40 Scientific Reviews. 
course of the Ni-Geir is next to be pursued. This river, formed 
from several sources, is to be conveyed to the Wangara, through 
which it passes by the before-mentioned branch of communication 
into the Nile of Bornou, ‘‘ somewhere to the southward of 162 
north lat.” (p. 73.) Five origins or feeding streams are, for the 
urpose of concordance with Ptolemy, appropriated to this river. 
he first issues from the Mandrus, (Mandingo Mountains, ) and hay- 
ing formed Lake Nigrites, (‘‘a physical aneurism” no longer existing, 
and which the author supposes may have been taken up again into 
the circulation, p. 79.) is there left by Ptolemy, with the general 
statement that it continues to flow towards the midland parts. 
The second from Usargola, corresponding to the Kowarrama of Sul- 
tan Bello. The third from the Libyan Lake, (Lake of Ghana,} 
which, with the second, unites to form an eastward branch, which 
our author supposes to have misled the Arabians. The fourth from 
the south, which, by an immaterial removal from 17° north lat. 
(which would be north of the river) to 7° north, is made to corre- 
spond with a stream which, as Park was informed, flows from the 
south into the Niger. And the fifth springs in Mount Thala, (a pro- 
jecting branch of the Mountains of the Moon,) and corresponds 
with the Shary, which flows into the Tchad, (but which, accord- 
ing to Lander, passes out from that lake.) 
Thus briefly the new hypothesis stands: The Niger (Ni-Geir) 
passes through Wangara, and emptying itself into the Wad-el- 
Ghazel, or Nile of Bornou, (which is formed by the continuation 
of the Misselad, (Geir,) through Lake Fittre,) flows under the 
sands of Bilmah into the Mediterranean Sea. 
To complete such a continued stretch of the imagination, no or- 
dinary climax could sufiice, and our author, with poetic furor, ris< 
ing upon the stilts of his vast conceptions, thus terminates his ori- 
ginal views. 
** But reasoning from analogy, and still more from what we know of the na- 
ture of the country of which I am now more immediately speaking, I have no 
doubt but that, in very remote ages, the united Niger and Geir, that is the Nile 
of Bornou, did roll into the Sea, in all the magnificence of a mighty stream, 
forming a grand estuary or harbour where now the quicksand is...... 2). 6. ie 
question to be solved under such a supposition is, what revolution in nature can 
have produced so great a change in the face of the country, as to cause a great 
river which once flowed into the sea, to stop short in a desart of sand...... aaa 
know from all recent, as well as from some of the older modern travellers, that 
the sands of those desarts which lie to the westward of Egypt are encroaching on 
and narrowing, by a constant and irresistible inroad, the valley of the Nile of 
Egypt. We see the pyramids gradually diminishing in height, particularly on 
their western sides, and we read of towns and villages which have been buried in 
the desart, but which once stood in fertile soils, some of whose minarets were 
still visible a few years ago, attesting the powers of the invading sand. The 
sphynx buried almost up to the head, till the French cleared her down to the 
back, attested equally the desolating progress of this mighty sand flood...... # 
“* And, if we turn to the valley of the Nile of Egypt, we shalt see at this moment 
the very process going on by which the lower part of the Niger, or Nile of Bor- 
nou has been choked up and obliterated by the invasion of the Great Sahara, 
under the names of the Desarts of: Bilmah and Libya. Thus has been rubbed 
out from the face of the earth a river which had once its cities, its sages, its war- 
