182 HISTORY OF 



from two sources, northward of the city Erzerum 

 in Turcomania, and unites about three days' 

 journey below the same ; from whence, after per- 

 forming a course of five hundred leagues, it falls 

 into the Gulf of Persia, fifty miles below the city 

 of Bassora in Arabia. The river Indus is extend- 

 ed, from its source to its discharge into the Ara- 

 bian Sea, four hundred leagues. 



The largest rivers of Africa are the Senegal, 

 which runs a course of not less than eleven hun- 

 dred leagues, comprehending the Niger, which 

 some have supposed to fall into it. However, 

 later accounts seem to affirm that the Niger is 

 lost in the sands, about three hundred miles up 

 from the western coasts of Africa. Be this as it 

 may, the Senegal is well known to be navigable 

 for more than three hundred leagues up the 

 country ; and how much higher it may reach is 

 not yet discovered, as the dreadful fatality of the 

 inland parts of Africa not only deters curiosity, 

 but even avarice, which is a much stronger pas- 

 sion. At the end of last war, of fifty English- 

 men that were sent to the factory at Galam, a 

 place taken from the French, and nine hundred 

 miles up the river, only one returned to tell the 

 fate of his companions, who were destroyed by 

 the climate. The celebrated river Nile is said to 

 be nine hundred and seventy leagues, from its 

 source among the Mountains of the Moon, in 

 Upper ^Ethiopia, to its opening into the Mediter- 

 ranean Sea. The sources of this river were con- 

 sidered as inscrutable by the ancients ; and the 

 causes of its periodical inundation were equally 



