Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/335

 expedition up the Congo was carried out in 1816, while Peddie was to join hands with him by descending the Niger! Yet in 1802, the geographer Reichard had already traced on the map the true mouth of the river, although even he made it pass through Rennell's "Sea of Wangara," now identified with Lake Tsad. It was only in 1830 that the brothers Lander determined its true lower course by actual exploration; nor is the survey of the whole river yet quite completed. It began with Mungo Park, who devoted his life to the problem, and who in 1796 reached the Niger at Segu, which he found already as large as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly towards the east. From this point he followed it for 120 miles down to Silla, and for the same distance up to Bamaku, thus apparently verifying Herodotus' account of a great river flowing "from west to east" across

Africa. In 1805 he started on his second voyage from the same village of Bamaku, but after four months' floating with the stream he perished with all his party at the passage of some narrow rapids near Bussa. One slave alone escaped, and as the papers were lost in the rapids, no details were received in Europe of this ill-fated expedition.

In 1826 Clapperton crossed the Niger below the point where Mungo Park was drowned, and the approximate form of the ramifications above Timbuktu was determined by Caillié's journey in 1827-28. Lastly, in 1830, Richard Lander, companion of Clapperton in the previous expedition, succeeded, with his brother, in following the lower course all the way to its mouth.

In 1832 Laing reached the hilly district where the headstreams have their