On the return of the Landers, the question was mooted by the Geographical Society of London, whether the Quorra or Niger, as discovered by Lander, was the same river as the Kigir of the ancients. Upon the whole subject it would have been sufficient to refer to D'Anville and Rennell, who favour the affirmative of the question, and on the opposite side to M. Wakkenaer, who of all later writers has examined it with the greatest diligence, had not recent discoveries furnished us with better grounds for forming a conclusive opinion, than even the latest of these authors possessed.
Maritime surveys have now completed a correct outline of Northern Africa. Major Laing, by ascertaining the source of the Quorra to be not more than sixteen hundred feet above the sea, proved that it could not flow to the Nile. Denham and Clapperton demonstrated that it did not discharge itself into the Lake of Bornou, and at length its real termination in a delta, at the head of the great gulf of the western coast of Africa, has rewarded the enlightened perseverance of the British government, and the courage and enterprise of its servants. The value to science of this discovery, and the great merit of those, whose successive exertions have prepared and completed it, is the more striking, when we consider that the hydrography of an unknown country is the most important step to a correct knowledge of its geography, and that in barbarous Africa, nothing short of the ocular inquiries of educated men, is sufficient to procure the requisite facts, and yet it is not a little extraordinary, that the termination of the Quorra or Niger has been discovered by two men, who, in point of scientific knowledge, education, or literary acquirements, stand the lowest in the scale of the African travellers. It is, however, curious to observe how even the best collectors of oral information in that country, have failed in arriving at the truth, as to the origin, cause, and termination of the rivers. Edrisi, Abulfida, Leo Africanus,[Footnote] Delile, and Bruce, all come to the determination that the Quorra flowed from east to west. Burckhardt, whose oral inquiries on Bornou, have proved generally correct, concluded that the Shary flowed from N.E. to S.W., and Lyon, though particularly successful in his information on the countries not visited by him, was induced to confound the Shary of Bornou with the Tchadda or Yen, and like Sultan Bello, to carry the Quorra, after passing Youri and Funda, into the Lake Tchadda, and thence into Egypt. The most intelligent natives are confused, when questioned on the subject of rivers, while the majority, unable to understand the object or utility of such enquiries, can neither inform the traveller whether two streams are different rivers or part of the same; where any river rises, or whither it flows, and appear often to believe that all the lakes and streams of Africa, are parts of one and the same water. It is not surprising, therefore, that ancients as well as moderns have obtained the knowledge of a large river flowing to the east, should have supposed that it was a branch of the Nile of Egypt, or that when the existence of a great lake, in the direction of the known portion of its stream, became known, the opinion should have followed, that the river terminated in that lake, or that it was discharged through the lake into the Nile. Such, consequently have been the prevalent notions in all ages, even amongst the most intelligent foreigners, as well as the higher class of natives, from Herodotus, Etearchus, and Juba, to Ibn, Batuta, and Bello of Soccatoo.
[Footnote: It is supposed by W. Martin Leake, Esq. Vice President of the Geographical Society, that Leo Africanus actually reached Timbuctoo. The narrative of Adams places the matter at rest, that Leo never did reach that famous city. Mr. Leake says, that Leo was very young at the time, and, therefore that his memory probably failed him, when he came to describe the city, which was many years after his return.]
Considering these circumstances, it will hardly be contended that the late discovery of the Landers, has made any alteration in the nature of the question, as to the identity of the Quorra and Nigir; the sudden bend of the river to the southward, through a country, which has been equally unknown to the ancients and moderns, having always left the best informed of them in ignorance of any part of the river, except that of which the course was northerly or easterly. If then, there be sufficient reason for the belief, that these latter portions were known to the, ancients, we have only to suppose them to have had some such imperfect knowledge of the interior of North Africa, as we ourselves had attained previously to the expedition of Denham and Clapperton, to justify the application of the name Nigir to the whole course of the river. Although we find Ptolemy to be misinformed on several points concerning central Africa, yet there still remains enough in his Data, on Interior Libya and Northern Ethiopia, to show a real geographical approximation, very distant indeed from the accuracy at which science is always aiming, but quite sufficient to resolve the question as to the identity of the Nigir, in which an approximation is all that can be expected or required. Having been totally ignorant of the countries through which that river flows in a southerly direction, Ptolemy naturally mistook it for a river of the interior; he knew the middle Ethiopia to be a country watered by lakes, formed by streams rising in mountains to the southward; he was superior to the vulgar error of supposing that all the waters to the westward of the Nile flowed into that river, and he knew consequently that the rivers and lakes in the middle region, had no communication with the sea. It is but lately that we ourselves have arrived at a certainty on this important fact. We now know enough of the level of the Lake Tchad, to be assured that no water from that recipient can possibly reach the Nile. This wonderful river, of which the lowest branch is 1200 geographical miles from the Mediterranean, (measuring the distance along its course, in broken lines of 100 G.M. direct,) has no tributary from the westward below the Bahr Adda of Browne, which is more than 1600 miles from the sea, similarly measured. It is scarcely possible, therefore, that the latter point can be less, taking the cataracts into consideration than 1500 feet above the sea, whereas the following considerations lead to the belief that the Tchadda is not more than 500 feet in height.
We learn from the information of Clapperton, confirmed and amplified by that of Lander, that there exists a ridge, which about Kano and Kashna, extends forth the Yeu to the Lake Tchadda on one side, and on the other the river of Soccatoo, which joins the Quorra at a distance from the sea of about 500 miles, measured in the manner above mentioned. A similar process of measurement gives a length of 1700 miles to the whole course of the Quorra, the sources of which, according to Major Laing, are about 1600 feet above the sea; the stream, therefore, has an average fall of something less than a foot in a mile in lines of 100 geographical miles. This would give to the confluence of the river of Soccatoo with the Quorra, a height of less than 500 feet above the sea, but as that confluence occurs above the most rapid part of the main stream, 500 feet seem to be very nearly the height.
As a knowledge of the origin and course of rivers, conducts in every country to that of the relative altitude and directions of its highlands, the late discoveries on the waters of Africa have thrown great light on its orography. The sources of the largest, or rather longest of its rivers, namely, the white or true Nile, now appears to be in a point nearly equidistant from the Indian and Atlantic Oceans in one direction, and from the Mediterranean and the Cape of Good Hope on the other. These central summits, it is fair to suppose, are at least as high as the snowy peak Samen, in Abyssinia, which is the culminating point towards the sources of the minor branch or Blue Nile, and that they are covered, therefore, with perpetual snow. From hence flow the White Nile, the Djyr, the Bahr Culla, the Congo, and several rivers of the coast of Zanguebar.
As a part of these great African Alps was described to Denham as lying beyond the mountain of Mendefy, the latter would seem to be an advanced northerly summit of them. The range is probably united to the eastward with the mountains of Abyssinia, and to the westward, terminates abruptly in some lofty peaks on the eastern side of the delta of the Quorra, but not till after it has sent forth a lower prolongation, which crosses the course of the Quorra nearly at right angles, and terminates at the end of 1500 miles, at the sources of the Quorra, Gambia, and Senegal. A minor counterfort advances from the central range to the northwestward, commencing about the Peak of Mendefy, and vanishing at the end of about 900 miles in the desert of the Tuaricks. It gives rise to the two Sharys, which flow in opposite directions to the Quorra and the Lake Tchadda, and further north to the streams which flow to the same two recipients from about Kano and Kashna.
Though the knowledge of interior Africa now possessed by the civilized world, is the progressive acquisition of many enterprising men, to all of whom we are profoundly indebted, it cannot be denied that the last great discovery has done more than any other to place the great outline of African geography on a basis of certainty. When to this is added the consideration that it opens a maritime communication into the centre of the continent, it may be described as the greatest geographical discovery that has been made since that of New Holland. Thrice during the last thirty years, it has been on the eve of accomplishment; first when Horneman had arrived from Fezzan and Nyfflé, secondly when Park had navigated the Quorra as far as Boussa, and lastly when Tuckey, supplied with all possible means For prosecuting researches by water, was unfortunately expedited to The Congo, instead of being sent to explore the mouths of the Niger.
CHAPTER XLIII.
A maritime communication with the interior of Africa having been now opened, by the discovery of the termination of the Niger in the Bight of Benin, it was considered, that some great commercial advantages might be derived by fitting out an expedition on a large scale, and as Lander on his return home had reported, that the Niger was navigable for vessels of a light burden for a considerable distance into the country, it was resolved to fit out two steam vessels, well armed and amply supplied with all stores both in a commercial point of view, and for attack and defence when arriving amongst the natives in the interior. It was an enterprise every way worthy of the British character, and one likely to be productive of future consequences, the importance of which it would be difficult to overrate either in a commercial or in a moral and political point of view. Sir John Tobin of Liverpool was one of its great promoters, and the immediate object of the expedition was to ascend the Niger, to establish a trade with the natives, and to enlarge our geographical knowledge of the country. When we look at the dense population of Africa described in the preceding parts of this work, it is obvious that in them might be found an extensive market for the manufactured goods and wares of England; for the cottons of Manchester, Glasgow, &c., and for many other products of our skill and industry. In return for these, the rich commodities of gold, ivory, hippopotami teeth, and the more common articles of wood, peltry, gums, &c. &c. may be imported, and if encouragement be given, indigo and other valuable things would be largely cultivated to barter with Europe. And still nobler aims were before us, the ending of the traffic in human beings, and the gradual illumination and civilization of Africa.