98 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 
Chap. XXV. 
in order to satisfy the governor of that place. Be- 
sides, I was aware that I had to make a considerable 
present to the governor of Kano; and I was most 
desirous to discharge Mohammed e' Tiinsi, whom I 
had discovered to be utterly useless in these countries, 
and wiio, besides his insupportable insolence, might 
bring me into trouble by his inconsiderate and frivo- 
lous conduct. 
These were material calls upon my encumbered 
property. On my mind, too, there were claims of 
a not less serious character ; for, from my very outset 
from Europe, I had steadily fixed my eyes upon 
that Eastern branch of the Kwara, or so called Ni- 
ger, which Laird, Allen, and Oldfield had navigated 
for the distance of some eighty miles, and which 
the former (although he himself did not penetrate 
further than Fdnda) had, with reasons decisive in 
my eyes, and which could not be overthrown in my 
opinion by Captain William Allen's ingenious but 
fanciful hypothesis, concluded to have no communi- 
cation whatever with Lake Tsad, but to proceed from 
another and very different quarter.* 
I had therefore cherished the hope, that I should 
be capable of penetrating from Kano in the direction 
* Laird's and Oldfield's Narrative, vol. i. p. 233. As this clear 
and rational conviction, which the meritorious man who has la- 
boured so long for that part of Africa entertained, has been en- 
tirely confirmed by my succeeding discovery, I think it well to 
give to it all the publicity which it deserves. The two learned 
geographers of Africa, Mr. Cooley and Mac Queen, concurred en- 
tirely in this opinion. 
