240 
entrance into the desert, want a sufficient declivity t© 
reach the exterior seas of Africa. Let us examine the 
reasons which induce me to believe in the existence of 
an interior sea in Africa, independently of the waters 
which the ocean may have left there, and which might 
perhaps suffice to maintain for many centuries a very 
extensive lake, like the Caspian sea. 
There is, in the interior part of Africa, a space of 
thirty-three degrees and a half from east to west, or 
from the source of the Niger to the source of the Mis- 
selad, and of more than twenty degrees from north to 
south, or from the southern declivity of the mounts At- 
las and the other mountains which border on the Me- 
diterranean, to the northern declivity of the mountains 
of Kong, and to the sources of Bahar Kulla. From all 
this immense surface, not a drop of water flows into the 
exterior seas of Africa. Yet we know the sources of 
the rivers which flow into the Mediterranean and the 
western ocean; and all these sources are beyond the 
limits of the vast surface we have noticed. The rivers 
which fall into the gulf of Guinea are not much more 
abundant than the others, and therefore give no reason 
to suppose a more distant source from their mouths 
than the meridional declivity of the mountains of Kong, 
and the other mountains, which, following the same 
easterly line, unite with the mountains of Komri, or of 
the Moon, where are the sources of the Bahar el Abiud, 
or the White River, the principal arm of the Nile. 
It is known, that the rivers of this part of Africa di- 
rect themselves in lines convergent towards the centre. 
The rivers of the Atlas, and those of the desert, to 
the south and south-east; the Niger, and those which 
