ffirmative 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 diffe
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