be expected when its principles and practice are well understood. To those who wish to investigate this branch of legislation and the facts on which it should be founded, it is not necessary to mention the works of Beccaria and Howard; they may be found in every library; but to these we would add the following, as containing much valuable matter: Eden's Principles of penal law, 1 vol. 8vo. 2d edit. in 1771 : Dagge's criminal law, 3 vols. 8vo. 2d edit. in 1774: sir G. O. Paul on the construction and regulation of prisons, 2 vols. Svo. 1818 the opinions of different authors on the punishment of death, selected by Basil Montague, 3 vols. in 1813: which will be found a particularly interesting and valuable book: Roscoe's Thoughts on penal jurisprudence in 1818: and An inquiry into the system of Prison discipline, by T. F. Buxton, in 1818. ART. XXII.-A Geographical and Commercial View of Northern Central Africa; containing a particular account of the course and termination of the great river Niger in the Atlantic ocean. By James M'Queen. Edinburgh. Syo. 1821. pp. 288. THE author of this work has collected a mass of information upon the geography of Nothern Africa not only from all the authors who have written on the subject, beginning with Herodotus and ending with Bowditch's mission to Ashantee, but from conversation with negroes, negro traders, and travellers. Of the greater part of this detail, which may be interesting enough to those who are curious in inquiries of this sort, we do not propose to take any particular notice. Much of it appears to be derived from sources of doubtful authority, and care is not taken to distinguish facts which may be considered as settled on competent authority, from those which depend upon questionable testimony, or are assumed upon conjecture. One of the principal objects of the author is to establish the course and termination of the Niger. His hypothesis, if indeed it is not to be considered, as he regards it, an established fact, is that this river, after flowing in an easterly course a few degrees beyond the longitude of Tombuctoo, takes a turn towards th by severa This is in the E year 1808 Géograph Reichard, after pass ing from surround named ri west, until Guinea, w the river E del-Rey.' makes a v of Maj. R the Missel dissipated ceeds to s Edresi say gara the w has the fig coming fro Ghana; th forming a towards the This at lea correct, an navigable ri which is ha tent, witho tain the wa Aral; but t rivers which gou, and Fo large and ne and are disc communicati plained. H general dired Misselad, and towards the south, and discharges itself into the gulf of Guinea by several mouths at the Bights of Benin and Biafra. 6 This is no new hypothesis. It was maintained by Reichard in the Ephémérides Géographiques de Weimar as early as the year 1808, and appears to be adopted by Malte-Brun, in his Géographie Universelle. At the west of Wangara,' says Reichard, the Niger flows to the south; and the Misselad, after passing the lake Fittree, and that of Semegonda, in flowing from the latter divides into two principal branches, which surround the Wangara, and fall into the Niger. This last named river afterwards continues to flow towards the southwest, until it discharges itself into the corner of the gulf of Guinea, where it forms a delta, the western branch of which is the river Benin or Formosa, and the eastern branch the Riodel-Rey.' In support of this opinion, Mr Reichard first makes a variety of calculations to show that the supposition of Maj. Rennel, that the waters of the Niger, the El Gazel, the Misselad, and the other rivers that water the Wangara, are dissipated by evaporation, is physically impossible. He proceeds to support this opinion by the following arguments. Edresi says that the Nile of the Negroes surrounds the Wangara the whole year. It is on his testimony that this country has the figure that is given to it on the maps. The Niger coming from the west is divided into two branches above Ghana; the northern flows directly to the east; the southern, forming a curve, equal to the extent of the Wangara, returns towards the north; and both flow into the lake Semegonda. This at least is what must be supposed. But is this result correct, and according to the nature of things? How can a navigable river, one or two English miles wide, fall into a lake which is hardly twenty or five and twenty miles square in extent, without making it overflow? There should be, to contain the waters of the Niger alone, a lake of the size of the Aral; but the lake of Semegonda receives besides, all the rivers which come from Bournou, from Kagou, Begarme, Bergou, and Four, and particularly the Misselad, which is quite large and never dry. All these rivers meet in the lake Fittree, and are discharged from it. It is only in this manner that the communication of the rivers spoken of by Edrisi can be explained. He gives to his Nile, which surrounds Wangara, a general direction towards the west. This can be only the Misselad, and as Hornemann says that this river flows from the lake of Fittree, the communication of the waters of Kagou with the lake of Semegonda, alleged by Edrisi, is confirmed. But this last named lake being too inconsiderable to contain all these waters, the two branches which flow from it must run, one to the west, and the other to the south-west, and empty into the true Niger at a considerable distance from each other. The true Niger then can wash only the western part of the Wangara, and proceeds on its course. But a more satisfactory argument is drawn from the nature of the soil of Benin and Biafra, and the character of the rivers which water that part of the coast, which he describes in the following terms. The countries of Benin, Oware, New Calabar, and Calbongo are the delta of a large river which comes a great distance from the north-west. From accounts given by Nyendael, Bosmann, Dapper, and the two Barbots, we learn that the Rio Formosa is eight marine miles wide at its mouth. Higher up it is only four, and higher still it is at times wider and narrower. It divides into an infinite number of branches which spread into all the neighboring country. It is possible to pass in a boat from one branch to the other. There is also in the interior a passage by water which reaches to Calabar, and it is quite easy to reach that place in a canoe. From the Rio Formosa to the western shore of the river of Cameroons the coast is very low and marshy. It preserves the same character farther up into the country. The whole of this country forms an immense plain, crossed by large and navigable rivers, such as that of the Forcados, Ramos, Dodos, Sangama, near cape Formoso, Non, Oddi, Filana, Saint Nicholas, Meas, Saint Barthelemy, New Calabar, Bandi, Old Calabar, and Del-Rey. This last is from seven to eight marine miles wide at its mouth; it preserves this width far into the country, and comes a great distance from the north. All these rivers belong to the same principal river, for the Rio-del-Rey coming from the north, and the Rio Formoso from the north-east, the two lines which they follow must meet at forty or fifty geographical miles higher north. Both must have one course for at least two hundred miles. Then why not grant that their courses unite for three or four hundred miles? What an extent indeed must it have, since the delta, including cape Formoso, occupies a length of ninety [geographical] miles along the coast, and contains so many branches. It much surpasses in size the delta of the Ganges.' In addition to these arguments it is urged, that the delta, composed of slime, and without any stones, must have been formed by the periodical inundations of one or several large riversGrasilhe New C months correspo Pimento kulla. dence of to the A groes, an with that the Old is covere In the statemen siderable on the co rates this Houssa, a was killed continual down to described months, by rivers tries betw ed by the passenger traders w large fre The pers suaded, fr that it wo Benin to This is his last le cured a g part of Af Niger, afte or the sou na, or Bor kingdoms. river until rivers-that according to the testimony of Jaques Barbot and Grasilheir, who were eye-witnesses, all the country about New Calabar and Bandi is overflowed every year in the months of July, August, and September-that this inundation corresponds with that which takes place in Wangara-and that Pimento, which is abundant at Benin, is equally so at Darkulla. To these arguments Mr Malte-Brun adds the coincidence of the name of the island of Oulil, which, according to the Arabs, is situated at the mouth of the Nile of the Negroes, and is the only country of Nigritia where salt is obtained, with that of an island on the coast of Guinea, at the mouth of the Old Calabar, called on the Portuguese maps Olil, which is covered with a bed of marine salt. In the preface to the narrative of Robert Adams we find a statement, derived from a gentleman who had resided a considerable time at the settlement of Lagos, and at other stations on the coast of the Bight of Benin, which strongly corroborates this hypothesis. It is there asserted that traders from Houssa, a town on the Niger near the spot where Mr Park was killed, previously to the abolition of the slave trade, were continually to be met with at Lagos, and that they still come down to that mart, though in smaller bodies. These traders described their journey to the coast as occupying three or four months, and as retarded and obstructed, not by mountains, but by rivers, morasses, and large lakes, which intersect the countries between Houssa and the coast. These lakes were crossed by the traders on large rafts capable of transporting many passengers and much merchandize at one passage, and the traders were detained a considerable time, until a sufficiently large freight of passengers and goods could be collected. The person who furnished this information, had become persuaded, from his frequent communications with these traders, that it would be practicable to penetrate safely by water from Benin to Houssa. This is also in accordance with Mr Park's late opinions. In his last letter to sir Joseph Banks, he says, that he had procured a guide, who was one of the greatest travellers in that part of Africa, and that he had learned from him, that the Niger, after it passes Kashna, runs directly to the right hand, or the south,' and that he was sure it did not end near Kashna, or Bornou, having resided for some time in both these. kingdoms.' Park speaks with confidence of following the river until it reaches the sea-coast. From these statements it will be seen that Mr M'Queen is not the author of this hypothesis, though he has defended it with great confidence and zeal. His defence would have been more satisfactory and his work more valuable, had he confined himself more exclusively to well attested facts, and to witnesses of undoubted credibility, instead of bringing in aid the testimony of negroes and wandering Arabs, whose geographical knowledge is to be regarded with very little respect, and had he carried his speculations and conjectures less into detail where positive information fails him. He in the first place disposes of the hypotheses in relation to the Niger, adverse to his own, in the following manner. The theories at present most in vogue are, first, that it flows eastward, reaching beyond the parallel of the eighteenth degree north latitude, and then in about twenty degrees east longitude, flows south-east, and is the parent stream of the Bakr-el-Abiad, or Nile of Egypt; second, that it terminates in a large lake in the interior, which also receives the waters of the Gir, or Nile of Soudan, coming from the eastward; third, that the waters of both rivers are lost in and absorbed by swamps and sandy deserts, in a country called Wangara; and fourth, that the Niger from his middle course flows south, and joins the great river Congo, or Zaire. Every one of these theories is grossly erroneous, contrary to every authority on which reliance can be placed, and in opposition to every feature of geography exhibited any where else on this globe. The expedition to the Congo so lately undertaken, and so unfortunate, has nevertheless settled the question, that the Congo and Niger are different streams. The lake said to receive and retain the waters of the Gir and the Niger, can no where be heard of, either as a sea of salt or fresh water, in the interior of Africa. Wangara, said to absorb these rivers in swamps and sands, or rather those parts of Africa where Wangara is said to lie, is, as the name signifies, a country of a different description, a country intersected by many powerful rivers, mountainous, fertile and cultivated, and inundated during the rains. That the Niger flows to form the Bahr-al-Abiad, is contrary to all probability, contrary to the good authority of Ptolemy, contrary to the authority of the best Arabian geographers, and contrary to excellent modern authority. p. 4. In support of his position relative to the course of the Niger, the author appeals first to the authority of Ptolemy. This geographer, he says, describes Northern Africa, apparently from go enumera or Kong ed as the a little les ed as cont miles. |