THE COURSE OF THE DHIOLIBA. 367 
mana, that is to say at an elevation of from fourteen to 
fifteen hundred feet^ reached the Mediterranean after a 
course of two thousand leagues. But, what is perhaps still 
more strange, this notion rested wholly upon the equi- 
vocal interpretation of a word, or as we may express it in 
plain English upon a pun ; the word Nile or Nil is ge- 
neric. In saying that the Dhioliba joins the Nile, the 
Africans mean no more than it communicates with some 
other great water, whether it falls into it, or whether it 
receives it, (for this distinction of arm or tributary is very 
important). When therefore the Arabs say that the 
Dhioliba communicates with the Nile or the Bahi, they 
understand thereby either a great river, or a sea, and this 
may be an inland sea as well as the Ocean. This opinion 
that the Dhioliba empties itself into the Nile of Egypt, 
though it was supported only a few years since by a learn- 
ed writer, appears to be now altogether abandoned. 
But this is not the case with the opinion of those 
who, like Major Rennell, consider the central lake as the 
outlet of the river. Before the discovery of the lake 
Tch^d by the English travellers, the existence of this 
inland sea might have been doubted, the evidence of it 
was so vaguely attested. This opinion, however sup- 
ported by probability, is nevertheless liable to two objec- 
tions : first, that upon the whole western coast of the 
lake is found the mouth of only one inconsiderable river, 
the source of which is at no great distance in the E. S. E. ; 
secondly, that the town of Boussa, to which Park navi- 
gated upon the Dhioliba, is now known by the second 
