22 MEMOIR OF BURCKHAEDT. 



course with the natives \ the king submitting to the 

 rite of baptism, and allowing free scope to the 

 Catholic missionaries to erect churches and labour 

 in the conversion of his subjects. According to 

 some accounts, their ambassadors penetrated as far 

 as Timbuctoo, not in quest of worldly riches, but in 

 prosecuting their indefatigable efforts to trace the 

 abode of Prester John. If this adventurous journey 

 failed in its pious object, it gained the Portuguese a 

 more complete knowledge of Central Africa than 

 was ever attained in Europe until a very recent 

 period. Most of this intelligence, however, has 

 either perished, or still remains locked up in the 

 national archives. 



The Dutch, who had risen in the seventeenth 

 century to the first rank as a naval power, next 

 became masters of the trade and settlements of the 

 western coasts ; but they were soon dispossessed by 

 their successful rivals, the French and English, 

 whose avarice was doubly stimulated by the flat- 

 tering reports, then prevalent in Europe, of the 

 magnitude of the gold trade carried on at Timbuc- 

 too and along the Niger, which was represented as 

 surpassing in value the dazzling treasures of Mexico 

 and Peru. 



According to all the geographical systems of that 

 age, the great river Niger, which watered the inte- 

 irior of the continent and carried vast quantities of 

 that precious metal in its alluvion, was understood 

 to empty itself into the Atlantic Ocean either by 

 the Senegal or Gambia, or both. Hence by ascend- 



