THE COURSE OF THE D H I O L I B A. 373 
rather extraordinary opinion has met with adversaries, 
at which we need not be surprised, even after having read 
the arguments on which the dissertation is founded. I do 
not therefore think it necessary to discuss it here ; neither 
shall 1 enter into the complicated notions, upon the courses 
of the central river, hazarded by the English traveller 
Bowdich on very vague information; and I shall be cautious 
not to offer an additional hypothesis of my own respecting 
this problem, still full of obscurity. On what basis can 
an entire and complete system be founded while even the 
names of the central regions are unknown to us, and our 
researches into the physical geography of these vast tracts 
are yet in their infancy ; when, in short, the papers of Major 
Laing, should they be recovered, may at once throw strong 
light on these chasms in science It may however be 
affirmed and I think with certainty, that the rivers called 
Dhioliba and Couara neither join the Egyptian Nile, nor 
contribute one drop to its waters ; I think besides that, if 
the Couara of Funda actually is the continuation of the 
Dhioliba, flowing to Sego and Timbuctoo, and falls into 
the Gulph of Guinea, there is nothing to hinder it from 
throwing off a branch to the east, which may have its 
* M. Chauvet, however has just published a conjecture coinciding 
with several different accounts, and possessing the advantage of embrac- 
ing the whole question of the rivers which traverse Northern Africa in 
every direction : his opinion is developed at great length, and I should 
here insist upon the merit of this explanation, had not the author pre- 
vented me, by quoting my opinion as an authority. (Revue Encych Oc- 
tober lb 29). 
