110 Dr Brown on the Correspondence between Mr Park 
higher up, which has a sloping fall of 30 feet. The river in that 
place is of its ordinary breadth, and makes a most tremendous 
noise ; but the first has only the appearance of breakers. They 
spoke with assurance, that no rivers join the Congo for a great way 
up ; yet, were it not for one circumstance, Mr Maxwell T^ould be 
almost certain that it received a very considerable branch from the 
S. E. being the only way to account for the great increase of the 
river in December and Januai'y ; only in that course, it would 
cross the route of the Portuguese traders from Loando St Paul’s, 
and their other settlements, which, in his opinion, would have 
led them to fortify the mouth of the river twenty years ago, in- 
stead of Cabenda, forty miles to the northward of it, when the 
French sent out a couple of frigates, with 300 troops, and demo- 
lished the fort In answer to the 5th query, Mr Maxwell saysj 
that he never heard them speak of having seen any canoe, or other 
substance floating down the river, but such as were quite familiar 
to them ; although it is probable that such an event may have 
occurred in the lapse of time. The only thing that makes 
against the supposition is, that any bulky substance would most 
likely have been seen by some of the numerous inhabitants 
along each shore above the cataracts, who would instantly have 
launched their canoes and brouglit it to land : but should it 
have escaped the observation of those above the falls, it would 
have been infallibly dashed to pieces at the cataracts; after 
which, its fragments would have become water soaked, and ren- 
dered incapable of appearing above the surface of a rapid run- 
ning stream, at all times of* a brick colour. A stranger who 
visits the Congo, says Mr Maxwell, in the latter end of Septem- 
ber, when there is least water, would never doubt but the river 
was then in full flood, until he examined the perpendicular 
rocks of Taddi-iem-Weenga, when he would observe a water- 
mark of from 9 to IS feet above its surface. 
On the 6th query, he says. That he never heard them speak 
of any Mahomedan priests having visited that country, though 
he confesses, supposing the Congo to be the outlet of the Niger, 
• Mr Maxwell has since been' informed by a friend, that a branch of the Congo 
docs take a sharp turn to the S. E. above Mambcenda, and that this branch runs 
past the walls of the Porlugucee settlement, commonly known by the name of St 
Salvador or Banza Congo, 
