that they lend to those positions any undue degree of probability.
Without, therefore, pretending to determine whether
the Negro dominion does actually reach to the 16th
degree of north latitude under , the assumed meridian of
Soudenny, (that the Negro population extends so far we presume
no one will doubt), or whether Adams’s real course lay
further to the south than his Narrative warrants us in placing
it, we must at least contend that the approximation of
Adams’s evidence on this part of his journey, to the best
standards by which it can be tried, is astonishingly near;—
so near indeed, that if we had not been assured, upon the
undoubted authority of Mr. Dupuis, that the first account of
his courses and distances which he gave when fresh from the
Desert, afforded, with respect to Tombuctoo, the same results
as those which we are now remarking, we shotjld have been
rather tempted to suspect that this degree of coincidence
was the result of contrivance, than to have derived from the
degree of his discordance with other authorities any doubts
of the reality of his journies. Those who are most conversant
with questions of this nature will best appreciate
the extreme difficulty which an unscientific individual must
find in even approaching to the truth in his computations of
the direction and extent of a long succession of journies:
even the evidence of so practised an observer as Park was
not sufficiently precise to secure the eminent compiler of
the Map of his first Journey from very considerable inaccuracies,
which Park on his second mission, by the aid ot
his instruments of observation, was enabled to correct.
On the whole, since the circumstances stated by Mr.
Dupuis entirely preclude all suspicion of contrivance in
Adams’s account of his route in Africa, (a contrivance
which he was too ignorant to invent himself, and in which,
when he arrived from the Desert, he had had no opportunity
of being instructed by others) we do not conceive how it is
possible to resist the circumstantial corroboration of his
story which the application of his route to the Map affords;
unless, indeed, by resorting to the preposterous supposition
that so uniform an approach to the truth, throughout a
journey of nearly three thousand miles, could be purely
aocidental. But to return to the particular question before
us.
In addition to the grounds already adduced for placing
Soudenny within the Bambarran territories, Adams may
fairly claim the advantage of another circumstance mentioned
by P ark; we mean the fluctuating state of the line of
boundary itself. Considerable changes in that respect had
occurred within a few months of the period when Park
crossed the frontier in question:—the seeds of further