Xiv INTRODUCTION. 
nel 100 fathoms deep; at twenty-four or twenty-five miles 
up the river, where the funnel or estuary is contracted to 
the natural bed of the river, which is about two and a half 
to three miles in width, the depth is still 100 fathoms. At 
fifty miles, the stream is broken into a number of branches, 
by islands and sand banks. Beyond ninety miles they are 
again united into one channel, abouta mile and a half in 
width, and the depth, in some places fifty, in others thirty, 
fathoms, continuing about the same width and depth to 
the end of the survey, or about 130 miles from the mouth 
of the river; and it is stated, from information of the 
native slave dealers at Embomma, that it is navigable be- 
yond the termination of this survey from fifty to sixty miles, 
where the navigation is interrupted by a great cataract, 
which they call Gamba Enzaddi. He says, however, in 
his letter to Mr. Keir, which was communicated to Park, 
that, according to the accounts he had received from tra- 
velling slave merchants, the river is as large at 600 miles 
up the country as at Embomma, and that it is there called 
Enzaddi. 
All these accounts prove the Zaire to be a river of very 
considerable magnitude ; and though not to be compared 
with the Amazons, the Oronooko, the Missisippi, St. Lau- 
rence, and other magnificent waters of the New World, 
it was unquestionably the largest river on the continent of 
Africa. If the calculation be true, that the Zaire at its 
lowest state discharges into the sea two million cubic feet 
of water in a second of time, the Nile, the Indus, and 
Ganges, are but rivulets compared with it, as the Ganges, 
which is the largest of the three, discharges only about one 
fifth of that quantity at its highest flood. In point of 
