44 THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS. -

scientific value, as resting on false cosmographical data. As to the sources of the Kile, he says that he never met with but one person who professed to know anything about them. This was the registrar of the treasury of Minerva at Sais ; but when he began to talk about two conical hills " called Krophi and Mophi " between Syene and Elephantine (below the cataracts), Herodotus thought he could hardly be quite serious. Between those hills, said his in- formant, lay the fountains of the Kile, of unfathom- able depth. Half the water ran to Egypt, the other half to Ethiopia. Psammetichus had tried to sound them with a rope many thousand fathoms in length, but there were such strong eddies in the water that the bottom of the spring could never be reached. Herodotus himself went up the Kile as far as Ele- phantine that is, did not get beyond the first cata- ract ; and though he learnt much by inquiry as to the country generally, he could throw no additional light on the great question. But a story reached him originally derived from certain Kasamonians a people inhabiting the edge of the desert that once on a time certain " wild young men," sons of their chiefs, took it into their heads to draw lots which of them should go and explore the desert of Libya, and try to get farther than any one had gone before. Eive of their number set out, well supplied with food and water, and passed first through the inhabited region, then through a country tenanted only by wild beasts, and then entered the desert, taking a direction from east to west. After proceeding for many days over a sandy waste, they came at last to a plain where