those stupendous rivers of the new world. But it appears at
least as great as any of those which water the old continents. There
can rank with it only the Nile, and the Yangtse-kiang, or Great
River of China. But the upper course of neither is yet very fully
ascertained; and the Nile can compete only in length of course, not in
the magnitude of its stream, or the fertility of the regions which it
waters. There is one feature in which the Niger may defy competition
from any river, either of the old or new world. This is in the
grandeur of its Delta. Along the whole coast, from the river of
Formosa or Benin to that of Old Calabar, about 300 miles in length,
there open into the Atlantic its successive estuaries, which
navigators have scarcely been able to number. Taking this coast as
the base of the triangle or Delta, and its vertex at Kirree, about 170
miles inland, where the Formosa branch separates, we have a space of
upwards of 25,000 square miles, equal to the half of England. Had
this Delta, like that of the Nile, been subject only to temporary
inundations, leaving behind a layer of fertilizing slime, it would
have formed the most fruitful region on earth, and might have been
almost the granary of a continent. But, unfortunately, the Niger rolls
down its waters in such excessive abundance, as to convert the whole
into a huge and dreary swamp, covered with dense forests of mangrove,
and other trees of spreading and luxuriant foliage. The equatorial
sun, with its fiercest rays, cannot penetrate these dark recesses; it
only exhales from them pestilential vapours, which render this coast
the theatre of more fatal epidemic diseases than any other, even of
Western Africa. That human industry will one day level these forests,
drain these swamps, and cover this soil with luxuriant harvests, we
may confidently anticipate; but many ages must probably elapse before
man, in Africa, can achieve such a victory over nature.

The Niger, besides its own ample stream, has a number of tributaries,
equal perhaps in magnitude and importance to those of any other
river on the globe; with the exception of the united streams of the
Mississippi and Missouri. At no great distance above the point where
the Delta commences, the Tshadda, nearly equal in magnitude to itself,
enters it; after watering large and fruitful kingdoms, of which the
names only, and of these but a very few, have reached us. On this
river an extensive commerce and active