24 MEMOIR OF BURCKHARDT. 



nued at intervals till the close of the seventeenth 

 century. The only geographical fact of any im- 

 portance, if it deserve the name, was a report that 

 the Niger did not flow westward by the two sepa- 

 rate channels of the Gambia and the Senegal, but 

 was distinct from both these rivers, and passed east- 

 ward beyond Timbuctoo. This opinion, now found 

 to be the more correct theory, was adopted by the 

 learned geographers Delille and D'Anville, although 

 a contrary belief continued until within these last 

 few years to prevail generally among the learned in 

 Europe. 



The imperfect success which had attended these 

 earlier attempts to penetrate the interior of Africa, 

 and the unseemly blank which still covered the map 

 of that vast continent, at length roused the attention 

 of several public-spirited individuals in London,'who 

 considered it discreditable to a great maritime and 

 commercial nation, as well as to the sciences upon 

 which the extension of geographical knowledge de- 

 pends, that a country so interesting, and opening up 

 apparently so many new channels for trade, should 

 be allowed to remain a sort of terra incognita, 

 whilst the remotest extremities of land and sea in 

 other quarters of the world had been reached and 

 explored by British enterprise. 



Accordingly, in the year 1788, the individuals 

 referred to, with a view to remove this reproach, 

 formed themselves into a Society called the African 

 Association, for the purpose of promoting disco- 

 veries in the interior of that extensive continent. 



