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He was pleased with the presents he received, and through his means the King of the Dark Water promised to supply them with canoes and a guide to conduct them to the sea. Funda, the town near which the Niger was supposed to flow, was, as far as they could learn, at a considerable distance from this neighbourhood.
There are, however, two regions of the same name, the Eastern upon the Upper Nile and the Western which contains the Niger Valley, and each considers itself the Sudan. Every classical reader knows that the former practice dates from the earliest ages.
In 1821 Major Laing, starting from Sierra Leone, made a journey in search of the source of the Niger, but was compelled to return.
Lander entered Kano on the 25th May, and after a short stay there started for Funda, on the Niger, whose course he proposed following to Benin. This route had much to recommend it, being not only safe but new, so that Lander was enabled to supplement the discoveries of his master.
Here they saw manifest traces of European intercourse; the natives wore Manchester cottons, and the chief presented the travellers with a case bottle of rum, a liquor which they had not tasted since they left Kiama. About a mile from Damugoo, they saw two streams which appeared to be branches of the Niger; one of which came from the eastward, while the other flowed from the westward.
Speaking of Wasiboo, he says: "Cultivation is carried on here on a very extensive scale; and, as the natives themselves express it, 'hunger is never known." On Mr. Park's arrival at one of the Sego ferries for the purpose of crossing the Niger to see the king, he says: "We found a great number waiting for a passage; they looked at me with silent wonder.
Here he remained from November, 1825, to January 1826, and then made his way to the Wâdy Ghât, intending to go from thence at once to Timbuctoo, making a tour of Lake Jenneh or Debbie, visiting the Melli country, and tracing the Niger to its mouth. He would then have retraced his steps as far as Sackatoo, visited Lake Tchad and attempted to reach the hill.
This great water is supposed to be the Atlantic, and as the distance of three moons must not be less than two thousand five hundred miles, it has been supposed that the Niger must communicate with the Congo. If so it must be, doubtless, by intermediate rivers; the whole account, however, is pregnant with suspicion, nor has any part of it been verified by any subsequent traveller.
We may perhaps be justified in expecting that the intercourse, thus formed with the interior of Africa, will eventually open new communications of trade, and possibly create new markets; that a certain portion of that vast commerce, which is now carried on with Tombuctoo from Morocco and the shores of the Mediterranean, may be diverted to the western coast; and that great quantities of European goods, now conveyed through other channels, may be transported into the centre of Africa through the new route of the Niger.
He likewise had discovered an angle of the letter N, and, at some distance, an entire I; from these circumstances conjecturing, and indeed concluding, that the medal was struck by Severus, in honour of the victory he obtained over his rival Niger, after he had forced the passes of Mount Taurus.
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