"Gir, notissimus amnis
Æthiopum, simili mentitus gurgite Nilum."
And again ("Eidyll. in Nilum," 20):
"Hunc bibit infrenis Garamas, domitorque ferarum
Girrhæus, qui vasta colit sub rupibus antra,
Qui ramos ebeni, qui denies vellit eburnos."
Here we find a Wady or torrent discharging into the Mediterranean, made equal to "Egypt's heaven-descended stream;" caused to flow under great rocks, as the Niger was long believed to pass underground to the Nile, of which it was a western branch; and said to supply ebony, which is the characteristic not even of the Niger regions, but of the Zaire.[14] A little of this peculiar and precious commodity is produced by Old Calabar, east of the Nigerian delta, and southwards it becomes common.
Pliny (v. i) places his Gir (which some editions read "Niger") "some distance" beyond the snowy Atlas. Ptolemy (iv. 6) tells us "in Mediterraneâ verò fluunt amnes maximi, nempe Gir conjungens Usargalam montem et vallem Garamanticam, à quo divertens amnis continet secundum situm (east longitude) 42° (north latitude)— 16°." Again: "Et Nigir fluvius jungens et ipse Mandrum" (Mandara, south of Lake Chad?) "et Thala montes" (the range near the western coast on the parallel of Cabo Blanco?). "Facit autem et hic Nigritem Paludem" (Lake Dibbie or Debu, north-east of Sego and Sansanding?) cujus situs 15°-18°."
Here the Gir, Ger, Gar, or Geir is clearly laid down as a Mediterranean stream, whilst "Niger" gave rise to the confusion of the Senegal with the true Niger. The name has greatly exercised commentators' ingenuity. D'Anville believes the Niger and the Gir to end in the same quarter of Africa, and the latter to be entirely unknown. Gosselin, agreeing with Pliny, whose Ger is the 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, Appendix 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 Algeria. Gräberg ("Morocco") had already identified it with the Ghir, which flows through Sagelmessa; Burckhardt with the Jir, "a large stream coming from about north latitude 10°, and flowing north- west through the Wadaí, west of the borders of Dar-Fur." No wonder that some geographers are disposed to believe Gir, Giris, Ger, and Geir to be "a general native name for a river, like Bá" (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 circumstances which gave rise to Captain Tuckey's disastrous 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 ainsi dire, de la vaste carrière que l'intérieur y laissait prendre" ("Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions," xxvi. 61), had not been subjected to scientific analysis; this was reserved for the Presidential Address to the Royal Geographical Society by the late Sir R. I. Murchison, 1852. Geographers did not see how to pass the Niger through the" Kong Mountains, which, uniting with the Jebel Komri, are supposed to run in one unbroken chain across the continent;" and these Lunar Mountains of the Moslems, which were "stretched like a chaplet of beads from east to west," undoubtedly express, as M. du Chaillu contends, a real feature, the double versant, probably a mere wave of ground between the great hydrographic basins of the Niger and the Congo, of North Africa and of Central Africa. Men still wasted their vigour upon the Nigritis Palus, the Chelonídes waters, the Mount Caphas, and the lakes of Wangara, variously written Vancara and Vongara, not to mention other ways. Maps place "Wangara"to the north-west of Dahome, where the natives utterly ignore the name. Dupuis ("Ashantee," 1824) suggests that, like "Takrúr," it is an obsolete Moslem term for the 660 miles of maritime region between Cape Lahu and the Rio Formoso or the Old Calabar River. This would include the three despotisms, Ashanti, Dahome, and Benin, with the tribes who, from a distance of twenty-five days, bring gold to Tinbuktu (the Tungubutu of De Barros, i. 220). Thus the lakes of Wangara would be the lagoons of the Slave-coast, in which the Niger may truly be said to lose itself.
At length M. Reichard, of Lobenstein ("Ephémerides Géographiques," Weimar, 1802), theoretically discovered the mouth of the Niger, by throwing it into the Bight of Benin. He was right in essentials and wrong in details; for instance, he supposed the Rio Formoso or Benin River and the Rio del Rey to join in one great stream beyond the flat alluvial delta: whereas the former is indirectly connected through the Wari with the Niger, and the latter has no connection with it at all. The truth was received with scant courtesy, and the hypothesis was pronounced to be "worthy of very little attention." There were, however, honourable exceptions. In 1813, the learned Malte-Brun ("Précis de la Géographie Universelle," vol. iv. 635) sanctioned the theory hinted at by Mungo Park, and in 1828 the well-abused Caillié, a Frenchman who had dared to excel Bruce and Mungo Park, wrote these remarkable words: "If I may be permitted to hazard an opinion as to the course of the River Dhioliba, I should say that it empties itself by several mouths into the Bight of Benin." In 1829, fortified by Clapperton's opinion, my late friend, James Macqueen, who to immense industry added many qualifications of a comparative geographer, recommended a careful examination of the estuaries between the Rio Formoso and Old Calabar. The question was not finally set at rest till 1830 (November 15th), when Richard and John Lander entered Yoruba viâ Badagry and, triumphantly descending the lower Niger, made the sea by the "Nun" and Brass embouchures.
Meanwhile, Mr. George Maxwell, a Scotchman who had long traded in the Congo, and who subsequently published a chart of the lower river proposed, at the end of the last century, to take from England six supernumerary boats for rowing and sailing, which could be carried by thirty people and portaged round the cataracts. This gave rise to Captain Tuckey's first error, depending upon labour and provisions, which were not to be had "for love or money" anywhere on the Congo above the Yellala. With thirty or forty black rowers, probably Cabinda men, Maxwell advised navigating the river about May, when the Cacimbo or dry season begins; and with arms, provisions, and merchandize he expected to reach the sources in six weeks. The scheme, which was rendered abortive by the continental war of 1793, had two remarkable results. It caused Mungo Park's fatal second journey, and it led to the twin expeditions of Tuckey and Peddie.
In July, 1804, the ardent and irrepressible Scot wrote from Prior's Lynn, near Longtown, to a friend, Mr. William Kier, of Milholm, that the river "Enzaddi" was frequented by Portuguese, who found the stream still as large as near the mouth, after ascending 600 miles. It is useful to observe how these distances are obtained. The slave-touters for the Liverpool and other dealers used, we are told, to march one month up country, and take two to return. Thirty days multiplied by twenty miles per diem give 600 miles. I need hardly point out that upon such a mission the buyer would be much more likely to travel 60 miles than 600 in a single month, and I believe that the natives of the lower river never went beyond Nsundi, or 215 indirect miles from Point Padrão.