THEORIES RESPECTING THE NIGER. 403 
(toiu) the Nigrites Palus. The opposite branch, 
flowing into it from the west, must in this view 
be very much underrated ; which may be easily ac- 
counted for, from its remote situation, and the line 
of communication by which Ptolemy obtained his 
knowledge of this part of Africa, 
The next geographical system was that of the 
Arabians, in whose opinion, with regard to the 
course of this river, there is nothing dubious or 
equivocal. They all identify it with the Nile, but 
only in its source and earliest course, borrowed ap- 
parently from Ptolemy. But they conceive that at 
a particular point, this primary Nile separates into 
two branches, or Niles ; of which one, the Nile of 
Egypt, flows northward through Nubia, and falls 
into the Mediterranean ; the other, the Nile of 
the Negroes, takes its course westward, and tra- 
verses the vast range of central Africa. Accord- 
ing to Abulfeda and Edrisi, the most eminent 
Arabian geographers, it continues to flow till it 
is received into the Atlantic, or " Sea of Dark- 
U ness," as they term their supposed circumam- 
bient ocean. This system, to the extent in which 
it has been applied, is no doubt quite erroneous. 
But as Gana was the capital of the Arabian set- 
tlements, and the centre of their communications, 
it may deserve consideration whether there do not 
arise a probability that, at Gana> the course of the 
