DISCOVERY OF BORMU. 
13 
The usual fate of African travellers attended them ; they 
had to encounter hardship and fever, and both failed, 
Tuckey entered an embouchure of immense width and 
depth, discharging a volume of water with a rapidity 
of current sufficient to justify the expectation of finding 
a river of first-rate magnitude ; but on ascending with 
great difficulty, not having the advantage of steam, they 
found it suddenly reduced to a narrow rocky channel 
terminated by a cataract. Beyond this, they traced a 
magnificent river one hundred miles, or two hundred 
and eighty miles from the coast. They were then 
obliged from exhaustion to return, and most of them 
died. Other attempts by Gray, from the west coast; 
Ritchie and Lyon by way of Fezzan, were equally 
unsuccessful. 
In 1822 , Clapperton, Oudney, and Denham crossed 
the Great Desert from Tripoli, and discovered the 
powerful kingdom of Bornu, situated on the borders 
of the large lake, Tshad. Respecting this noble sheet 
of water, however, very little information was obtained, 
except that it was “ clear and remarkably sweet,’* 
which fact alone would justify the supposition that 
it is but the widening of a large river ; probably 
the “ Gir” of Ptolemy, and may prove to be identical 
with the great tributary of the Niger — the so-called 
Chadda. 
The principal feature, however, of this expedition, 
which bears on our present purpose, is the journey of 
Clapperton through a large part of Sud^n westward to 
