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 sun, with its fiercest rays, cannot penetrate these dark recesses; it only exhales from them pestilential vapours, which render this coast the theatre of more fatal epidemic diseases than any other, even of Western Africa.  That human industry will one day level these forests, drain these swamps, and cover this soil with luxuriant harvests, we may confidently anticipate; but many ages must probably elapse before man, in Africa, can achieve such a victory over nature.

The Niger, besides its own ample stream, has a number of tributaries, equal perhaps in magnitude and importance to those of any other river on the globe; with the exception of the united streams of the Mississippi and Missouri.  At no great distance above the point where the Delta commences, the Tshadda, nearly equal in magnitude to itself, enters it; after watering large and fruitful kingdoms, of which the names only, and of these but a very few, have reached us.  On this river an extensive commerce and active navigation is said to prevail; the existence of which is further confirmed by the great importance attached to Funda, and other cities situated at or near the junction.  It would have been deeply interesting, and have given a new importance to the river communications of Africa, could we have believed, what was positively asserted by very credible witnesses, that vessels by its channel