SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY.
THE COURSE OF THE NIGER.
The discovery of the termination of the course of the Niger, will be of the greatest importance to geography, to our political power, and to civilization.
With regard to geography, perhaps the contradiction which was afforded by the various sources whence we derived our knowledge of the character of the interior of Africa, and of the course of, next to the Nile, the most renowned, and, as was considered from the same accounts, the greatest river of that country, have in late times given unlimited zest in the pursuit of further information, and has not in the least detracted from the pleasure with which we find that we are indebted to our countrymen for the solution of this all-absorbing problem. It appears, that among the ancients many facts connected with the geography of the interior of Africa were well known, which have still been an object of discussion among the moderns; and of these, we may enumerate the occurrence of a large lake or marsh (for it is either, at different seasons of the year), whose real existence, beyond the speculations of geographers, was very unsatisfactorily established, until the journey of Denham and Clapperton; and the fact of the occurrence of a great river in the west, emptying itself into the ocean, though many were of opinion that it lost itself in an inland marsh, or in the desert, while others supported the opinion of its identity with the Nile of the Egyptians. The researches of Ptolemy and the Arabian geographers on the Nile of the Negroes, and in later times the travels of Leo Africanus, who was a Moor of Grenada, demonstrated the absurdity of this opinion; and how extraordinary that, in the boasted perfection of human intellect, it should have been broached several centuries afterwards, and that the barometric levellings of Bruce should have been necessary to enforce conviction! It is not at all improbable that Hanno, the Carthaginian, as advanced by Macqueen, reached the Bight of Benin, or of Biafra; and certainly the geographical information obtained on these countries by Herodotus and Edrisi was more accurate than the speculations of many modern geographers.
Observation had demonstrated to the moderns that no large river emptied itself into the ocean on the north-west coast, though it required a more accurate acquaintance with the Senegal and the Gambia before it was fully ascertained that they were not the outlets of this great stream. The progress of navigation along the south-eastern shores of Africa also showed that no large river emptied itself into the sea along that coast; while the settlements of the Portuguese on the coast to the south of Cape Lopez, led them, at an early period, to adopt the opinion afterwards supported by Mungo Park and Mr. Barrow, that one or more of the rivers in their vicinity were the outlets of the great river of the interior of Africa. Two celebrated geographers, D'Anville and Major Rennell, however, espoused the theory of the waters emptying themselves into the Wangara, or great marsh; which argument underwent various modifications in the hands of different geographers; and though the probability of its emptying itself into the Gulf of Guinea had been pointed out on the continent, and vigorously supported in this country, an expedition was fitted out to explore the Congo or Zaire, which, though unfortunate to the individuals concerned, was yet satisfactory in a geographical point of view, and demonstrated that the rivers south of Cape Lopez were not the outlets of the waters of the Niger, and gave origin to a speculation which partook of all the characters of a romance of the desert, beneath the sands of which its author buried the gigantic stream, loaded with the waters of the Wangara or Lake Tchad, to make it flow into the Mediterranean at the Syrtis of the ancients.
In the history of geography there are no examples of greater perseverance and courageous determination than in the efforts made to triumph over the difficulties presented in the solution of this important question. Since 1815, there has scarcely a year passed in which a new attempt has not been made; and of these, if we recede a little farther back, twenty-five were made by our countrymen, fourteen by Frenchmen, two by Americans, and one by a German; of which but a small number, since the days of Houghton, have not fallen victims to their heroic devotion.
Mungo Park first observed the direction of the stream which had become as much an object of discussion as its termination; and, strange to say, after the present discovery, it will, in some parts of its course, still remain so. The unfortunate traveller just alluded to, previous to his descent of the river, obtained some information from Moors and from negroes, on its course by Timbuctoo. The Jinnie of Park is synonymous with Jenné, Giné, Dhjenné, of other writers, as Jenné has again been confounded with Kano or Kanno. It may be a figurative term—for the Jinnie of Park was on an island, as was the Jenné of the Moorish reports, while the Jenné of some travellers is at a short distance from the river. This cannot be the case with regard to Timbuctoo, which is visited by caravans twice a year from Morocco; nor is the name met with any where, except the two first syllables in the town of Timbo, which cannot be mistaken for Timbuctoo.
Major Laing had discovered the source of the Niger to be in the mountains of Loma, in 9 deg. 15 min. west latitude, and had ascertained its course for a short distance from its source. We were also aware of the existence of one or two streams joining the great river, or branching from it near Timbuctoo. De Lisle had marked a river Gambarra, on his maps drawn up for Louis XV., and not without good authority. This is the river coming from Houssa; and the Joliba of modern travellers is a river, we could prove, from the concurring testimony of a variety of sources, coming from the north-west, and joining its waters with, that is to say flowing into the Niger, in the immediate neighbourhood of Timbuctoo; still at that point the Kowarra, or Quorra of the Moors, or Quolla of the Negroes, who always change the r for l a name which, according to Laing, it has at its sources—according to Clapperton, it preserves beyond Timbuctoo, and is probably still the name of the same stream at its embouchure in the Bight of Biafra. The Quarrama is another tributary stream which passes by Saccatoo, and falls into the Quorra above Youri, and above the point where Mungo Park was wrecked; and the line of country between this river and the Shashum, comprising the hills of Doochee, of Naroo, and of Dull, is the line of water-shed to the rivers joining the Quorra on the one hand, and those emptying themselves into the Wangara on the other. The course given by Sultan Bello, and the information obtained by Major Denham, both pointed out a river coursing to the east, which is probably the branch followed by the Landers: for its termination in Lake Tchad had not even the air of probability; though it is not, on the other-hand, at all improbable that other branches empty themselves into the Bight of Benin, by the rivers Formosa or Volta, according to information given to Captain Clapperton and Major Laing.