Towards the end of January the waters of the river reached their highest level, exhibiting that marvellous anomaly, in comparison with the period of the rising of other African rivers north of the equator, which is calculated to awaken astonishment in any man acquainted with the subject. For when he knows that the rising of these rivers is due to the fall of the tropical rains, he will naturally expect that the Niger, like its eastern branch, the Tsádda or Bénuwé, or the Nile, should reach its highest level in August or September. The fact can only be partly explained with the means at our disposal, and in the present state of our knowledge of this part of Africa, although it is illustrated by similar cases, if we compare it with the anomalous rising of some South- African rivers; especially the grand discovery of Dr. Livingstone, the Liambézi, which, forming in its upper course an immense shallow sheet of water, collects here the greatest amount of water at a time (July and August) when its lower course, the Zambézi, separated from it and withdrawn from the immediate effects of the waters collected above by the marvellous narrowing of the river-bed from the Falls of Victoria[2] downwards, is in its lowest state, and, through the influence of the water by which it is joined in its lower course, reaches here its highest level at quite a different season, February and March. We have before us exactly the same phenomenon in the case of the Niger, the great West-African river, which, according to the most accurate information which I was able to gather on the spot, every year continues to rise till the end of December or the beginning of January, and does not begin to decrease before February; while its eastern branch, the Bénuwé, as well as the lower course of the Niger, where it is called Kwára, exactly as is the case with the Nile, reaches its highest level by the end of August and begins to decrease steadily in the course of October.