this improbable story; we know, at least, that there was a time, and not very distant, when our South Sea whalers carried on with the Spaniards of South America a contraband trade very much in the

same manner.

Thus also there is a wonderful similarity, we might almost say unanimity, among the natives of every part of Northern Africa with regard to the identity of the Niger and the Nile of Egypt. Having already detailed the information collected by Mr. Ritchie, which is in fact to the same effect as that of Captain Lyon, it is unnecessary to repeat it. It is summed up in the following paragraph:—

"The Nil, Goulbi, Joliba or Kattagum, runs from Tembuctoo, through Melli in the country of the Fellata; thence to Kebbi, which is three days north of Nooffy: past this place or country, it runs to Yaowri, which is seven days east; from thence to Fendah, a Fellāta country S.W. of Kashna, which latter kingdom it passes at thirteen days south of the capital. It again makes its appearance at Kattagum, four days W.S.W. of the capital of Bornou, where it runs into a lake, called the Tsaad. Beyond this lake, a large river runs through Baghermee, and is called the Gambarro and Kamadakoo; the word Nil being also used for the same stream. -Thus far are we able to trace the Nil, and all other accounts are merely conjectural. All agree, however, that, by one route or other, these waters join the great Nile of Egypt, to the southward of Dongola.'-p. 148.

If this be compared with the following paragraph of Horneman's letter, and the information which he received from an Egyptian traveller, that the river of Timbuctoo and the Bahr-el-Abiad are the same, it must, we think, be admitted, that these and other testimonies to the same effect, have a concurrence almost sufficient to establish a fact, which has nothing physically impossible in it, in the mind of the most incredulous. The river,' says Horneman, 'you call Niger, in Soudan, Gulbi or Gaora, in Burnu, Zad, is a very large river, into which fall more than twelve other rivers. It comes from Tombuctoo, as I am told, runs to the south of Houssa (or Soudan), in the empire of Burnu; here it takes a more northerly direction, and falls (at least I could not find a single man who said to the contrary) south of Darfour into the Nile.'

We have derived considerable amusement, if not instruction, from the brief but learned pamphlet of the Rev. John Dudley, Vicar of Humberstone and Sileby, the object of which is to prove the identity of the Niger and the Nile from ancient authorities. We feel the more disposed to notice this little work, independently of its intrinsic merits, on account of the laudable motive which is stated to have produced it, namely, the prevention of random expeditions, the saving of time and expense, and the preserving of many valuable lives. These, it must be owned, are no mean pretensions :

and,

and, to the author's own satisfaction at least, he has fully established what he proposes, by having shown, as he thinks he has done, that every ancient writer, from Homer downwards, whether poet, historian, or geographer, is in favour of the identity of these two rivers. As fellow and sometime tutor of Clare Hall,' Mr. Dudley is undoubtedly entitled to be considered as an able and accomplished scholar; but it appears to us, that he is better versed in ancient literature, than in modern geography, or the knowledge of men and things. It would lead to a discussion in which our limits forbid us to engage, were we to examine his arguments and authorities at length; and we shall, therefore, as a specimen of the mode in which he arrives at the proof of identity, content ourselves with selecting that which is deduced from the Argonautics of Apollonius of Rhodes: and we take this part of his case in preference, as being more laboured than the rest, and considered, we have no doubt, as our author's strongest ground. We must protest, however, in the outset, against the doctrine that it is a question of little moment, whether that voyage was an enterprize really performed, and historically true; or, whether it was a mythos or fable.' Surely, where geographical positions are to be fixed, and their accuracy established or disproved, an actual voyage performed is preferable to the mere fancy of the poet. If, indeed, it were true, what, however, we most strenuously deny, that experience has been found to confirm the accuracy of the statements concerning the seas over which the Argonauts are said to have sailed, the islands on which they landed, the shores along which they coasted, the promontories at which they touched, and the ports and rivers into which they entered;'-if this, we say, were the fact, we might, perhaps, concede a little to Mr. Dudley's position; but the contrary is notoriously the case. Among other difficulties arising out of the absurdities of the fable, we could wish he had explained how the Argo got out of the Euxine; because all the ancient writers on the subject (and they are not a few) give a different account of this exploit, each more improbable than the other: but, according to all, the ship must have travelled over land some hundreds, or even thousands of miles, to regain the Mediterranean; some sending her to the Baltic, some to the Indian Ocean, others again to the Atlantic, and others to the Adriatic. Mr. Dudley, however, though silent on this part of the voyage, finds no difficulty in reconciling to himself a second land-navigation which he does notice: for, having brought the Argo safely to the northern coast of Africa, we beg pardon, not safely, for she was stranded on the shallows and quicksands of the greater Syrtis,-her intrepid navigators, unable to extricate themselves from the difficulties of their situation, by regaining the sea, hoisted the ship on their shoulders,

and,

and, after a journey of twelve days, reached the lake Tritonis, situate in Lybia, in central Africa; and having launched her once more, they sailed down a stream which led them into the Mediterranean sea, through one of the mouths of the Egyptian Nile! so says the poet; and so Mr. Dudley undertakes to prove.

6

The first great point to be settled is the position of this lake Tritonis; and in doing this, a variety of ancient testimonies is referred to; and after some ingenious conjectures and comparisons with modern authorities, it is finally decided to be no other than Wangara (of which, by the way, neither Burckhardt, nor Ritchie, nor Lyon, could learn any thing decisive).* The whole argument, however, turns upon Tritonis being Wangara, and Wangara the Nou, and Nou the sea of Soudan. Adopting this exposition,' says our learned author, 'the Argonauts lifted the vessel from the sands of Syrtis, and with effort more than human, but such as was usually believed to be easy to heroes, they bore it on their shoulders, for twelve days and nights without a rest, across the Sahara, or Great Desert, which being in most places about eight hundred miles broad, they must have travelled at the rate of about seventy-two miles in each solar day, a space nearly quadruple of a day's journey in the present day:' much more, we say; for as Bornou or Birnie, situate on the north side of the lake, is in lat. 16°, and the bottom of the Syrtis is 31°, these heroes must have travelled, with the ship on their shoulders, at the rate nearly of ninety miles a day; as the one however is just as probable as the other, we shall not dispute the point of a few miles more or less. Be this as it may, they reached the Bahr-el-Soudan, and launched the Argo on it. Here, it seems, some difficulty occurred in finding their way through the numerous shallows of the lake; but guided by the darkness and tranquillity of the deep channels, and by that good fortune which always attends heroes and demigods, they at length succeeded in reaching the Nile of Egypt, by taking advantage of 'the first rush of the water from the lake, when the inundation of the Niger approached towards its greatest height.'

Though the aid of an inundation was not necessary for heroes to get over the swamps and shallows, yet, as Pliny has asserted that part of the waters of the Nile (which part is assumed to be the Niger) arrive at Egypt by subterraneous currents, it might have been inconvenient, even for heroes, to navigate the Argo, as Sinbad did his boat, under ground, and hence the rush of Wangara is a place of which we cannot obtain any decided account. One person states it to be twenty days to the southward of Timbuctoo; another places it south of Kashna; and many even assert that it is beyond Waday but it is quite impossible, from the various accounts given of it, to form any idea of its actual situation, or even existence.'-Lyon, p. 148.

:

waters.

waters. But this inundation of the Niger answers another and a very important purpose. The grasses and aquatic plants, on the retreat of the waters, will clothe the greater part of the country with a most abundant vegetable harvest;' and this harvest being again immersed in water on the return of the rains, in such a state and in such a climate, must quickly become putrescent, and thereby render the waters of the lake one vast flood of inky fluid. This vast flood, which is calculated to spread over an extent of 70,000 square miles, flowing onwards, gives to the Nile of Egypt that remarkable blue blackness, which has affixed in all ages names of such an import to both the river and the country over which the inundation flows.' If we admit this ingenious explanation, we have at once a satisfactory solution of a difficulty which the Argonauts unexpectedly encountered, (and which, we confess, has often staggered us,) after being fairly afloat on the lake of Tritonis-their unaccountable distress for want of water.

They sought a fountain, for fell thirst enhanced

Their miseries and pains.'

It might, indeed, have occurred to us, had we been aware of the fact, that heroes and personages half divine' could not make use of such foul potations' as the inky fluid' of the lake; they were accordingly relieved by the benevolence of the nymphs Hesperides, whose sacred abodes, or gardens, appear to have been not far distant from the borders of the lake.' This position of the celebrated gardens of these nymphs amidst the swamps of Wangara, to find which had puzzled so many authors and commentators, ancient and modern, seems quite a new discovery, the merit of which, we believe, is entirely due to Mr. Dudley. The feculent matter, engendered by the decayed vegetables of the Wangara, and carried down the Niger, offers likewise, in Mr. Dudley's mind, a satisfactory explanation of the black sediment deposited by the inundations of the Nile. We pass over the 'decisive argument' in proof of this, which Mr. Dudley draws from a chemical analysis of the slime of the Nile, because we would not be thought to speak slightly of his logical deductions; which, however, amount precisely to this-that,

The black mud of the Nile contains clay and silex:

But clay and silex are found in the plants of Wangara; Therefore, the black mud of the Nile is composed of the plants of Wangara.

And, by the same process of ratiocination, we cannot see why the Himalaya mountains and the Andes may not be proved to be composed of the plants of Wangara. This argument, however, 'most decisive' as it may appear to our author, will carry him but

a very little way; for, by his own showing, or Pliny's, the inky fluid,' penetrating through the sands, would necessarily leave the black feculæ behind, and, thus filtered, the water would join the Nile as clear as crystal.

We looked with some degree of anxiety for the spot where these waters of the Niger, whether black or white, were to form their junction with the Nile; but we looked in vain. Bruce, it seems, found but very little sediment at Sennaar; and not much more at the junction of the Nile and Astabaras, where the water was whiter, and the greatest part of the sediment, sand; at Syené, however, where the Nile enters Egypt, the sediment was amazingly increased; but unluckily, only a trifling part of it was black, the rest being sand. Hence it follows that the junction must be below the Astabaras; and in this case, it is somewhat singular, that neither Poncet nor Bruce, nor Burckhardt, nor Brown, nor Bankes, Belmore, Belzoni and a host of travellers, some of whom traversed both banks, and others of whom navigated the river, should have discovered this rush of waters,' which would hardly have escaped such scrutinizing eyes, even if not more remarkable than the junction of Fleet-ditch with the Thames.

But though Mr. Dudley does not inform us where it is that the Niger joins the Nile, he tells us where it does not, namely, by the chaunel of the Bahr-el-Abiad; and this for two reasons-first, 'because the details of Pliny strongly contradict it, and render somewhat improbable the idea of the Niger approaching the Nile in a' sluggish stream;' and secondly, because it seems almost impossible that a river uniformly designated by names implying blackness, should, for a short part of its course, be called white?' these are deemed so conclusive by Mr. Dudley, that he thinks they may incline the Inquirer' (referring to the Quarterly Review) to reject the opinion that the Niger and Nile may be the White River.'

'better ap

With every possible respect for Mr. Dudley's course of reading, and willing to accord with him, that there can be no plication of learning, than that whereby the experience of past ages is rendered subservient to purposes of useful knowledge,' we cannot bring ourselves to reject the universal testimony in favour of a fact, on which, however, we have not declared any opinion:though we feel no hesitation in stating that an overweening confidence in the vague statements of ancient authors, and an overstraining of those statements to answer particular purposes, have betrayed our learned author into strange and inconsistent conclusions. We give him full credit for the benevolent intentions which he manifests, of saving the valuable lives of many Europeans,' and of 'preventing only one injudicious expedition;' but we cannot flatter

VOL. XXV. NO. XLIX.

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