Niger

trumpets scream aloud and the dense arrows
drive \
But presently, on the middle Niger, there arose to
being two great negro kingdoms, Songhay and
Bornu. Each had under its control territory to the
extent of a million and a half square miles. Their
kings were great potentates : there was a great
Black civilisation long ere there was a great Euro¬
pean. The Niger drained it—still mysteriously.
For Ibn Mohammed al Idrisi’s map, published in
1153, showed the Niger rising in the Nile and flow¬
ing thence across Africa into the Atlantic. Ibn
Batuta, who visited Timbuctoo in 1353 and voyaged
down the Niger to Songhay—decaying Songhay—,
knew the falsity of the Nile for the rising point of the
Great River. But he also was unsure of where it
reached the haven of ocean—if reach it it did.
Perhaps it was lost in the 4 sands of the interior
Though they make no mention of the fact, it is
obvious that to these Arab geographers the puzzle
of the river was the direction in which, a full-flowing
stream, it ultimately flowed. Four hundred years
after Ibn Batuta, determination of that flow of the
Niger was to crown as the pinnacle of his achieve¬
ments the person of a tall young man tramping shoe¬
less, ragged and alone down the jungle to its banks.
In the early fifteenth century the Portuguese com¬
menced to plant trading-stations—slave and gold
trading-stations—up and down the West African
coast, coming in the process on the mouths of the
Senegal and the Gambia, great and authentic
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