8 
COURSE OF THE NIGER. 
the Gambia and coast of Guinea. Mr. Ledyard unfor- 
tunately died at Cairo, and Mr. Lucas was unable, on 
account of intestine wars, to reach Fezz^n; but at 
Mesurata, he obtained from native travellers some 
valuable information concerning the routes across the 
Desert to Moursouk, the capital of that country ; and 
of the manners and customs of the people, of the 
empires of Bornu and Kashna, of the city of Timbaktu 
and of the River Niger, the rise and termination of 
which, according to his informant, were unknown, but 
its course was from east to west. 
An opinion had long obtained that the Niger 
flowed to the westward, instead of, as the great 
historian had asserted, to the eastward; and some 
of the rivers on the west coast, near Sierra Leone, 
were supposed to be its outlet. In the beginning of 
the seventeenth century, a Portuguese pilot, passing the 
Rio Grande on his way to St. Thomas’ Island : says, ‘‘ it 
is held for certain that this is the river which was called 
by the ancients the Niger, and that it is a branch of 
the Nile flowing to the westward.”* 
Some further information, obtained from an Arab 
trader, named Shabeni, respecting the city of Timbaktu, 
* Si va per sirocco alia volta del Rio Grande sopra TEthiopia gradi 
1 1 verso il nostro polo ; qual rio over flume, si tien certo che sia queilo 
che dalli antichi fu chiamato Nigir, e ch’ el sia un ramo del Nilo che 
corre verso ponente, percio che in detto flume vi si trouan coco- 
drilli, caualli marini ; cresce in li medesimi giorni che cresce il Nilo.” 
— Fiaggi da Ramusio, p. 115. 
