mediterranean, but into the intersecting sea, which it is assumed the Carthaginians navigated.
Then, too, let it be remembered Nilus is the very cause and raison d'etre of Egypt's existence, of its very origin, its mythical civilisation, of its marvellous antiquity. Granting even the existence of land where Egypt now stands, there would be no Nile, with its periodical outflow, for the supply would be cut off by the intersecting sea.
Now we know that there is no question at all about the early exist- ence of Egypt, and the assumption, therefore, of the Carthaginian voyage, by an inland route, has to contend with the co-existence of a river of which there can be no question also, and must, there- fore, be withdrawn. During the European glacial period, ships, or canoes, might have navigated the inland sea, but at this epoch the Phoenician race had not arisen.—I am, Sir, &c., J. E. K.
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