INTRODUCTION. vii 
course of a great river, which was still left undecided in 
our times, the authority of an English traveller, from per- 
sonal inspection, set this question for ever at rest, by de- 
termining the direction of the stream to be from west to east. 
That part, therefore, of the problem which relates to the 
origin and the directiun of the early course of this cele- 
brated river, has been completely solved ; but another and 
no less interesting part still continues to be wrapt up in 
mystery—where, is its termination? As ancient authorities 
had pointed out the true direclion of the stream, it was but 
fair to allow them credit for a knowledge of its termination. 
In the examination of this part of the question, by the 
first geographer of the age, either in this or any other 
country, the authorities of the Arabian writers are weighed 
and compared with the geography of Ptolemy; and after 
a close and accurate investigation of the various state- 
ments of ancient and modern authorities, and a train of 
reasoning clear and argumentative, the result of the en- 
quiry appears to be, that the Niger loses itself in the ex- 
tensive lakes or swamps of Wangara; an hypothesis which 
was supposed to have the merit of falling in pretty nearly 
with the termination of that river, as assigned to it by 
Ptolemy in what he called the Libya palus, which lake, 
however, Ptolemy only says, is formed by the Niger. 
In addition to this coincidence, there were also negative 
proofs of the disappearance of the Niger in the interior 
regions of Africa. It could not, for instance, be a branch 
ef the Egyptian Nile, as the Arabs generally contend, for 
the two reasons adduced by Major Rennell : first, because 
of the difference of level; the Nile, according to Bruce’s 
measurement by the barometer, passing over a country 
