APPENDIX. 
V 
of the river to be from west to east, as Major Houghton's information had 
previously induced a belief of, yet it may not be amiss to trace the history 
of the opinions, concerning the course of this celebrated river, from the ear- 
liest date of profane history. 
Herodotus,* more than twenty -two centuries ago, describes, from the in- 
formation of the Africans, a great river of Africa, far removed to the south of 
the Great Desert, and abounding with crocodiles. That it flowed from west 
to east, dividing Africa, in like manner as the Danube does Europe. That 
the people from the borders of the Mediterranean, who made the discovery, 
were carried to a great city on the banks of the river in question; and that the 
people of this quarter were black ; that is, much blacker than their visitors. 
Our author, indeed, took this river to be the remote branch of the Egyptian 
Nile, and reasons on the circumstance, accordingly: but even this argument 
serves to express in a more forcible manner, the supposed direction of its course. 
Pliny also believed that the Nile came from the west : but he is far from 
identifying it with the Niger, which he describes as a distinct river. But we 
have at least his negative opinion respecting its western course; for he speaks 
of the Bambotus river as running into the Western ocean; meaning to ex- 
press by it either the Gambia or Senegal river, and not the Niger.t 
Ptolemy is positive in describing the Niger as a separate stream from the 
Senegal and Gambia, which two rivers are designed by him under the names 
of Daradus and Stacbir ; and they are by no means ill expressed ; falling 
into the sea on different sides of the Arsinarium promontory, or Cape Verd.J 
The Niger of Ptolemy is made to extend from west to east, over half the 
breadth of Africa, between the Atlantic ocean, and the course of the Nile. 
These may suffice for the ancient authorities, which in very early times 
fixed the course of the Niger in the systems of geography, to befrotn west 
to east. Who it was that first led the way, in the opposite opinion, I know 
not; but we find Edrisi, in the twelfth century, not only conducting the 
Nile of the Negroes, or Niger, westward, and into the Atlantic, but also 
* Euterpe, c. 32. t Life. v. c. 9. 
X Probably a corruption of Senhagi; or Assenbag i, as the early Portuguese discoverers 
write it. These were a great tribe. 
