APPENDIX. No. IV. 
cxv 
performed in the year 1780 by a party of seventeen negroes, the particulars 
of which expedition, he says that he received from ** a very intelligent man 
who has an establishment atTombuctoo." These negroes proceeded down the 
Niger from Jinnie, on a commercial speculation, and reached Cairo after a 
voyage of fourteen months. They returned by the caravan, and arrived at 
Jinnie, after an absence of more than three years. Some of the facts which 
they reported are not a little extraordinary: — viz. that in several places they 
found the Nile so shallow, in consequence of channels cut for irrigating the 
lands, that they could not proceed in their boat, and were obliged to transport 
it some distance over-land ; that they saw between Tombuctoo and Cairo 
twelve hundred cities and towns, adorned with mosques and towers, &c. It is 
needless to comment upon such hearsay statements, received from an African 
traveller or merchant more than twenty years after the transaction is said to 
have happened ; nor would any allusion have been made to them in this 
place, if Mr. Jackson's book had not been much commended by distinguished 
critics*, and quoted as an authority respecting the interior of Africa by 
several geographical writers. 
The principal, and apparently decisive, objection against this supposed 
junction of the Niger and theNile, is grounded upon a comparison of the 
great difference of level between the beds of the two rivers. From the authentic 
information we possess by means of Mr. Browne, respecting the countries 
west of the Nile, it is now clear, that if this junction takes place at all, it must 
be in the upper part of the Nile, before that river has quitted the higher 
regions of Africa, from whence it has still 1000 geographical miles to run be- 
fore it reaches the sea, passing in its way through several crttaracts. But it 
is utterly incredible that the Niger, which, in order to reach this part of the 
Nile, must have run at the least 2300 miles, should not in so long a course 
have descended to a level considerably lower than that which is here described. 
This objection is urged with great force by Major Rennell, who justly con- 
siders it as being entirely decisive of the question ; but he has added several 
other arguments, which those who take an interest in this question, will do 
well to consult. f 
III. The supposition, mentioned in the text (p.lxviii), that the Niger termi- 
nates in the River Congo, or, as it is sometimes called, the Zaire, is entirely 
a recent conjecture, adopted by Park in consequence of the information and 
* Edinburgh Review, vol. xiv. p. 306. 
i Proceedings of the African Association, vol. i. p. 537; and vol. ii. p. 268, 2S0. 
