In The Second He Embarked At Bammakoo, And By Sailing Downwards To Boussa, Proved Its Continuous Progress For Upwards Of A Thousand Miles.

The present voyage has exhibited it following a farther course, which with its windings must amount to about eight hundred miles, and finally emptying itself into the Atlantic.

This celebrated stream is now divested of that mysterious character, which surrounded it with a species of supernatural interest. Rising in a chain of high mountains, flowing through extensive plains, receiving large tributaries, and terminating in the ocean, it exhibits exactly the ordinary phenomena of a great river. But by this discovery we see opened to our view a train of most important consequences. The Niger affords a channel of communication with the most fertile, most industrious, and most improved regions of interior Africa. Its navigation is very easy and safe, unless at intervals between Boussa and Youri, and between Patashie and Lever, and even there it becomes practicable during the malca or flood, produced by the periodical rains. British vessels may, therefore, by this stream and its tributaries ascend to Rabba, Boussa, Youri, Soccatoo, Timbuctoo, Sego, and probably to other cities as great, but yet unknown. They may navigate the yet unexplored Tchadda, a river, which at its junction, is nearly as large as the Niger itself, and no doubt waters extensive and fertile regions. It was even stated to the Landers by different individuals, that by this medium, vessels might reach the Lake Tchadda, and thereby communicate with the kingdom of Bornou. But this statement appears erroneous, for though the Tchadda be evidently the same with the Shary, which runs by Adomowa and Durrora, yet flowing into the Niger, it must be a quite different stream from the Shary, which flows into the Tchad, and in a country so mountainous, there is little likelihood of any connecting branches. The decided superiority of the interior of Africa to the coast, renders this event highly important. Steam, so peculiarly adapted to river navigation, affords an instrument by which the various obstacles may be overcome, and vessels may be enabled to penetrate into the very heart of the African continent.

On the return of the Landers, the question was mooted by the Geographical Society of London, whether the Quorra or Niger, as discovered by Lander, was the same river as the Kigir of the ancients. Upon the whole subject it would have been sufficient to refer to D'Anville and Rennell, who favour the affirmative of the question, and on the opposite side to M. Wakkenaer, who of all later writers has examined it with the greatest diligence, had not recent discoveries furnished us with better grounds for forming a conclusive opinion, than even the latest of these authors possessed.

Maritime surveys have now completed a correct outline of Northern Africa. Major Laing, by ascertaining the source of the Quorra to be not more than sixteen hundred feet above the sea, proved that it could not flow to the Nile. Denham and Clapperton demonstrated that it did not discharge itself into the Lake of Bornou, and at length its real termination in a delta, at the head of the great gulf of the western coast of Africa, has rewarded the enlightened perseverance of the British government, and the courage and enterprise of its servants. The value to science of this discovery, and the great merit of those, whose successive exertions have prepared and completed it, is the more striking, when we consider that the hydrography of an unknown country is the most important step to a correct knowledge of its geography, and that in barbarous Africa, nothing short of the ocular inquiries of educated men, is sufficient to procure the requisite facts, and yet it is not a little extraordinary, that the termination of the Quorra or Niger has been discovered by two men, who, in point of scientific knowledge, education, or literary acquirements, stand the lowest in the scale of the African travellers. It is, however, curious to observe how even the best collectors of oral information in that country, have failed in arriving at the truth, as to the origin, cause, and termination of the rivers. Edrisi, Abulfida, Leo Africanus,[Footnote] Delile, and Bruce, all come to the determination that the Quorra flowed from east to west. Burckhardt, whose oral inquiries on Bornou, have proved generally correct, concluded that the Shary flowed from N.E. to S.W., and Lyon, though particularly successful in his information on the countries not visited by him, was induced to confound the Shary of Bornou with the Tchadda or Yen, and like Sultan Bello, to carry the Quorra, after passing Youri and Funda, into the Lake Tchadda, and thence into Egypt. The most intelligent natives are confused, when questioned on the subject of rivers, while the majority, unable to understand the object or utility of such enquiries, can neither inform the traveller whether two streams are different rivers or part of the same; where any river rises, or whither it flows, and appear often to believe that all the lakes and streams of Africa, are parts of one and the same water. It is not surprising, therefore, that ancients as well as moderns have obtained the knowledge of a large river flowing to the east, should have supposed that it was a branch of the Nile of Egypt, or that when the existence of a great lake, in the direction of the known portion of its stream, became known, the opinion should have followed, that the river terminated in that lake, or that it was discharged through the lake into the Nile. Such, consequently have been the prevalent notions in all ages, even amongst the most intelligent foreigners, as well as the higher class of natives, from Herodotus, Etearchus, and Juba, to Ibn, Batuta, and Bello of Soccatoo.

[Footnote: It is supposed by W. Martin Leake, Esq. Vice President of the Geographical Society, that Leo Africanus actually reached Timbuctoo. The narrative of Adams places the matter at rest, that Leo never did reach that famous city.

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