though making in one part a rapid bend to the east, whence it
gradually returns. If we measure two distances, one from the source
to Timbuctoo, and the other from that city to the sea, we shall have
nearly 2,000 miles, which may be considered as the direct course;
and the various windings must raise the whole line of the stream to
upwards of 3,000 miles. For several hundred miles of its lower course,
it forms a broad and magnificent expanse, resembling an inland sea.
The Niger must after all yield very considerably to the Missouri and
Orellana, those stupendous rivers of the new world. But it appears at
least as great as any of those which water the old continents. There
can rank with it only the Nile, and the Yangtse-kiang, or Great
River of China. But the upper course of neither is yet very fully
ascertained; and the Nile can compete only in length of course, not in
the magnitude of its stream, or the fertility of the regions which it
waters. There is one feature in which the Niger may defy competition
from any river, either of the old or new world. This is in the
grandeur of its Delta. Along the whole coast, from the river of
Formosa or Benin to that of Old Calabar, about 300 miles in length,
there open into the Atlantic its successive estuaries, which
navigators have scarcely been able to number. Taking this coast as
the base of the triangle or Delta, and its vertex at Kirree, about 170
miles inland, where the Formosa branch separates, we have a space of
upwards of 25,000 square miles, equal to the half of England. Had
this Delta, like that of the Nile, been subject only to temporary
inundations, leaving behind a layer of fertilizing slime, it would
have formed the most fruitful region on earth, and might have been
almost the granary of a continent. But, unfortunately, the Niger rolls
down its waters in such excessive abundance, as to convert the whole
into a huge and dreary swamp, covered with dense forests of mangrove,
and other trees of spreading and luxuriant foliage. The equatorial