This is all very well: I do not object to the Quarterly Reviewer giving up an opinion which he finds no longer tenable; but when I see in the same review (No. 44, p. 481.) the following words,--"we give no credit whatever to the report received by Mr. Jackson, of a person (several Negroes [314], it should be) having performed a voyage by water from Timbuctoo to Cairo," I cannot but observe with astonishment, that the Reviewer believes Burckhardt's report, that they are the same river, when, at the same time he does not believe mine.
Footnote 314:[ (return) ] Vide Jackson's enlarged Account of Marocco, p. 312.
Is there not an inconsistency here, somewhat incompatible with the impartiality which ought to regulate the works of criticism? I will not for a moment suppose it to have proceeded from a spirit of animosity, which I feel myself unconscious of deserving. But the reviewer further says, the objection to the identity of the Niger and the Nile, is grounded on the incongruity of their periodical inundations, or on the rise and fall of the former river not corresponding with that of the latter. I do not comprehend whence the Quarterly Reviewer has derived this information; I have always understood the direct contrary, which I have declared in the enlarged editions of my account of Marocco, page 304, which has been confirmed by a most intelligent African traveller, Ali Bey, (for which see his travels, page 220.)
I may be allowed to observe, that although the Quarterly Reviewer has changed his opinion on this matter, I have invariably maintained mine, founded as it is on the concurrent testimony of the best informed and most intelligent native African travellers, and I still assert, on the same foundation, the identity of the two Niles, and their continuity of waters.
I have further to remark what will most probably ere long prove correct; viz. that the Bahar Abiad [315], that is to say, the river that passes through the country of Negroes, between Senaar and Donga, is an erroneous appellation, originating in the general ignorance among European travellers of the African Arabic, and that the proper name of this river is Bahar Abeed, which is another term for the river called the Nile-el-Abeed, which passes south of Timbuctoo towards the east (called by Europeans the Niger).
It therefore appears to me, and I really think it must appear to every unbiassed investigator of African geography, that every iota of African discovery, made successively, by Hornemann [316], Burckhardt, and others, tends to confirm my water communication between Timbuctoo and Cairo, and the theorists and speculators in African geography, who have heaped hypothesis upon hypothesis, error upon error, who have raised splendid fabrics upon pillars of ice, will ere long close their book, and be compelled, by the force of truth and experience, to admit the fact stated about twelve years ago by me in my account of Marocco, &c. viz. that the Nile of Sudan and the Nile of Egypt are identified by a continuity of waters, and that a water communication is provided by these two great rivers from Timbuctoo to Cairo; and moreover, that the general African opinion, that the Neel-el-Abeed (Niger) discharges itself into the (Bahar el Mâleh) Salt Sea, signifies neither more nor less than that it discharges itself at the Delta in Egypt, into the Mediterranean Sea!
James Grey Jackson.
Footnote 315:[ (return) ] Bahar Abiad signifies White River; Bahar Abeed signifies River of Negroes.
Footnote 316:[ (return) ] Vide my letter in Monthly Magazine on this subject for March, 1817, p. 124.