He spent nearly three, years in Syria: his most important geographical discoveries in this country relate to the nature of the district between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Elana; the extent, conformation, and detailed topography of the Haouran; the situation of Apanea on the river Orontes, which was one of the most important cities of Syria under the Macedonian Greeks; the site of Petreea; and the general structure of the peninsula of Mount Sinai. Perhaps the most original and important of these illustrations of ancient geography is that which relates to the Elanitic Gulph: its extent and form were previously so little known, that it was either entirely omitted, or very erroneously laid down in maps. From what he observed here, there is good reason to believe that the Jordan once discharged itself into the Red Sea; thus confirming the truth of that convulsion mentioned and described in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, which interrupted the coarse of this river; converted the plain in which Sodom and Gomorrah stood into a lake, and changed the valley to the southward of this district into a sandy desert.
But Mr. Burckhardt, considering all these excursions, and their consequent numerous and important accessions to geographical knowledge, as only preludes to the grand expedition for which he had expressly come to the East, still looked forward to the interior of Africa. This, however, he was not destined to reach; for while at Cairo, waiting for a caravan, which was to proceed by Mourzouck,--a. route which he had long decided on as the most likely to answer his purpose,--he was suddenly seized with a dysentery, on the 5th of October, 1817, and died on the 15th.
Travellers in. Egypt and Nubia have been numerous since the time of Mr. Burckhardt; but as they chiefly directed their investigations and inquiries to the antiquities of the country, they do not come within our proper notice; we shall therefore merely mention the names of Belzoni, (whose antiquarian discoveries have been so numerous and splendid,) Mr. Salt, Mr. Bankes, &c. To this latter gentleman, however, geography is also indebted for important additions to its limits; or, rather, for having illustrated ancient geography. He penetrated, as we have already mentioned, as far as the second cataract: he visited some of the most celebrated scenes in Arabia, and made an excursion to Waadi Mooza, or the Valley of Moses. He also visited Carrac; but the most important discovery of this gentleman relates to the site of the ancient Petraea, which was also visited by Burckhardt. Onr readers will recollect that this city has been particularly noticed in our digression on the early commerce of the Arabians, as the common centre for the caravans in all ages; and that we traced its ancient history as far down as there were any notices of it. Its ruins Mr. Bankes discovered in those of Waadi Mooza, a village in the valley of the same name.
Since Mr. Burckhardt travelled, geographical discoveries have been made in this part of the world by Messrs. Ritchie and Lyon, Lord Belmore and Dr. Richardson, Messrs. Waddington and Hanbury, Messrs. Caillaud and Drovetti, Sir Archibald Edmonstone, Sir Frederick Henniker, and by an American of the name of English. The travels of Messrs. Ritchie and Lyon were confined to Fezzan, and are chiefly curious for the notices they give, derived from native merchants, of the course of the Niger, By means of the travels of Lord Belmore and Dr. Richardson, the latitudes and longitudes on the Nile have been corrected from Assouan to the confines of Dongola. Mr. Waddington and Mr. Hanbury, taking advantage of an expedition sent into Ethiopia by the pacha of Egypt, examined this river four hundred miles beyond the place to which Burckhardt advanced. The travels of the two French gentlemen extended to the Oasis of Thebes and Dakel, and the deserts situated to the east and west of the Thebaid. In the Thebaic Oasis some very interesting remains of antiquity were discovered: the great Oasis was well known to the ancients; but the Thebaic Oasis has seldom been visited in modern times. Brown and Poncet passed through its longest extent, but did not see the ruins observed by Mr. Caillaud.
This gentleman, who was employed by the pacha to search for gold, silver, and precious stones, after a residence of five months at Sennaar, traversed the province of Fazocle, and followed the Arrek, till it entered the kingdom of Bertot. At a place called Singue, in the kingdom of Dar-foke, which is the southern boundary of Bertot, situated on the tenth parallel of latitude, and five days' journey to the westward of the confines of Abyssinia, the conquests of Ishmaei Pacha terminated. Only short notices of these travels of Mr. Caillaud have as yet been published.
Sir A. Edmonstone's first intention was to visit the Thebaic Oasis; but understanding from Mr. Belzoni that Mr. Caillaud had already been there, but that there was another Oasis to the westward, which had never been visited by any European, he resolved to proceed thither. This Oasis was also visited by Drovetti much about I he same time: he calls it the Oasis of Dakel. It seems to have escaped the notice of all the ancient authors examined by Sir Archibald, except Olympiodorus. Speaking of the Thebaic Oasis, he mentions an interior and extensive one, lying opposite to the other, one hundred miles apart, which corresponds with the actual distance between them.
The American traveller accompanied the expedition of the pacha of Egypt as far as Sennaar. He commences the account of his voyage up the Nile at the second cataract; and as far as the pyramids of Meroe, where the voyage of Messrs. Waddington and Hanbury terminated, his accounts correspond with what they give. He did not, however, follow the great bend of the river above Dongola: this he describes as 250 miles long, and full of rocks and rapid. He again reached the Nile, having crossed the peninsula in a direct line, at Shendi. Near this place he discovered the remains of a city, temples, and fifty-four pyramids, which are supposed, by a writer in the Quarterly Review, to be the ruins of the celebrated Meroc, as their position agrees with that assigned them by a draughtsman employed by Mr. Bankes. The army halted on the western bank of the Nile, opposite Halfaia: about five hours' march above this place the Bahr el Abiad, or White River, flows into the Bahr el Azreck, or Nile of Bruce. In thirteen days from the junction of these two rivers, the army, marching along the left, or western branch of the Azreck, reached Sennaar.
In the year 1817, Delia Cella, an Italian physician, accompanied the army of the bashaw of Tripoli as far as Bomba, on the route towards Egypt, and near the frontiers of that country. He had thus an opportunity "of visiting one of the oldest and most celebrated of the Greek colonies, established upwards of seven hundred years before the birth of Christ; and in being the first European to follow the footsteps of Cato round the shores of the Syrtis, and to explore a region untrodden by Christian foot since the expulsion of the Romans, the Huns, and the Vandals, by the enterprising disciples of Mahomet." In this journey he necessarily passed the present boundary between Tripoli and Bengaze, the same which was anciently the boundary between Carthage and Cyrene; and our author confirms the account of Sallust, that neither river nor mountain marks the confines. He also confirms the description given by Herodotus of the dreadful storms of sand that frequently arise and overwhelm the caravans in this part of the Syrtis. At the head of the Syrtis the ground is depressed, and this depression, our author supposes, continues to the Great Desert. Soon after he left this barren country, he entered Cyrenaica, the site of Cyrene: that most ancient and celebrated colony of the Greeks was easily ascertained by its magnificent ruins. From Cyrene the army marched to Derna, and from this to the gulf of Bomba, an extensive arm of the sea, where the expedition terminated.
Such are the most recent discoveries in this portion of Africa.
The settlement of the Cape of Good Hope, originally established by the Dutch, and at present in possession of the English, was naturally the point from which European travellers set out to explore the southern parts of Africa. Their progress hitherto has not been great, though, as far as they have advanced, the information they have acquired of the face of the country, its productions, the tribes which inhabit it, and their habits, manners, &c. may be regarded as full and accurate. The principal travellers who have visited this part of Africa, and from whose travels the best information may be obtained of the settlement of the Cape, and of the country to the north of it for about 900 miles, are Kolbein, Sparman, Le Vaillant, Barrow, Lichtenstein, La Trobe, Campbell, and Burcheli. To the geography of the east coast of Africa, and of the adjacent districts, little or no addition has been made for a very considerable length of time.