it must be admitted, though undoubtedly if the Niger and the Congo had proved to be one, it could scarcely have been said to be too strong. Park had been converted to this view of the identity of the two great rivers by one George Maxwell, a West African trader, who had seen much of the Congo near its mouth, and had published a chart embodying the results of his observations. When closely examined, the arguments in its favour were of small value, and practically arose out of the fact that there was a large river with a southerly trend whose termination was unknown, while further south there was a second, the Congo, whose origin was equally a mystery. Prolong these in the necessary direction and the result is identity, and the mystery of both is settled. Meanwhile Major Rennell stuck to his view with all the pertinacity of the arm-chair geographer, and the man of one idea. For him the Niger ended in the desert wastes of Wangara and Ghana. Unfortunately for his theory the Major was unconsciously confounding two Wangaras separated from each other by fifteen hundred miles and more, and likewise the old Empire of Ghana on the middle course of the Niger with Kano at the eastern extremity of the Haussa States. A similar confusion also appears in Park’s memorandum, where he speaks of the continuation of the river after Nupé to Kashna (Katsina) and the kingdom of Wangara. Strange indeed it seems to us now that no geographer even at this time ever suggested that the outlet of the Niger might be in the Bight of Benin, among the numerous creeks that penetrate the low swampy mangrove ground which here subtends the Bight. Looking at the map, the suggestion seems to us to come naturally, yet Park had to carry the course of the river away south to the Congo; Rennell turned it west, and ended it where our maps are now occupied by Lake Chad, while there were not wanting others, like Jackson, who persisted in joining it to the Nile, “en abusant, pour ainsi dire, du vaste carrière que l’intérieur de l’Afrique y laissait prendre,” as D’Anville had said of earlier geographers. Whatever we may now think of Park’s theories as to the termination of the Niger, they did not appear in any way absurd in his own time. The wildest conjecture was permissible as regards a vast river flowing by an uncertain course through a continent still blank on our maps. Accordingly his memorandum was received favourably by Lord Camden, and the despatch of the expedition to carry out the traveller’s ideas was determined on. A liberal compensation was to be given to Park on his return, and it was also stipulated that in the event of his death, or of his not being heard of within a given period, a certain sum should be paid by Government as a provision for his wife and family.