164 Notes on the Congo River. 
Nigir of the Greeks, places them south of the 
Atlas. Mr. Leake (loc. cit.) holds all conjecture 
useless. Not so the Rev. M. Tristram, whose 
geography is of the ornithological or bird’s-eye 
order. In “ The Great Sahara” (pp. 362-4, Ap¬ 
pendix I.), he asks, “ May not the name Giris or 
Gir be connected with Djidi ? ” i. e. the Wadi 
Mzi, a mean sink in El Areg, south of Al¬ 
geria. Graberg (“ Morocco ”) had already iden¬ 
tified it with the Ghir, which flows through Sagel- 
messa; Burckhardt with the J ir, “ a large stream 
coming from about north latitude io°, and flowing 
north-west through the Wadai, west of the bor¬ 
ders of Dar-Fur.” No wonder that some geo¬ 
graphers are disposed to believe Gir, Giris, Ger, 
and Geir to be “ a general native name for a river, 
like Ba” (Bahr), “ Bi” (in many Central African 
tongues a river, Schweinfurth, ii. 241), “Quorra 
(Kwara), Gulbi and Gambaru (the Yeou), Shadda, 
and Enzaddi.” 
It is still interesting to consider the circum¬ 
stances which gave rise to Captain Tuckey’s dis¬ 
astrous expedition. As any map of Africa during 
the early quarter of the present century, Bowdich 
or Dupuis for instance, may prove, the course 
of the Niger was laid down, now according to 
the ancients, then after Arab information. The 
Dark Continent, of which D’Anville justly said 
that writers abused, “pour oinsi dire , de la vaste 
