418 THEORIES RESPECTING THE NIGER. 
who collected all the narratives of travellers in 
this part of Africa, declares himself unable to 
determine from what sources it was drawn. In 
the detail, however, a capital error was committed. 
The point of separation was made at the lake 
Dibbie, called by them Maberia, which, for this 
purpose, was split into two lakes, from one of 
which flowed the Niger eastward, and from the 
other the Senegal westward. The consequence 
is, that all that part of the Niger which flows 
through Bambarra, which was travelled by Park, 
or accurately known to Europeans, was added to 
the Senegal, and, like it, made to flow westward. 
This error was never discovered till the journey 
of Park. 
These discoveries were generally adopted by 
geographers of the first rank, and passed into all 
the good maps of Africa. Yet so slow is the 
progress of knowledge, that in 17«56, Adanson, 
though a man of science, and in 1767? Demanet, 
who had resided for some years at Senegal, adhere 
to the old hypothesis, use indiscriminately the 
terms Senegal and Niger, and seem unconscious 
that any one had ever represented them as diffe- 
rent streams. Golberry, even after the perform- 
ance of Park's journey, affects to consider the 
point as not perfectly ascertained. The truth is, 
that all who placed their ambition in the exten- 
sion of these settlements, leaned to this hypothe- 
