14 discoveries in Africa. Sept. ^, 



the manT.er iu which their pnttery Is made, he gave, 

 unknowingly to himself, a representation of the 

 Grecian wheel. 



• In pafsing from Houfsa to Tombuctoo, in which 

 last city he resided seven years, he found the banks 

 of the Niger more numerously peopled than those of 

 the Nile, from Alexandria to C:nro ; and 'his mind - 

 was obviously imprefsed with higher ideas of the 

 wealth and grandeur of the er/apire of Houfs.a, than 

 those of any other kingdom he had seen, England 

 alone excepted. 



' The existence of the city of Houfsa, and the em- 

 pire thus described by Shubeni, was strongly con- 

 firmed by the letters which the committee received 

 from his majesty's consuls at Tunis and Morocco, 

 and with this additional circumstance of information 

 from them, that both at Tnuis and Morocco, the 

 eunuchs of the seraglio were brought from the city 

 of Houfsa. 



'Anxious to investigate the- truth of thes© ac- 

 counts, and- impatient to explore the origin a 

 course of a river that might pcfsibly open to Britain 

 a commercial pafsage to rich and populous nations, 

 the committee embraced the proposals which the ar- 

 dour of a.new mifsionary offered to their acceptance. 

 For major Houghton, who was formerly a captain in 

 the 69th regiment, and in the year 1779 '^^^ acted 

 under general Rooke as fort major, in the island of 

 Goree, exprefsed his willingnefs to undertake the 

 execiTtion of a plan,, which he heard they had formed, 

 of penetrating to the Niger by the way of the Gam- 

 bia, 



