444 
APPENDIX. 
or Formosa, the Warri, the Cross, the Bonny, and the New and 
Old Calabar, have each had their advocates, and undoubtedly 
some of them near their mouths do appear to offer a wider, 
deeper, and more easy access than the opening of the Nuna, or 
central branch. On the other hand, according to statements 
which have lately reached this country, tlie Benin and other 
branches are said to fail at a short distance from the sea, while 
the Nuna, which from its position must evidently have been tlie 
principal agent in the protrusion of the delta, still seems to be 
the most direct road. In order to solve this important problem, 
you will in good time prepare all the necessary measures, so that 
you may be able at once to seize on the most favourable period 
of the year for this trying service ; and the officer to whom it 
may be entrusted must be chai-ged to pursue it with the utmost 
rapidity iu his power, and yet with the utmost prudence, cau- 
tiously feeling his way with respect to the health of the people, 
and immediately retiring to the higher and more wliolesome 
parts of the river, or proceeding to sea on the first appearance 
of disease. But you are not to consider that the leading and 
peculiar object of your mission, nor your efforts in discovery, are 
to be confined to the Quorra and Chadda, and their confluent or 
diverging branches — the Cameroons, the Malinda, the Gaboon, 
and sundry other streams of great magnitude, which empty 
themselves into the Bight of Biafra offer, if not a more extended, 
at least a newer field of discovery; and the same objects which 
are to be accoinplished by your visit to the former rivers, equally 
invite the Expedition to explore the latter. Nothing being 
known of the direction that these Biafra rivers take, or the 
regions from whence they flow, or whether the period of the 
rains from which they are swollen is simultaneous with those 
which swell the waters of the Niger, the proper time for ex- 
ploring them must be left to your own juilgment, or to the 
information you may be able to glean. 
If their sources be in the equatorial belt of mountains which 
traverses the African continent, then their rains, as well as the 
season proper for ascending thejn, will alternate with the rains 
and the season necessary for the navigation of the Quorra, and 
the two enterprizes will therefore not interfere witli each other. 
