tly vanished) of the African river Niger, and the
golden city Tombuctoo. These were lies; and yet also, in a limited sense,
they were truths. They were expansions, often fabulous and impossible,
engrafted upon some basis of fact by the credulity of the traveller, or
subsequently by misconception of the scholar. For instance, as to
Tombuctoo, Leo Africanus had authorized men to believe in some vast
African city, central to that great continent, and a focus to some mighty
system of civilization. Others, improving on that chimera, asserted, that
this glorious city represented an inheritance derived from ancient
Carthage; here, it was said, survived the arts and arms of that injured
state; hither, across Bilidulgerid, had the children of Phoenicia fled
from the wrath of Rome; and the mighty phantom of him whose uplifted
truncheon had pointed its path to the carnage of Cannae, was still the
tutelary genius watching over a vast posterity worthy of himself. Here was
a wilderness of lies; yet, after all, the lies were but so many voluminous
_fasciae_, enveloping the mummy of an original truth. Mungo Park came, and
the city of Tombuctoo was shown to be a real existence. Seeing was
believing. And yet, if, before the time of Park, you had avowed a belief
in Tombuctoo, you would have made yourself an indorser of that huge
forgery which had so long circulated through the forum of Europe, and, in
fact, a party to the total fraud.

We have thought it right to direct the reader's eye upon this correction
of the common problem as to this or that place--Ceylon for
example--answering to this or that classical name--because, in fact, the
problem is more subtle than it appears to be. If you are asked whether you
believe in the unicorn, undoubtedly you are within the _letter_ of the
truth in replying that you do; for there are several varieties of large
animals which carry a single horn in the forehead.[15] But, _virtually_, by
such an answer you would countenance a falsehood or a doubtful legend,
since you are well aware that, in the idea of an unicorn, your questioner
included the whole traditionary character of the unicorn, as an antagonist
and emulator of the lion, &c.; under which fanciful description, this
animal is properly ranked with the griffin, the mermaid, the basilisk, the
dragon--and sometimes discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current
zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal natural history. When
asked, the