Journal of a second expedition into the interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo : $b To which is added, the journal of Richard Lander from Kano to the sea-coast, partly by a more eastern route. — John Shaqi
Journal of a second expedition into the interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo : $b To which is added, the journal of Richard Lander from Kano to the sea-coast, partly by a more eastern route.Clapperton, Hugh
History
Journal of a second expedition into the interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo : $b To which is added, the journal of Richard Lander from Kano to the sea-coast, partly by a more eastern route.
Clapperton, Hugh
Sudan (Region) -- Description and travel
Various notices are given, in the Journal, of two objects of peculiar
interest, which are still left open for further investigation; the
course and termination of the river which has been (improperly, as
it now appears) called the Niger, and the recovery of the papers,
which still exist, of the late Mungo Park. The exact spot on which
he perished, and the manner of his death, are now ascertained with
precision. The former of these inquiries will now be considered,
perhaps, to have lost much of its original interest, by the deflection
which that river takes from its easterly into that of a southerly
course; and which, in point of fact and strict propriety, has destroyed
every pretension to its continuing the name of Niger. It cannot be
supposed that either Herodotus, or Ptolemy, or Pliny, or any Greek or
Roman writer whatever, could have had the slightest intimation of such
a river as this, so far to the westward and to the southward of the
Great Desert, of the crossing of which by any of the ancient travellers
there does not exist the slightest testimony. The name of Quorra, or
Cowarra, by which it is known universally in Soudan, and probably also
to the westward of Timbuctoo, ought now, therefore, to be adopted on
our charts of Africa.
With regard to its termination, the reports continue to be
contradictory, and the question is still open to conjecture. Its
direction, as far as has now been ascertained, points to the Bight of
Benin; but there is still a considerable distance, and a deep range
of granite mountains intervening, between the point to which with any
certainty it has been traced, and the sea-coast. If, however, it be
the fact, that the river of Benin has been traced as high up as is
marked on the chart (and it is taken from an old chart of the year
1753, stated to have been engraved for Postlethwayte’s Dictionary),
that distance, between the lowest ascertained point of the Quorra and
the highest of the Benin, is reduced to little more than a degree
of latitude, or about seventy miles; but it is seventy miles of a
mountainous country. By our occupation of the beautiful and fertile
island of Fernando Po, and the extension of African commerce which may
be anticipated in consequence thereof, there can be little doubt that
this question of their identity or otherwise will ere long be decided.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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