4^16 THEORIES RESPECTING THE NIOER, 
termiiie whether it be the Dibbie, or another lake 
lying really to the eastward of Tombuctoo. 
The French geographers, Delisle and D'An- 
ville, employed very peculiar diligence in improv- 
ing the geography of this part of Africa. It is 
true, that in Delisle's map of the world, (I7OO), 
and in his map of Nigritia, (1707)j he assigns to 
the Niger the same long course, from east to west, 
as his predecessors had done. He makes it, how- 
ever, enter the sea only by the channel of the 
Senegal. The rivers Gambia and Grande he re- 
presents truncated, and carried up only as high 
as they had been ascended by Europeans, He 
also removes Tombuctoo eastward to its true dis- 
tance from the sea. He retains the lake of 
Guardia, and endeavours to form a most extra- 
ordinary alliance between it and the system of the 
Arabian geographers. He makes it stand for all 
the lakes described by them in the different parts 
of Nigritia. On the east side of it he places the 
city of Gana, and round it, all the cities of Wan- 
gara, which became thus west of Gana, instead 
of several hundred miles east. But in the map 
of the world, on a polar projection, published in 
1714, though composed with a different object, 
he alters entirely his construction of this part of 
Africa. The Niger and Senegal are there repre- 
sented as separate rivers j are made to arise from 
two lakes near to each other, and to flow, the one 
