2 Journey of a Mahomedan Priest 
sive scale, and on apparently the wisest plans, have been fitted 
out, and as it were, thrust into Africa from various points; but 
although neither expense, ingenuity, nor perseverance have been 
spared, the success has hitherto been so limited from disasters 
painful to recollect, that we are at this day in possession of 
little more information than twenty-five years ago, re- 
specting regions still untraversed by Europeans, and known 
only by reports and occasional information gathered from 
native travellers, who too often relate as facts, on their own 
knowledge, what they have only heard from others; and thus 
furnish matter for hypotheses concerning the interior divisions 
of this terra incognita, and the course of its mysterious river, 
which has been successively represented to flow towards every 
point of the compass. 
I regret much that the hurry of making arrangements prepa- 
ratory to conducting a mission into the Solima and Sankara 
countries, whither I shall set off in a few days, does not allow 
me sufficient time to put the route of the Priest in a shape more 
fit to meet the public eye; but | trust that its authenticity, and 
the care which I have bestowed in sifting the information, will 
in some measure compensate for this deficiency; and although 
the matter collected is not of a nature to throw much light on 
the probable termination of the Niger, yet it may be of conse- 
quence in detecting the fallacious opinions of those fanciful 
speculators, who direct the courses of rivers in their chambers, 
and eventually draw conclusions, with which they are (naturally 
enough) satisfied themselves, but which can produce no other 
effect upon the generality of their readers, than a conviction 
that the result of their labours is to involve in greater doubt and 
obscurity a problem which never can be solved but by ocular 
demonstration. 
Mohamed Misrah, a Moslem, was born in Alexandria about 
forty-five years ago. When a young man, he remembers an 
army of white people taking possession of his country, who 
about three years afterwards were driven from it, having been 
beaten in a battle with other white people, who spoke a 
different language. Mahomed was within hearing of the 
