I attempted to reach him, to avail myself of a resource which, under any other circumstances, would have filled me with disgust. At that moment I perceived the trusty Arab advancing towards me. Those only who have experienced the agonies of suspense, or the torments of thirst, can conceive my sensations, when he brought me the wishedfor beverage; which, though only dirty water in a goat-skin, I thought delicious." (P. 339.)

Upon the whole, we have perused with much pleasure, mixed as it has been with feelings of a melancholy kind, this simple and unembellished narrative. It belongs to that class of writing, of which the only praise is that of exactness and fidelity. How much superior to those books of travels, the descriptions of which consist, for the most part, either of truths heightened by rhetorical painting into falsehood, or of falsehood so tricked and coloured as to resemble truth! Every page of it bears attestation to the unexaggerated correctness of Capt. Lyon's details, and the honest and unaffected warmth of his sentiments. He laboured with unwearied zeal and enthusiasm to effect the purposes of an expedition inauspiciously commenced, and prosecuted through impediments and dangers, which it required extraordinary firmness to encounter; and though he failed in the ultimate object of his researches, his diligence has enabled him to collect a large mass of interesting and profitable facts, which will be of inestimable value to those who may succeed him in his arduous enterprize.

ART. X.-A Dissertation, showing the Identity of the Rivers Niger and Nile, chiefly from the Authority of the Ancients. By John Dudley, M. A. Vicar of Humberston and Sileby. 8vo. London, 1821.

As Capt. Lyon has noticed the great problem which is at present as much the object of perplexed speculation, as it was in the time of Herodotus,-what and where are the sources of the Nile?-we here subjoin a short view of Mr. Dudley's learned dissertation. We cannot indeed follow him in his journeyings over this mystic region, but as the theory accords with the information collected by Capt. Lyon from the African traders, respecting the course of the Niger, and as there seems, amongst the most intelligent of our modern travellers, a remarkable unanimity concerning the identity of the Niger and the Nile, we could not pass by the learned reasonings of this little tract without taking a rapid survey of them.

The conclusions of the Arabian geographers in the seventh and eighth centuries, concerning the Niger and the Nile, were

very erroneous. They affirmed that both rivers (to which they gave the same common name, the Nile), issued from the same' lake; but that the Nile of the Negroes flowed westward, till it entered the Atlantic Ocean. The accounts, however, of the ancient poets and historians, are at direct variance with these statements, and conspire to prove that these rivers are not distinct, but one and the same. To this opinion, resting on the faith of ancient testimonies, Mr. Dudley zealously inclines, and confidently anticipates the confirmation of it, when the African continent shall have been sufficiently explored. He begins with' Homer, who mentions the sources of a river (oxsavos) in the country of the Ethiopians, and it seems that, with the ancient Greek writers, ocean means any large river. The Ethiopians mentioned by the father of poetry, as his writings abundantly' testify, could be no others than the negro inhabitants of the western regions of Africa, where recent discoveries have ascertained that the sources of the Niger are to be found. The Egyptians personified Ocean under the name of Osiris, and, according to Diodorus, the Nile had the name of Oceanus in the most ancient times.

The learned dissertator then essays to establish the ancient geographical position of Ethiopia; and deals profusely in authorities to show that, in the time of Homer, the river Ocean, which the poet, in its lower course, calls Egyptus, and which is now the Nile, flowed through Lybia, the country of the Ethiepians, the western Negroes of Africa. In addition to the tèstimony of Homer, in support of the identity of the Nile and the Niger, Mr. Dudley cites Eschylus, who, in the Prometheus Vinctus, represents the sage, while chained to the rock, describing prophetically to the unhappy Io the wide extent of her wanderings, and, in tracing her way over the African continent, speaks of the river Ethiops," by the banks of which she is directed to keep,

until thou comest

To that descent, where from Byblinian heights,
The Nile pours down its sacred stream.

Hence he presumes the continuity of the streams of Niger and Nile; for the course of the Ethiops not being traced farther than as it falls from Byblinian heights, which, as the scholiast remarks, are so called, because the Nile and the Niger both abound in the papyrus, those heights must be those cataracts of the Nile, of which ancient writers never fail to speak, though almost unknown to modern travellers. The Ethiops of Eschylus, therefore, is the Libyan Niger.

From Eschylus, Mr. Dudley passes to Herodotus, who,

though professing to be ignorant of the sources of the Nile, correctly described the course of the Niger, when he affirmed that the Nile passed through and intersected the whole of Lybia. Park's discoveries have clearly shown that the Niger is the only river which can be said to divide Libya in the midst. Hence, according to Herodotus, the Niger was considered as the upper stream of the Nile. We must omit all notice of the learned speculations of our author, respecting the Hyperboreans, and the lake Tritonis, into which the waters of the Lybian Nile or Niger are received. Dionysius, the poet, in the age of Augustus, gives a positive account of the sources of the Nile, in the country of the Blemyæ, Æthiopians near the western shores of Africa. He considers the passage decisive of the question. We therefore subjoin the translation of it.

The Æthiopians, the last of men,

Pasture the continent's remotest lands,

'Fore these up towers the sun-burnt Blemyan's height,
Whence fall the waters of all fertile Nile,

Who, while he eastward winds his Libyan course,
Is Siris named. But they of far Syene

Change, when his stream is turn'd, the name to Nile.
From thence, as northward spreads his varying way,
Through seven mouths roll'd, he glides into the sea,
Egypt's fat plain enriching as he flows.

Dionys, Perieg. v. 217.

"Whoever," says our author, ८८ may compare this short but com→ plete testimony, with the modern reports of Park, concerning the Joliba, or Niger, will be surprised at their perfect agreement. The testimony of Park is this:-The Niger rises among the mountains of the Mandingoes and Fooladoes, (the Blemyæ of the ancients). The western scarpe of these mountains pours down into the Atlantic, the rivers Senegal, Gambia, and Rio Grande; but the eastern descents produce the streams which, uniting into one, compose the modern Niger. This he traced along its course eastward for about 300 miles. He learned that, lower down, it passed not far from Tombuctoo, beyond which he could gain no intelligence of its course." (Dissertation, p. 40.)

Having noticed the testimonies of Pliny and Pausanias (both of which appear to us to be at variance with his theory), Mr. Dudley inquires what were the opinions of the Egyptians themselves concerning the rivers in question, and concludes from the uniform concurrence of the opinions of the ancients concerning the Niger, that is, the Nile of Western Ethiopia or Libya, and the Nile of Egypt, that there was even a superfluity of proof that these rivers are one; and by far the most ingenious part of his tract is that in which he has laboured to remove the objections to his theory, arising from

the obscurity of some ancient terms used by the authors hé cites, and to reconcile their apparent discrepancies. It is thus that he combats the opinion which he contends to be modern, that the Niger flows with a westward current, and discharges itself into the Atlantic,-the hypothesis of El Edrisi, the Nubian geographer, a name of great authority in all matters respecting African topography, who expressly says (a position adopted by Bruce), that the Nile of the Negroes runs westward into the Atlantic, and that it takes its rise from the same lakes in Abyssinia as the Nile of Egypt.

"Now in this it is to be remarked, that the Nile of the Negroes is not said to flow from or through Libya, but from Abyssinia, which being to the south of Lybia, it follows that this Nile, were it the Niger, must flow northward, for at least some part of its course, before it reaches Lybia. But such a supposition is wholly destitute of any support whatever. Again, the Niger does not rise in Abyssinia, but in Western Africa: the Nile, therefore, of the Negroes cannot be the Niger or Nile of Lybia, but some other river wholly distinct from that celebrated river, and wholly unknown to the ancients. Such a stream is now known in the river Zaire or Congo river, which rises in regions, at least in the vicinity of Abyssinia, but south of the Equator, and discharges an immense volume of water into the Atlantic, in latitude 6° south. This river, it should seem, is the Nile of the Negroes, to distinguish it from the Nile of Egypt, and as is here contended, from the Nile of Lybia also, one and the same with the Egyptian Nile. The reason also why El Edrisi should have adopted this form of distinction is equally obvious. A Nile flowing from Abyssinia westward must pass through countries inhabited by Negroes only; a circumstance which renders the term Nile of the Negroes' peculiarly applicable to the Zaire: and the river in question would be called the Nile from the great resemblance it bears to the Nile of Egypt in the annual inundations which take place with great regularity, are of great extent, and modern travellers, who have observed the Congo river affirm, are occasioned by rains falling on distant mountains, from whence they flow and inundate other countries like Egypt. These circumstances will serve to remove the perplexities arising from accounts affirming that the Niger, or in other terms, the Nile, flows westward into the Atlantic. (P. 89—92.)

Mr. Dudley thus sums up the practical tendencies of his hypothesis:

"To escape from error is the surest way to the attainment of truth. The expectation of the existence of two distinct rivers, the Lybian Niger, and the Nile of the Negroes, will serve to guide aright the endeavours of ingenious research in the full discovery of both. It will suggest to the explorer of Lybian Africa, the propriety of taking his course from the neighbourhood of the ancient Syrtis, perhaps from Tripoli, in his search of the lower course of the Niger or Lybian

Nile. In this, he will follow the track of the Argonauts of Apollo nius, the Nasamones of Herodotus, and the caravans which now pass occasionally from Tripoli to Tombuctoo. In his travels to dise cover the Nile or Niger of the Negroes, the daring explorer will probably endeavour to avail himself of the advice and protection of the newly known monarch of the Ashantee Negroes, whose empire may be reasonably supposed to extend to the banks of the Zaire, though not likely to reach the Niger of Libya. To pass directly to different points of the Niger and the Zaire will be more likely to enable Europeans to obtain full accounts of them, than unscientific and almost impracticable attempts to ascend or descend the streams of either. To ascend the Zaire was lately a work of waste to the health, strength, and lives of the adventurers. The attempt to descend the Joliba, or Niger, proved fatal to Park, who in all probability was lost in one of the rapids of that river. At all events, it cannot but be very honourable to our national character, to avail ourselves of the wisdom and information of other times; nor can there be a better application of learning, than that by which the experience of past ages is ren, dered subservient to useful knowledge." (P. 93-95.)

We have thus concisely analyzed Mr. Dudley's argument. For ourselves, we preserve an undisturbed neutrality upon the question. In a critical journal, the, speculations of learned and ingenious men upon literary or scientific subjects cannot be wholly overlooked, even when they bring but small advantage to the substantial interests of literature or science. In another point of view, and considered in relation to the history of the human mind, they illustrate at once the strength and weakness of its powers-their strength in building compact and coherent structures of reasoning upon imperfect data; their weakness, in leaving the subjects, on which so much learned toil is expended, as obscure and uncertain as they found them.

ART. XI.-An Autumn near the Rhine, or, Sketches of Courts, Society, and Scenery in Germany; with a Tour in the Taurus Mountains in 1820. Second Edition. To which are now added, Translations from Schiller, Goethe, and other German · Poets. 8vo. Murray. London, 1821.

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We should feel some regret at not having sooner introduced this very agreeable book to the attention of our readers, if the author had not furnished us with an excellent apology, in the improved state in which he has now presented it to the public. The alterations and additions are so numerous, that the book, in its present form, may be regarded as a new publication. Our tardiness, therefore, has been in this case some