TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 97 



Many curious details also were given with respect to the vegetation 

 and climate of these regions, whose mean temperature appeai-s to be 

 that of the freezing point. 



A brief Account of a Mandingo, native of Nydni-Maru, on the River 

 Gambia, in Western Africa. By Captain Washington, R. N. 

 Although the special object of our inquiries, as geographers, is the 

 surface of the earth we inhabit, yet, observes the author of this notice, 

 it may be permitted to pause for a moment in our more ordinary re- 

 searches for the purpose of contemplating a native of one of the little- 

 kno\vn regions of western Africa, and to mark the vicissitudes in the 

 life of a Mandingo, who in his native village had been in company 

 with Mungo Park, one of the first and best of our African travellers, 

 and successively to notice him as a slave, a soldier in the British army, 

 a freeman, and, finally as about to return to the house of his fathers, 

 and to impart to his countrymen some few of the blessings of civiliza- 

 tion which he may have acquired during an absence of more than a 

 quarter of a century from the laud of his birth. 



It were needless here to enter into any detail of the life of Mo- 

 hamed-u Sisei" ; suffice it to observe, that the chief points of geographi- 

 cal interest are, that we have been enabled to obtain from him some 

 itineraries in the country of Senegambia, noting places not to be 

 found in our maps, but more especially a vocabulary of more than 

 2000 words and phrases in the Mandingo tongue ; and when Ave con- 

 sider how extensively diffused is this language, perhaps the most so 

 of any of the thirty-six families of language into which authors have 

 classified the 115 languages (not dialects) of Africa, and that hitherto 

 a vocabulary of about 400 words is all that we possessed of it, it may 

 perhaps be admitted that this native of the Gambia has not offered an 

 unprofitable subject of geographical inquiry. 



On the recent Expeditions to the Antarctic Seas. By Captain 

 Washington, R. N. 



This paper was illustrated by a South Circumpolar Chart on a large 

 scale, showing the tracks of all former navigators to these seas, from 

 Dirk Gherritz, in 1599, to M. d'Urville, in 1838, including those of 

 Tasman, in 1642; Cook, in 1773; Bellingshausen, in 1820; Weddell, 

 in 1822 ; Briscoe, in 1831 : and exhibiting a vast basin, nearly equal 

 in extent to the Atlantic Ocean, unexplored by any ship, British or 

 foreign. The writer pointed out that the ice in these regions was far 

 from stationary ; tliat Bellingshausen had sailed through a large space 

 within the parallel of 60°, where Briscoe found ice that he could not 

 penetrate ; that where D'Urville had lately found barriers of field-ice, 

 Weddell, in 1822, had advanced without difficulty to the latitude of 

 74^°, or within 16 degrees of the pole; and that it was evident from 

 the accounts of all former navigators, that there was no physical 



VOL. vn. 1838. h 



