152 HISTORV OF 



piavigiible for more than three hundred leagues up the country; 

 ;!iid how much higher it may reach is not yet discovered, as the 

 dreadful fatality of the inland parts of Africa, nut only deter* 

 curiosity, but even avarice, which is a much stronger passion. 

 At the end of last war, of fifty Englishmen 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 cele- 

 brated river Nile is said to he nine hundred and seventy leagues, 

 from its source among the Mountains of the Moon, in Upper 

 -Ethiopia, to its opening into the Mediterranean Sea.* The 



Bome geographers had made the Niger run from W. to E.,aDd teriniii.ite in a 

 great lake. This was in fact the opinion of Herodotus 2000 years before ; and 

 in this opinion Piolemy had coincided. '1 he Portuguese, on seeing the Senegal, 

 the Gambia, and other great rivers proceeding from the unknown interior of 

 y\fri(a, discharge themselves into the Atlantic, conceived that these rivern 

 mi-ht be the mouths of the Niger itself, and therefore gave it a westward 

 course. It was reserved for Mungo Park, to decide Ihe question as to the 

 direction of the Nij,'er in favour of the old Grecian geograplier : on the 21st 

 of July, 1796, that intrepid traveller beheld, from the heights of Sego, " the 

 majestic Niyer flowing slowly from VV. to E." Equally as unsettled were 

 the early notions as to the source of this river : for whilst some believed it to 

 originate in the mountains of Mauritania, others affirmed that it issued from 

 a lake to tlie S. of Bornou ; and others, as we have hinted, identified its 

 fouiitain-head with that of the Nile. It is now decided from observation that 

 the great central river of Africa, has Its source near Mount Lamba, in the 

 country of the Soulimas, on the northern declivities of the Kong mountains, 

 between G" and 10*' W. of Greenwich, and, according to Major Laing, at an 

 elevation of 163S feet above the level of the Atlantic. It runs first N. E. 

 through an unexplored country; and then, inclining a little more towards 

 the E., passes the large cities of Baramakou, Yamima, Sego, and Sausaiiding. 

 From the latter place it runs N. E., through lake Dibbie, to Timbuctoo, and 

 thence sweeps in a circular direction to the S. of Houssa, where we are yet 

 ignorant what becomes of it. The river is called, daring the know n part n) 

 its course, Joliba by the native Africans. This name is a corruption of DhioH. 

 ba : bu signifying ' a river,' in the Bambarra and Jlandingo languages, and 

 dioli, or dhioli, pronounced jo/i or (IJoli, signifying ' red.' The Joliba, there- 

 fore, means 'the Red river.' 



» The length of the Nile is about 2,000 miles ; but, as it receives few co.> 

 lateral branches, and none from Ihe mouth of the Tacazze to the Delta — f. 

 distance of nearly 1350 nautical miles — its breadth is seldom, if ever, moJe 

 than one-third of a mile, and its average depth is only about 12 feet. This, 

 however, must be understood as relating to its situation when confined v. ith. 

 in its banks : during an inundation, it lays every level spot upon its banks 

 under water. The ancients were not well acquainted with any other river 

 w hich annually inundated the country around it This circumst-ince, there. 

 <ore, must have attracted no inconsiderable share of their attention. To 



