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. Mr. Leake says, that Leo was very young at the time, and, therefore that his memory probably failed him, when he came to describe the city, which was many years after his return.]

Considering these circumstances, it will hardly be contended that the late discovery of the Landers, has made any alteration in the nature of the question, as to the identity of the Quorra and Nigir; the sudden bend of the river to the southward, through a country, which has been equally unknown to the ancients and moderns, having always left the best informed of them in ignorance of any part of the river, except that of which the course was northerly or easterly. If then, there be sufficient reason for the belief, that these latter portions were known to the, ancients, we have only to suppose them to have had some such imperfect knowledge of the interior of North Africa, as we ourselves had attained previously to the expedition of Denham and Clapperton, to justify the application of the name Nigir to the whole course of the river. Although we find Ptolemy to be misinformed on several points concerning central Africa, yet there still remains enough in his Data, on Interior Libya and Northern Ethiopia, to show a real geographical approximation, very distant indeed from the accuracy at which science is always aiming, but quite sufficient to resolve the question as to the identity of the Nigir, in which an approximation is all that can be expected or required. Having been totally ignorant of the countries through which that river flows in a southerly direction, Ptolemy naturally mistook it for a river of the interior; he knew the middle Ethiopia to be a country watered by lakes, formed by streams rising in mountains to the southward; he was superior to the vulgar error of supposing that all the waters to the westward of the Nile flowed into that river, and he knew consequently that the rivers and lakes in the middle region, had no communication with the sea. It is but lately that we ourselves have arrived at a certainty on this important fact. We now know enough of the level of the Lake Tchad, to be assured that no water from that recipient can possibly reach the Nile. This wonderful river, of which the lowest branch is 1200 geographical miles from the Mediterranean, (measuring the distance along its course, in broken lines of 100 G.M. direct,) has no tributary from the westward below the Bahr Adda of Browne, which is more than 1600 miles from the sea, similarly measured.

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