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Ch. 2: The Traditional Ophir Land

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38 THE DIAMOND MINES OE SOUTH AFRICA
tury a.d., describes quite accurately the east coast of Africa as far as Zanzibar and Ras Mamba Mku. His information was chiefly derived from Arabian merchants. But, as Schlechter has closely pointed out in his admirable monograph,1 there is no trace or hint anywhere during the Greek and Roman periods of antiquity of any colony or emporium south of the Zanzibar
coast, and not long after the time of Herodotus the gold im­ports of Arabia had shrunk to inconsiderable importance. With the decline of the Himyaritic Kingdom in Arabia, soon after the second century of our era, there was a falling off of commercial enterprise and intercourse with Africa, so marked that even the
1 " Periplus of the Erythraean Sea," Henry Schlechter, The Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, July, 1893.
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