HENNELL. 
4^1 
ward into the centre of the continent ; and that 
to it belonged several hundred miles of the course 
which the best modern geographers had assigned 
to the Senegal. Upon these data, Major Rennell 
founded his theory of its course. It had been 
traced, indeed, by Park, only about 300 miles 
from its source ; but concurrent testimonies, an- 
cient and modern, established the existence of a 
continued stream, upwards of a 1000 miles farther, 
to the extremity of Wangara. That country is 
described by the Arabian geographers as entirely 
surrounded and intersected by branches of the 
Niger, • (Nile of the Negroes) ; as containing, at 
least, two lakes, and as entirely overflowed dur- 
ing the rainy season. Major Rennell, therefore, 
very plausibly inferred, that Wangara was the 
Delta of the Niger ; that its waters, spread out 
by the separation of its branches, by inundation, 
and by the formation of lakes, might, under the 
burning rays of a tropical sun, be completely 
evaporated. 
This view of the subject, supported by the 
learning and ingenuity of Major Rennell, became, 
for a long time, the orthodox creed with regard 
to Africa. M- Reichard, of Weimar, advanced 
another hypothesis ; according to which, the 
stream passed through Wangara, and directing 
its course to the south-west, poured itself into the 
Gulf of Benin, by a succession of large estuaries. 
