THEORIES RESPECTING THE NIGER. 413 
give the remotest idea of their magnitude. What 
he has proceeded upon, is the mere arbitrary de- 
lineation of modern geographers, who, having lakes 
to delineate, were obliged to make them of some 
size or other. Upon the whole, however, if the 
Niger must reach the sea, perhaps this is as pro- 
bable a channel as any. There are certainly a 
number of large estuaries, which indicate either 
the Delta of the Niger, or a parallel chain of 
mountains from which they must issue. In the 
last case, such a chain, being a prolongation of the 
great belt of the Mountains of the Moon, would 
oppose a bar to the passage of any river into the 
southern regions of Africa. 
The next hypothesis is that famous one by 
which the Niger is identified with the great stream 
which passes through the kingdom of Congo. 
The extraordinary magnitude of this last river, 
—the prodigious mass of waters which it pours 
into the ocean, whose waves it freshens to the dis- 
tance of many leagues — its perpetual state of ful- 
ness, or rather flood, to which other tropical rivers 
are incident only during a few months of the year 
— the occurrence, at two seasons, instead of one, of 
a perceptible swelling of its waters — these circum- 
stances are supposed to indicate a river, which not 
only drains a vast extent of country, but is fed by 
the rains of both the tropics. Both these condi- 
VOL. II. * 
