ZAIRE, a very considerable river of Southern Africa, sometimes called Congo, from the district of that name in the possession of the Portuguese, through which it flows and discharges a large volume of water into the Southern Atlantic, in latitude south, longitude east.
It may be noticed, however, that the word Zaire, like those of Nile or Ganges, is a general appellation for any great river, and that the proper name of the one in question is Moienzie Enzaddi, the Great River, or the river which absorbs all other rivers.
There are some peculiarities in the lower part of the Zaire which had long attracted the attention of English traders; but owing to the combined effects of Portuguese jealousy, ignorance, and total indifference to all research which had for its object the extension of human knowledge, the baneful influence of which is felt in all their foreign establishments, nothing whatever was known of its source, or even of the general direction of its course through the continent, beyond some 80 or 90 miles from its mouth.
The accounts that had been given by early writers of the violence and impetuosity of its current, which was said to carry its waters perfectly fresh for twenty leagues into the sea, and the unfathomable depth of its channel, drew from Purchas, the quaint compiler of the Pilgrimage, the following amusing description, in his usual and best style: "The Zaire is of such force, that no ship can get in against the current but neer to the shore; yea, it prevails against the ocean's saltness threescore, and as some say, fourscore miles within the sea, before his proud waves yield their full homage, and receive that salt temper in token of subjection. Such is the haughty spirit of that stream, overrunning the low countries as it passeth, and swollen with conceit of daily conquests and daily supplies, which in armies of showers are, by the clouds, sent to his succour, runneth now in a furious rage, thinking even to swallow the ocean, which before he never saw, with his mouth wide gaping eight and twenty miles, as Lopez affirmeth, in the opening; but meeting with a more giant-like enemy, which lies lurking under the cliffs to receive his assault, is presently swallowed in that wider womb, yet so, as always being conquered, he never gives over, but in an eternal quarrell, with deepe and indented frowns in his angry face, foam-ing with disdain, and filling the aire with noise (with freshe help), supplies those forces which the salt sea hath consumed."
The first correct account of its real magnitude and velocity was given by Mr Maxwell, who, in the capacity of an African trader, resided in the country, and surveyed the lower part of it. The tendency of its channel to a northerly direction, the times of its flooding, and the great body of water which it discharged, induced him to think that it might be a prolongation of the Niger,—an idea which the late Mungo Park caught up and warmly adopted in the progress of his last unfortunate attempt to solve the problem of the course and termination of this mys-
terious river. Park had learned from a native of Kashna, that the Joliba, near that city, took a direction towards the right hand; and if so, it was not unnatural to conclude, that, if one great river ran to the southward without any known termination, and another great river came from the northward, whose source was equally unknown, there was at least a probability that they might be one and the same river. And as there was not the shadow of any information which tended to refute this supposition, and as the hypothesis involved no physical impossibility, while many plausible arguments were offered in favour of it, the Board of Admiralty, with that readiness which it has always shown, since the conclusion of the war, to afford opportunities for correcting and extending our geographical knowledge, sent out a small vessel, together with a transport, under the command of Captain Tuckey, with the view of tracing the course of the Zaire as far as it might be practicable. On the arrival of the vessels, destined for the examination, opposite to the mouth of the Zaire, they experienced no little difficulty in getting within it against the stream of a rapid current; and they found that the accounts given of the turbid water, the floating islands covered with trees and bushes, which had been torn from its banks and washed down into the sea, had not been greatly exaggerated. The rapidity of the current between the two headlands which form its mouth, being generally at the rate of five or six miles an hour, renders it impossible to obtain soundings. In the chart of Mr Maxwell, the mid channel is marked at 100 fathoms; but Mr Fitzmaurice, the master of the Congo, employed on the expedition, could get no bottom with 160 fathoms, at the distance of 25 miles above the mouth: where the river is contracted to something less than three miles, the depth was still found to be about 100 fathoms. At 50 miles, the stream is broken and interrupted by rocks and islets, and divided into a number of branches; but at 90 miles, it was again found to be one channel of a mile to a mile and a half in width, and of various depths, from 50 to 30 fathoms; and this depth and width it maintains as high up as Point Sondie, 140 miles from its mouth. Here it suddenly contracts its stream to the width only of 400 or 500 yards, and continues so to a place called Inga, about 40 miles above Sondie; being bristled all the way with rocks, so as to be unnavigable except by boats, and that not without difficulty and considerable danger.
The banks by which the river is thus contracted are composed of slate, and every where precipitous. In numerous places, ledges of slate cross the river from bank to bank, forming rapids or cataracts, known to the natives by the name of Yellala. That which first occurs is the highest and the most formidable of these barriers; being a sloping bed of mica slate, over which the river falls from a height of about 30 feet perpendicular, in a slope of 300 yards. In the low state of the river when Captain Tuckey visited it, this Yellala scarcely deserved the name of cataract; but it was said by the natives to make a
Zaire. tremendous noise when swelled by the rains. Compared with Niagara (says Captain Tuckey), it was a mere brook bubbling over its stony bed. One thing, however, surprised the party; it was, that the quantity of water which fell over the ledge was but a small portion of the volume below; and the only explanation which offered itself to them was, that a subterranean communication existed between the upper and lower part of the cataract beneath the sloping bed of slate.
At Inga, where the narrows terminate, the river once more became navigable, and stretched out into a magnificent sheet of water, expanding to the width of two, three, and even more than four miles, flowing with a gentle current of two to three miles an hour. Thus it continued to the distance of about 100 miles beyond Inga, or 280 miles from Cape Padrou. Here, however, the whole party were compelled to stop, partly from sickness, but chiefly because the natives refused to accompany them farther. At this place it is said the river had "a most majestic appearance; that the scenery was beautiful, and not inferior to any on the banks of the Thames; that the natives of this part all agreed in stating, that they knew of no impediment to an uninterrupted navigation of the river upwards; that at no great distance it divided into two branches; and that there was only one obstruction in the north-eastern branch, occasioned by a single ledge of rocks, forming a kind of rapid, over which, however, canoes were able to pass."
All this, under more prosperous circumstances, would have held out the strongest inducement to proceed; but it was found impossible, and, therefore, the question of the identity of the Niger and the Zaire was left pretty much in the same state of uncertainty as it was before the expedition. Little doubt, however, seemed to remain on Captain Tuckey's mind, that the north-eastern branch had its source in Northern Africa; for he observes, that, "Combining his observations with the information which he had been able to collect from the natives, vague and trifling as it was, he could not help thinking that the Zaire would be found to issue from some large lake, or chain of lakes, considerably to the northward of the line." He was the more inclined to this opinion, from the low state of the river, even so late as August; and he adds, "Should it begin to swell in the early part of September, an event I am taught to expect, I shall conclude that my hypothesis is correct." It did begin to swell at the period anticipated, and he notes down in his journal, in two words, "Hypothesis confirmed." The idea of its flowing out of a lake seems to have arisen from its "extraordinary quiet rise," which was only from three to six inches in twenty-four hours; whereas, had the swelling of the river been occasioned by rains falling to the southward of the line, and by the pouring into its channel of mountain torrents, the rise must have been sudden and the stream impetuous; but coming on, as it did, in a quiet and gradual manner, it was concluded that it could proceed only from the gradual overflowing of a lake.
Thus, the course of the Niger still remained
as a matter of speculation, and the swamps of Wangara (a name no longer known in Africa), the Bahr el Abiad, the Zaire, and the Rio Formosa and other sluggish waters which are discharged into the Bight of Benin and Biafra, continued each to have their advocates. The two latter hypotheses must, however, now be for ever abandoned. The accounts which have recently been received from the African travellers, Oudney, Clapperton, and Denham, set the question completely at rest, as far as the Zaire and the Rio Formosa are concerned. We may now safely say, that these waters are completely divided from those of the Niger by a barrier of lofty primitive mountains, from the southern side of which they undoubtedly receive their supply of waters, as the Niger and the lake of Bornou receive theirs from the northern side.
Having disposed of the Atlantic rivers, it remains only to be shown what progress has been made in determining the course and termination of the Niger beyond Timbuctoo; indeed, we may say, beyond Houssa, for to that extent it has unquestionably been traced in its easterly course, by every modern authority, written and verbal. By Houssa must be understood, a considerable tract of country to the northward of the Niger, interjacent between Timbuctoo and Bornou; of which Kashna or Kassina is the capital. Considerable light has been thrown on this part of Northern Africa by a native of the above mentioned city, who has recently left Cape Coast Castle with Belzoni on his journey home. This man had served many years in the British navy, under the name of William Pasco, but his real name is Abou Beker. By his own account, he travelled with a party of merchants from Kashna, or, as he calls it, Birnie-Kashna, to the Bight of Benin. To the southward of this city, and at the distance of four long days' journey, or about 100 miles from it, they crossed the Quarra-luan-dadi, or river of fresh water, which he describes to be as wide as the Gambia at St Mary's, running to the eastward. Five days further, still travelling south, they crossed a deeper and broader stream, also running east, called the Gulbi, which passes through the countries named Guari and Nooffi; and he has been told, and believes, that these two rivers unite at Zugum near Kaba, and proceed towards the rising sun to Birnie-Bornou. Several days after this, they reached a high range of mountains, one part of which had the top white like marble, and in its appearance resembled Fogo, one of the Cape de Verd Islands. Having crossed the mountains, and a small river called Echoo running at their feet, they saw the sea; and continuing their route towards the setting sun, having the sea in sight at intervals on the left hand, in ten days he reached Annamaboo on the coast, and entered on board his Majesty's ship the Lille Belt.
Abou Beker is represented as an intelligent man, and the account he gives of his journey is considered by the writer of a late article in the Quarterly Review, on the progress made by our African travellers, as worthy of credit. No other river than the two branches he mentions intervened in his route to the southward; and this corresponds
with the account given by Major Denham of his route in the same direction, but on a more easterly meridian, who met with nothing like a stream in travelling directly south between the river Yaou, in latitude , and a part of the chain of mountains crossed by Abou Beker, in latitude about .
This Yaou is, in fact, the only stream of water that occurred to our travellers between Mourzouk and the mountains above mentioned, and cannot possibly therefore be any other than the Niger or Joliba; unless we are to suppose this river to have sunk or been evaporated before it reaches thus far to the eastward. Indeed, it appears, from the latest letters received from Dr Oudney, dated in July last (1823), that they had followed up the Yaou 200 miles to the westward, and found it sometimes a stream between deep banks, and at other times swelling out into small lakes. As Noofi, or the lake of Soudan, into which the Niger is known to fall, could not be more than 100 miles from the spot to which the party proceeded westerly, there can scarcely be a doubt that the Yaou and the Niger are identical. Beker states, he has often heard his grandfather say, that Birnie-Bornou was about fifteen days' journey from Birnie-Kashna towards the rising sun, which accords pretty well with the accounts given by Hornemann and others. This traveller (Hornemann) names the river in that part of its course where it enters Bornou the Zad; and says (what is now confirmed) that it falls into a large lake, which Burkhardt states to be in Bornou, and that it is a fresh water lake.
It will be seen that under the Article Africa it is stated, as a speculation grounded upon the reports of various travellers, that a great lake or inland sea would one day be found in some part of Northern Africa, as a common receptacle of the several rivers, of the course of which so many contradictory statements have been given. It was not pretended to assign the precise situation of this lake, but it was conceived it might be somewhere "in an extensive tract of desert, immediately to the east of the modern position of Houssa;" meaning thereby to the eastward of Kashna. That lake is no longer a matter of speculation but of fact. Dr Oudney and his companions fell in with it at a place called Lari, the frontier town of Bornou, in latitude north, longitude , being very nearly in the same meridian with Mourzouk. Its name is the Tsaad, being the same as that given to the river which falls into it about sixty miles farther south, by
Hornemann and Burkhardt; but which, as already mentioned, is called by the present travellers the Yaou. The western shore of the lake was traversed not less than 220 miles, in a direction almost due south; and at the southern extremity a large river of the name of Shari, a full mile in width, was found to flow into the lake in latitude about . It came from the south, and undoubtedly had its rise in the great chain of mountains visited by Major Denham, and crossed by Abou Beker. How far the lake Tsaad may extend to the eastward is yet uncertain; but it is to be hoped, that the next accounts from the travellers will settle this interesting point, and determine the question whether, on that side, a river flows out of it in an easterly direction towards the Nile of Egypt, or that it is the great sink of Africa, receiving its waters from all directions. It is said that no mention is made whether the waters of the Tsaad be fresh or salt; the very omission of which we think is decisive of its being fresh; and if so, there is certainly a strong probability of its having an eastern outlet; a circumstance which would afford an equal probability of the identity of the Niger and the Nile, their union being effected through the channel of the Bahr el Abiad: for, in such a climate, and such a soil as those of central Africa, every lake without an outlet must be more or less salt, like the lake Asphaltites, and the numerous salt lakes of Persia. As the country all around, for many hundred (perhaps thousand) miles, is a dead flat, stated to be from 1200 to 1500 feet above the level of the sea, we want only to ascertain the level of the plain of Sennaar, where the Bahr el Abiad joins the Nile, to determine at least the possibility of the waters of the Tsaad emptying themselves into the Mediterranean.
We shall here only add, that the Tsaad must be of very considerable extent to the eastward, as a set of ferocious people, of the name of Buddooma, inhabiting some of its islands, come on rafts from that quarter, and carry off women, children, and cattle, from the western shores of the lake, beyond the possibility of their ever being recovered; at least, hitherto, the people of Bornou, who have boats sewed together from forty to fifty feet in length, have never ventured far enough to discover their haunts. Beautiful little islands, covered with the Papyrus, are seen floating about the lake in various directions, according to the quarter from which the breeze blows. (K.)