18;J1.] [ 157 ] 



AFRICAN DISCOVERIES. 



Murray is said to have given Lander a thousand pounds foi* his 

 Journal — which we hope, for Lander's sake, is true. As to the wisdom 

 of the publisher's thousand pounds' purchase, we may have very con-, 

 siderable doubts ; for the public have been so saturated with African- 

 discovery naiTatives, that their curiosity is prodigiously gone down. 

 However, we hope the government will take the affair to themselves, 

 and give the two Landers pensions. Let them have a couple of hun- 

 dreds a-year each, which is the very least that can decently be given, 

 and which might be saved in a single dejeune a la fourchelte of the 

 band of gentlemen pensioners. But the oddity of the whole matter is, 

 that the termination of the Niger had been declared, over and over 

 again, in print and copper-plate, before the Landers sailed down it. In 

 the travels of Leo Africanus, just detailed in the " National Library," 

 by Mv. St. John, the discovery is described in the early part of the six- 

 teenth century : — 



" ' From Timbuctoo, Leo proceeded to the town of Cabra on the Niger, which 

 was then supposed to discharge its waters into the Atlantic ; for the merchants 

 going to the coast of Guinea embarked upon the river at this place, whence they 

 dropped down the stream to the sea-shore.' From this it appears that all our 

 hot controversies, and lavish expenditure of human life for the last half-century, 

 have only left us as wise as we might have been had we listened to the earliest 

 traveller through Central Africa who has recorded his observations. Leo was, 

 in all probability, the authority upon which an old map of Africa, about which 

 considerable noise has lately been made, represents the Niger as falling into the 

 Bight of Biafra." 



From the latter part of the observation — which is made by a Scotch 

 journalist — we dissent. The old map is, we understand, a Dutcn one, 

 and now at Amsterdam ; probably formed on the observations of some 

 of the national traders, who, at this period, were the carriers of Europe, 

 and of course looked with a cunning eye to the land of gold and 

 ivory. 



But all this was a sealed book to our " philosophers," who, being 

 determined to believe nothing that anybody else had known, were 

 equally determined to believe a vast deal that was sure to turn out 

 absurd. What hundreds of pages has this controversy filled in the 

 Reviews for the last twelve years ! What proofs have been brought 

 that the Niger ran into the Nile, or into the Persian Gulph, or into the 

 Senegal, or into the moon ! What counter-proofs, that it ran in none of 

 these directions, but that it buried itself in the sands, or was lost in the 

 Lake Tchad, or evaporated in summer ! — or did none of these things — 

 but ran up the Etliiopian gkauls, and, having fought its way up an 

 ascent of three thousand feet — all by the new law of projectiles, of 

 course, for every thing now is science — roamed at its will over the 

 great African table-land, and, after meanders of some thousands of 

 miles, quietly slipped down, washed the faces of the Plottentots, and 

 finally glided through the great Karoo, to increase the comforts of the 

 British colony, who have imported pianos, harps, soda-machines, and 

 satin .sandals, for their aoiries on the banks of the " great fish river !" — 

 and all tiiis was proof! 



Yet dull as truth is, compared to the fancy of reviewers, the truth had 

 been given to those national enlighteners in all kinds of ways before. 



