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delays incidental to the former journey counterbalancing
its shorter distance. These difficulties are invariably
described as resulting from the numerousrivers, morasses,
and large lakes which intersect the countries between
Haoussa and the coast. Some of these lakes are crossed
by the traders on rafts of a large size capable of transporting
many passengers and much merchandize at one
passage; and here the travellers are often detained a com
siderable time until a sufficiently^ large freight of passengers
and goods happens to be collected. On no occasion
does our informant recollect that the Haoussa. traders have
spoken of a range of mountains which they had to cross in
coming down from their own country, and he has noidea
that any such range exists in that direction, as the
traders spoke only of morasses and other impediments from
water.
We hardly need to observe that these statements appear
to remove some of the difficulties which have been objected
to the prolongation of the course of the Niger to the
southward, either to the kingdom of Congo or to the Gulf
of Guinea, in consequence of the supposed barrier of the
Jibbel Kumri, or mountains of the moon; but the details
are of course too vague to supply any argument in favour
of either of the particular systems here alluded to respecting
the termination of the Niger,—either of the conjectural
theory of Reichard, or of the more reasoned system which
Park adopted, and which is so ably illustrated and inforced
in one of the publications* to which we have already
alluded,
* See the Quarterly Review for April 1815, Art. Y I.