APPENDIX. No. IV. 
cxvij 
" the ancients Oases, or Islands. Now, if such small springs could produce 
" such permanent effects, we may reasonably suppose, that the immense stream 
" of the Niger increased to three times the size from where Mr. Park left it, 
" would long before this have made the desert as green as any water meadow 
" and found its way gradually to the ocean, or inundated the whole country. 
" I can with much truth say this of the river Congo, that by comparing it 
" with other rivers, according to tiie best writers, it must rank as the lliird 
" or fourth in magnitude. Considering the force of the current it produces 
" in the sea, carrying out floating islands sixty or seventy leagues from the 
'* coast, the Amazon or Plata only can cope with it. Many traders, whom I 
" met with at Embonima, (a settlement on the banks of the Congo distant 
*' thirty leagues from its moulh,) had come one month's journey down the 
" river, which, reckoned at twenty miles each day (and they count them by 
" the moon, Gondu),wou\d make six hundred miles; and they spoke of it as 
" equally large where ihey came from, and that it went by the name of 
" Enzaddi, an it does among all the natives upon the coast. Should the 
" shallow water, as laid down opposite Saenda, detract from the assumed size 
" of the Congo, let it be remembered, that the river there is spread out ten 
" miles in width, the middle channel of which has never been accurately 
" sounded. It has long been my opinion that Leyland's or Molyneux Island 
" at Embomma (either of which might be rendered as impregnable as 
" Gibraltar at a very small expense) would be a choice station for establish- 
" ing an extensive commerce with the interior of Africa. Indeed, if the 
" idea of the Congo being the outlet of the Niger prove so upon trial, we 
" may consider it as an opening designed by providence for exploring those 
" vast regions, and civilizing the rude inhabitants.* 
Besides this account given by Mr, Maxwell, there are other testimonies to 
the magnitude of the Congo, shev\ing it to be a river of the first class, and 
larger probably than the Nile. In ajournal (which the editor has seen) of 
an intelligent and respectable naval officer. Captain Scobell, who visited the 
coast of Africa in the year 1813, in H. M. sloop of war the Thais, the Congo 
is described as " an immense river, from which issues a continued stream afe 
the rate of four or five knots in the dry, and six or seven in the rainy sea- 
" son." In a subsequent passage he says, " In crossing this stream, I met 
" several floating islands, or broken masses from the banks of that noble river, 
* A chart of the Congo by Mr, Maxwell was published many years suice by Laurie and 
Whittle, fleet street. 
