APPENDIX. 
vii 
same region with that which he describes,* and who had entered more into 
the detail of the African geography, than any other, would, according to the 
usual mode of decision, on such pretensions, be preferred to those who went 
before him, and had treated the subject in a more general way. Mankind 
had no criterion by which to judge of the truth. 
Since then the Arabian geographer, who had written the most extensively 
on the subject, had conducted the Niger into the Atlantic, we cannot wonder 
that the early Portuguese discoverers, who doubtless learnt from the Arabian 
authors the particulars of African geography, should adopt the same idea; 
and that they should regard the Senegal river as the Niger; as we find it, in 
the histories of their discoveries in the fifteenth century. The Portuguese, 
who at this period took the lead, in matters of navigation and discovery, 
might well be expected to set the fashion, in what related to African geo- 
graphy. So that in despite of Ptolemy, and of the ancients in general, the 
great inland river of Africa was described to run to the west; and to form 
the head of the Senegal river. Nay more, it was at last supposed to be the 
parent stock of all the great western rivers of Africa. 
Sanuto, whose Geography of Africa, is dated 1588, describes one branch 
- of the Niger to be the Rio Grande, the other the river of Sestos; regard- 
ing the Senegal as a different river. 
M. Delisle's map of Africa (1707) gives the Niger a direct course 
through Africa, from Bornou, in the east, and terminating in the river of 
Senegal on the west. But in his maps of 1722 and 1727, this was corrected; 
the source of the Senegal was placed at a shallow lake named Maberia i be- 
tween the 14th and 15th degrees of longitude east of Cape Verd; and in 
latitude 12 0 ; whilst the river of Tombuctoo, named Guien, was described 
to issue from another lake, in the same neighbourhood, and to flow towards 
Bornou, where it terminated in a third lake. 
The cause of this change, may be easily traced, in the intelligence col- 
lected by the French traders and settlers in Gallam : 1* the substance of 
* He was commonly called the Nubian Geographer. 
f Gallam is one of the names of the country in which Fort St. Joseph is situated ; 
and is often applied to the settlement itself. 
