subject of dispute among geographers, who, though they seem to have agreed in considering the wonders we have mentioned as the burning of grass and shrubs, the nightly revels of the negroes natural in a warm climate, and the herds of the ourangoutang, differ as to its southern termination by a distance of fourteen hundred miles. M. Gosselin, in the 'Geographie des Anciens,' would limit the Lixus to the modern river Lucos, Cerne to the present Fidala, and Gorilla to the country around Cape Nun; while, according to Rennell, the river mentioned by Hanno is the Senegal, Cerne is the present island of Arguin, and the whole voyage reached a little beyond Sierra Leone.

Of the discoveries of the three succeeding centuries, we have no record; but about one hundred years after the Christian era, the "Periplus of the Erythrean Sea" points out the progress which had been made in exploring the eastern coast. This is traced regularly from the Red Sea, through the straits, to cape Aromata, the present Guardafui; thence southward, along the shores of Azania or Ajan, to the island of Erevediouμevoronoias. From this place, whose unpronounceable name it is impossible to recognise even in the extraordinary nomenclature of African or Arabian geography, two days' sail brought the navigator to Rhapta, a flourishing seaport, supposed by Dr. Vincent to be the modern Quiloa. Though the author of the Periplus made this the southern termination of the coast, and supposed it to run thence westward to the Atlantic, Marinus a Tyrian geographer, extends it southward to Prasum, probably the present cape Delgado.

In the second century, the geography of the ancient world was illustrated by the labours and research of the enlightened Ptolemy. He gives up the idea, which appears to have existed from the time of Herodotus, that the main stream of the Nile flowed from a great river running westward through central Africa, and fixes its origin in the Mountains of the Moon. He speaks of the Niger and Gir, two very large rivers (μɛy150 Oraua) which water the great region of Libya Interior, and has been supposed by these to mean the modern Niger, and some river in the kingdom of Bornou. This has indeed been doubted, and it has been asserted that Ptolemy was acquainted only with those streams which are north of the great sandy desert; it must be confessed that his descriptions are vague, and his knowledge of distances and positions very inaccurate, yet we are inclined to think, after weighing all circumstances, that it is most probable the rivers alluded to, were really those of central Africa, of which he had obtained information from the gold traders, and other merchants, who must have penetrated thither either from Egypt or Numidia; or from adventurers, as bold as the young

Nassamonians, who in all probability were found in the lapse of four or five centuries.

The knowledge or conjectures of Ptolemy satisfied his successors for five hundred years. The records of the lower empire contain no new information relative to Africa. In that long interval, indeed, insurrection and tyranny, from time to time, made its provinces the theatre of wars; an ambassador from the great Justinian sought a commercial alliance with the remote tribes along the Nile; the holy zeal of Christianity gave to the northern cities some of the most famous fathers of its church; and vestiges of the true faith, planted at that early age, are said to be still visible in the savage towns of Senaar and Dongola; yet at no period does the ardour of war, commerce, or religion, seem to have led the subjects of the empire beyond the fastnesses of Mount Atlas, and the wild tribes and barren deserts of Nubia, or to have extended the limits of geographical knowledge, beyond those known in the age of the Antonines.

In the seventh century, the victorious Amrou planted the standard of Mahomet on the borders of the Nile; and the vast valley of that river, which he viewed with wonder and delight, became, as far as Nubia, the seat of the conquerors, who soon introduced those modes of intercourse and traffic which had long been familiar in the extensive steppes and deserts of Asia. New routes into the interior were explored; caravans were established; the camel, which the Arab looked on as the peculiar gift of heaven to his race, was transported with him to a congenial climate; and the interior of Africa, losing by degrees the mysterious and savage character which had been so long attached to it, became the dwelling of many Moorish tribes, who introduced the religion of Mahomet, and substituted their own crafty commerce and treacherous depredations, for the pagan ignorance and barbarism they found there. Yet, after all, the stock of correet geographical information derived from this intercourse, has been less than might be supposed; few Arabians of much knowledge seem to have visited it, or at least to have recorded their observations; and we have chiefly to rely on the inaccurate accounts of travelling traders. From the writings of the Arabian geographers, however, who thus obtained their information, we are alone enabled to delineate the discoveries of seven hundred suceeeding years. These may be divided into two classes, facts and hypotheses. The former consist in the statements that there is a large river in central Africa, which they call the Nile of the Negroes, running from east to west; that it flows into the Atlantic ocean; that at its mouth is an island called Ulil or Oulili, from which great quantities of salt are obtained; that proceeding up it towards the east, we arrive in forty days at Gano, (Kano) on the northern bank, a large and famous city, where the king's

palace was adorned with glass windows, and works of sculpture and painting, and his throne ornamented by a piece of pure gold weighing thirty pounds; that eight days' journey east of Kano, is Wangara, an island three hundred miles in length, formed by branches of the Nile, which overflow it during the rainy season, depositing at those times large quantities of gold dust, which are afterwards collected by the people, and become the principal article of exchange with foreign traders; that passing this island or swamp, and still pursuing a course eastward up the river, we reach, in a journey of forty-five days from Kano, the city of Cauga, (Kouka) where the river widens into a large freshwater lake; that north of this, extended the kingdom of Koku, one of the most powerful and splendid in Africa, and which appears to be the modern empire of Bornou. In proceeding eastward from Kouka, the route towards Egypt seems to have left the banks of the river, and diverged towards the north-east, reaching the Nile at Dancala, (Dongola) in about sixty days. The Arabian geographers have evidently endeavoured to connect these facts, with the opinion long current, that this river and the Nile of Egypt were the same; but as this had been founded on the belief, that the former flowed in an easterly direction, they were obliged to do so by a new hypothesis-which was, that the Nile had its source considerably to the south in the • Mountains of the Moon, as, indeed, Ptolemy had asserted, and that then flowing northerly it reached a point in Abyssinia, where it separated, one stream continuing north, through Egypt, to the Mediterranean; the other flowing west, through the land of the Negroes, to the Atlantic. The facts and opinions we have thus noticed, are important, as showing the progress of informa-. tion; but it should be recollected that the former appear to be nothing more than scattered and uncertain memoranda obtained from merchants, and the latter are mere conjectures founded on them, and on systems previously formed.

The fifteenth century is marked by the most extraordinary discoveries which have ever occurred, those of the new world, and of a passage by sea to India. These were not the result of accidental information or visionary theories, but the reward of scientific enterprise. The latter, which was accomplished by the Portuguese, was necessarily preceded by an examination of the western coast of Africa, as far as the cape of Good Hope. To this they had been first led by their voyages to the cape de Verd islands, and prosecuting it, step by step, in 1471 they reached the line; in 1484, discovered and took posses. sion of the coasts of Guinea, Benin, and Congo; and in 1498 doubled the cape. Nor were their inquiries confined merely to the coast; they early began to cast their eyes towards the interior, or at least to secure to themselves a permanent footing

with the nations on whose shores they had settled. Taking advantage of an application for assistance, made to them by Bemoy, a prince of the Jalofs, a tribe inhabiting the southern bank of the Senegal, who complained of having been unjustly driven from his throne, they fitted out a large armament, baptized the fallen monarch, and with a large host of soldiers and priests, under the direction of Pero Vaz d'Acunha, landed on the shore of the river; there they erected a fort, and prepared to invade the rebellious kingdom. Bemoy, however, being slain, either by accident or design, before he left the fleet, the hostile march was given up, and alliances were formed with some of the most powerful princes; those particularly mentioned are the kings of Tongubutu, Mandi Mansa, and Foulahs, the former being probably the present Tombuctoo and Manding, and the latter, a tribe still known by the same name. The Portuguese certainly did not penetrate into these countries themselves; but the information they obtained in their intercourse with the natives is interesting. They were told that the Senegal was the outlet of the great river of central Africa, which derived its source in the lakes far to the east, and of course flowed in a westerly direc tion, thus confirming the opinions of the Arabian geographers; that its banks were fertile, and covered with populous countries and large cities, the most famous of which were Tombuctoo and Genná, (probably Kano;) and that the great sandy desert ex-' tended from the Atlantic to the Nile, bounded to the south by the river Senegal. Nor were these inquiries confined to the colonies north of the equator; those settled on the river Congo, or Zaire as it was called by the natives, pursued them with equal zeal. They converted the king of that country, with all his nobles, and a hundred thousand of his subjects, to Christianity, after the pious labours of a month; but as a faith so suddenly adopted sat rather lightly on the wearers, it was thrown off with prompt indignation, on an intimation of the missionaries that the monarch should dismiss all but one of his numerous wives. The narrative of Barros is filled with amusing accounts of the miracles which were, from time to time, wrought among this favoured people, and the various vicissitudes of success and failure, which attended the labours of the Portuguese, in the efforts to effect their two great objects, the establishment of the true faith, and the discovery of the kingdom of Prester John; in both, notwithstanding successive missions of priests and ambassadors, they unfortunately failed; so that referring our readers to the narratives themselves, for the interesting particulars, we shall merely note down what was learnt of the interior. This does not seem to be much, for it extended no farther than the information, that twenty moons, or seven hundred miles from the coast of Congo, was a very

large kingdom, whose prince was called the Ogané; that the kings of Benin were a sort of feudatories to him; and that on the death of any one of them, he confirmed the territory to his successor, by a staff or sceptre, a brazen helmet, and a brazen cross to be worn round his neck. The monarch was himself hid from sight behind a silk curtain, exhibiting only his foot. From the similarity of name, the Ogané has been supposed to be the king of Kano.

To the result, such as it is, of these discoveries of the Portuguese, which embrace the whole of the sixteenth century, we have to add the information, much more important, of another traveller in the same interval. It is indeed the first narrative on record, made by any European who had himself penetrated into central Africa. When the cruelty and impolicy of Ferdinand drove from Spain the best portion of his subjects, Leo, a celebrated philosopher of Granada, sought and found a refuge in the court of Fez; employed by his new sovereign as an ambassador, he visited many lands, and among others the remote regions of the same continent; and being at last captured by pirates and carried to Rome, he occupied the evening of his days, in recording his adventures. Blending, like Herodotus, what he had himself seen, with what he had only heard, the credit of his whole narrative was impaired, but, as in the case of the historian, posterity seems to have acknowledged, in some degree, the veracity of the former, while it has classed the latter with the many similar tales, that adorn the long history of African research. The points of information obtained from Leo, are principally the following:-that the Niger flowed from east to west, as he knew from having himself navigated it; that it was not united with the Nile of Egypt, but rose in a lake south of Bornou, whose position agrees with the the Cauga or Kouka of the Arabians; that Kano had lost its supremacy, and Tombuto (Tombuctoo) become the principal city, and capital of a kingdom of the same name; that at Kabra, a town on the Niger, a few miles from it, merchants sailed with their commodities westward to Guinea, a country extending along the Niger to the ocean; that Tombuctoo was large and rich; and that great quantities of gold were found in the mountains to the south.

The seventeenth century brought new adventurers into the field. The Portuguese extended their observations more into the interior; and the French and English, actuated by a spirit of. commercial enterprise, determined to penetrate those regions which the tradition of antiquity had represented as the seat of spontaneous wealth, and the more credible narrative of Leo had described as abounding in gold. Noticing the discoveries of these nations, during this century, in turn, we find the Portuguese 35

VOL. V.No. 10.