inconsistency here, somewhat incompatible with the
impartiality which _ought_ to regulate the works of criticism? I
will not for a moment suppose it to have proceeded from a spirit of
animosity, which I feel myself unconscious of deserving. But the
reviewer further says, the objection to the identity of the Niger
and the Nile, is grounded on the incongruity of their periodical
inundations, or on the rise and fall of the former river not
corresponding with that of the latter. I do not comprehend whence
the Quarterly Reviewer has derived this information; I have always
understood the direct contrary, which I have declared in the
enlarged editions of my account of Marocco, page 304, which has
been confirmed by a most intelligent African traveller, Ali Bey,
(for which see his travels, page 220.)

I may be allowed to observe, that although the Quarterly Reviewer
has changed his opinion on this matter, I have invariably
maintained mine, founded as it is on the concurrent testimony of
the best informed and most intelligent native African travellers,
517 and I still assert, on the same foundation, _the identity of the
two Niles, and their continuity of waters_.

I have further to remark what will most probably ere long prove
correct; viz. that the _Bahar Abiad_[315], that is to say, the
river that passes through the country of Negroes, between Senaar
and Donga, is an erroneous appellation, originating in the general
ignorance among European travellers of the African Arabic, and that
the proper name of this river is Bahar Abeed, which is another term
for the river called the Nile-el-Abeed, which passes south of
Timbuctoo towards the east (called by Europeans the Niger).

It therefore appears to me, and I really think it must appear to
every unbiassed investigator of African geography, that every iota
of African discovery, made successively, by Hornemann[316],
Burckhardt, and others, tends to confirm _my water communication
between Timbuctoo and Cairo_, and the theorists and speculators in
African geography, who have heaped hypothesis upon hypothesis,
error upon error, who have raised splendid fabrics upon pillars of
ice, will ere long close their book, and be compelled, by the force
of truth and experience, to admit the fact stated about twelve
years ag