note 268: See New Supp. to Ency. Brit. article "Africa."]

Here then are two topographical facts first asserted by me, among
the moderns, to exist in the heart of Africa, and since confirmed
by Ali Bey, Park, and Dr. Sietzen, or, as the enlightened editor of
the Supplement to the New Encyclopedia Britt. observes,

451 "We have thus three independent testimonies[269] from opposite
quarters, meeting exactly in the same point; nor does there, as far
as we know, exist any evidence _at all respectable_ to the
contrary."

[Footnote 269: The testimonies here alluded to are Hornman,
Park, and Jackson.]

It now remains for me to declare (that as opinions have been
industriously propagated tending to discredit my account of
Marocco, and the interior of Africa,) that nothing has been set
down therein, until I had previously investigated the
qualifications of the narrators, their means of knowledge, and
whether the respective vocations of the several narrators made it
their interest to disguise or misrepresent the truth of their
communications; and, after ascertaining these important points, I
have generally had recourse to other testimonies, and have seldom
recorded any thing until confirmed by three or four _concurrent_
evidences: on this _pyramidical basis_ is founded the intelligence
in my account of Marocco, and of the interior of Africa, annexed to
that account.

This assertion is to be understood in respect to intelligence that
I could not ascertain by ocular demonstration.

Finally, my description of the black heartheaded serpent, called
452 Bouska[270], has been doubted; but a late traveller[271] has
confirmed the accuracy of my account; even of this extraordinary
animal.--In Riley's Narrative of his Shipwreck on the
453 Coast of Sahara is given an account of an exhibition by two
_Isawie_[272], who do not appear to have been adepts in the art of
454 fascinating these serpents; for I have frequently seen them manage
455 and charm the _Bouska_ much more adroitly than those who exhibited
at Rabat before Riley, although its bite is more deadly, and its
strength considerably greater, than that of the _El Effah!_

[Footnote 270: See Jackson's enlarged Account of Marocco, &c.
p. 109.]

[Footnote 271: "I paid two dollars for a station,