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Updated: June 9, 2025
The Niger or Quorra, which flows below the city, was the first object of interest visited by the brothers. "This morning," writes the traveller, "we visited the far-famed Niger or Quorra, which flows by the city about a mile from our residence, and were greatly disappointed at the appearance of this celebrated river.
A minor counterfort advances from the central range to the northwestward, commencing about the Peak of Mendefy, and vanishing at the end of about 900 miles in the desert of the Tuaricks. It gives rise to the two Sharys, which flow in opposite directions to the Quorra and the Lake Tchadda, and further north to the streams which flow to the same two recipients from about Kano and Kashna.
Both may be explained by the lay of the Quorra and the Binuwe, especially the latter; it was chronically confounded with the true Nile, whose want of western influents was not so well known then as now. It has been well remarked that, whereas the course of modern exploration has generally been maritime, the ancients, whose means of navigation were less perfect, preferred travelling by land.
On Tuesday the 19th June the Columbine brig and the Alburkha were towed out to sea by the Quorra, which vessel returned to Milford to wait the arrival of Lander, and then to sail immediately for Porto Praga on the African coast, the place of rendezvous.
The value to science of this discovery, and the great merit of those, whose successive exertions have prepared and completed it, is the more striking, when we consider that the hydrography of an unknown country is the most important step to a correct knowledge of its geography, and that in barbarous Africa, nothing short of the ocular inquiries of educated men, is sufficient to procure the requisite facts, and yet it is not a little extraordinary, that the termination of the Quorra or Niger has been discovered by two men, who, in point of scientific knowledge, education, or literary acquirements, stand the lowest in the scale of the African travellers.
This would give to the confluence of the river of Soccatoo with the Quorra, a height of less than 500 feet above the sea, but as that confluence occurs above the most rapid part of the main stream, 500 feet seem to be very nearly the height.
Boussa, Clapperton says in his journal, is a large town with extensive walls, situated on an island in the Quorra, and that to reach it he had to cross in a canoe, while his horse swam over. After Clapperton had offered the sultan the presents he had brought for him, he inquired about the white men who had been lost in the river.
His Niger, therefore, was the Quarrama, or river of Zermie, which flows westward through Kashna and Sackatoo, and is only a tributary to the Quorra or great river, which we call the Niger. He describes the stream as very broad and rapid, probably from having seen it during the rainy season, when all the tropical rivers of any magnitude assume an imposing appearance. Mr.
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