Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/334

 276 WEST ATEIOA. Tsad system, with tlie Sliari and its other affluents, might even be regarded as belonging to the Niger basin, the divide between the two hydrographic regions being extremely low, and the general aspect of the land showing that at a former geological epoch both systems were connected by intermediate channels. It is even probable that, before piercing the coast ranges barring its passage southwards to the Gulf of Guinea, the Niger flowed eastwards, developing vast inland seas, of which the Tsad is a surviving fragment. Possibly the " Nile of the Blacks " may at that time have really effected a junction with that of Egypt, through the low- water-parting between the Upper Shari and the numerous streams flowing to the White Nile. In that case the Benue, at present its great affluent from the east, would have been the branch for communicating directly with the Atlantic. Tra- versing regions exposed to a much heavier rainfall, the Benue, although shorter, has even now an equal, if not a greater volume, than the main stream itself. In the joint Niger-Benue basin the population is very unevenly distributed, certain tracts on the Saharian slope arid elsewhere being uninhabited, whilst others are densely peopled, with numerous large towns, villages following close together, and the whole land forming a continuous garden. The actual population is esti- mated by Behm and Wagner at forty millions, although judging from the detailed descriptions of travellers, it can scarcely amount to half that number. In any case it is certain that throughout a long historic period, powerful com- mercial and industrial nations have succeeded each other in the Niger basin. Like the Nile, this river was a centre of culture, and its cities became famous throughout Northern Africa, and even beyond the continent. The kingdom of Ghana, whose name under the form of Guinea, has been so widely diffused along the western seaboard, was known to the Venetian traders long before it was visited by any European travellers, and for centuries Timbuktu figured in the imagination of the western peoples as a sort of remote African Babylon. The Niger affords a striking example in support of the law of primitive cultures, recently expounded by Leon Mechnikov. Here also, as in the Iloang-ho, Indus, Euphrates, and Nile basins the riverain populations have been very irregularly developed, nor were the inhabi- tants of the fluvial deltas anywhere the first to reach a higher state of civilisation. Progress was always most rapid in the interior, where were first constituted national groups sufficiently powerful and industrious to play an important part in the history of mankind, and transmit their fame to remote regions. While such nations were being developed along the Middle Niger, the natives of the delta remained in a barbarous state, blocking the approach to the sea from the civilised inland peoples. Progress of Discovery. Thus it happened that, for four centuries, Europeans frequenting the seaboard remained profoundly ignorant of the true course of the great Nigritian river. Even Mungo Park still supposed that it reached the Atlantic through the Congo, and it was mainly in the hope of verifying this theory that Tuckey's disastrous