The Sun.
London, England, 1829-08-03 00:00:00

UNION-HALL

Several persons, who are proprietors of shops for
the sale of intermediate beer, were summoned for
allowing ale and beer to be drunk on their premises,
contrary to the statute.
The first defendant was Thomas Ford. The in-
former's witness proved that he was served with
half a pint of intermediate beer on the premises.
He was fined EL

John Palmer, who had an awning in the front of
his house, under which people sat and drank the in-
termediate beer and smoked their pipes was fined 71.
Another information against the same defendant
was withdrawn, upon his paying 405.t0 the poor-box.
James Mann, who has a shed or covered place
in front of his house, in Temple-place,Blackfriars-road,
under which a number of both sexes congregate in
the evening to drink and smoke, was fined 71.

THE NIGER.

(From the Literary Gazette.)

SIR,—An article has appeared in the Quar-

tenll Review, which conveys so erroneous a
view of what a late publication of mine—on the
" Course and probable Termination of the Niger"
—really is, that I beg leave, through your Jour-
nal, to make the following observations, in the
hope that they may meet the eyes of some of
those who may see the critique and not my book.
My censor begins by stating, that my " con-
clusions are contrary to known facts ;" and soon
after we are told, that " the Greek, Roman,
and Arab (authors), having no personal know-
ledge of this subject, ran riot in speculative geo-
graphy, and for want of facts, indulged in the
wildest fancies."

Now, many of the facts on which I have
reasoned were drawn from those Greek, Latin,
and Arab writers ; I supposing, as others had
done before me, that those writers were entitled
to some credit ; but I find myself suddenly de-
prived of all aid from them by the above sweep-
ing anathema, and Herodotus and Ptolemy fall
out of my hands, as insignificant personages as
" fortemque Gyan, fortetnque Cloanthum."
Here then I err—not in drawing " conclu-
sions contrary to facts," but in citing as facts
the " fancies" of dreaming authors ! This is a
destruction of a literary material for which I con-
fess I was not prepared : but as a considerable
portion of my work is founded on facts taken
from these condemned authors, I hope and be-
lieve it will not be found that I have come to
false conclusions on those facts.

But it appears afterwards, that some of the
" known facts," in defiance of which I have
come to my conclusions, relate to the course of
the Niger as detailed in Captain Clapperton's
last journey; and my censor contends, that the
Niger or Quorra does not flow into the Tchad
by the Ycon, but, if at all, by the Shary. I
need hardly say, that before I published a work
on the Niger, I had read what Denham and
Clapperton had written ; and, as well as I re-
collect here, Denham was so convinced that the
Ycon was the Niger, that he sent a bottle of

its water to a friend as the true Niger water ;
and the weight of testimony that the Yeon is
the Niger still appears to me to be so strong,
that my opinion remains unshaken. Indeed,
if any reliance is to be placed either on Major
Denham's map, or on his account of his jour-
ney to Mandara, the junction of the Quorra or
Niger with the Shary is impossible. However,
let the Niger run into the Tchad by the Shary
—all I ask is, let it run into the Tchad by any
channel—for a most material part of my Dis-
sertation turns on the channel which I think I
have proved to flow out of Me Tchad to the
eastward,—a circumstance of the greatest im-
portance ; for, if I have shown the existence of
such a channel, whither does it conduct the
Niger ? I thought I had found an undoubted
recipient for it in the Nile of Bornou ; but the
Quarterly Review tells me, to my surprise, that
I must not reckon on any such river (p. 225 !)
for that the only known rivers in Bornou are the
Yeon and the Shary : at the same time, too, the
lake Domboo is pronounced a non-entity ! To
be thus deprived of rivers, lakes, and authors, to
which all writers on African geography have
hitherto been accustomed to look up as en-
tities and certainties, leaves me with very scanty
materials indeed for a dissertation on the
Niger ; and all I can do is to appeal
from such a dictum to the authorities
I have cited on the subject of the Nile
of Bornou and the lake Domboo, in the exist-
ence of both of which I continue to believe.
Next comes a remark—parenthetically--that
the Niger and Nile of Bornou must ,‘ run a
little up hill, to be sure," to reach the Gulf of

Sidra. We are not told how this slope upwards
towards the coast is known or has been ascer-
tained. My belief is, that Africa, like most
other countries, falls towards its coasts ; and in
my hypothesis of the Niger running into the Gulf
of Sidra—for I give it as an hypothesis only,
even in my title-page, although I am dealt with
as if I had advanced it as a fact—l suppose that
river to be still in its ancient deep bed, though
covered over with sand in the catastrophe des-
cribed by Herodotus, but of whose authority I
have been deprived in the general proscription of
the Greeks and Romans. A river so covered
over by sand may surely be supposed to
continue its way to the sea in its old bed,
without running up hill. And as to the
state in which Messrs. Beechey are said
(Quarterly Review, p. 238) to have found
the coast, I have no where implied that now the
influx of the Niger was visible from " plashy
quicksands :" on the contrary, if the river be
there at all, it must be covered over by hills of
consolidated sand, the accumulation of ages,
and which are still accumulating ; and any one
who will look into_ my Dissertation will see a I
_river, not " running up hill," but hills running
over a river; or, in plain words, hills of sand
have come to and covered the river. But this
notion of water " running up hill" was too
good a joke to be lost, although to me it had
not the charm of novelty, having been let off
on me many weeks ago, and answered by me
at the time as I have here 'answered it. I wish
when the writer of the article in the Quarterly
was pleased to designate me (p. 327) as " Atm-
, cus Plato," he had recollected that there was a
still more important personage in the sentence
—an " Arnica" but who appears to have been
saerified for a joke, and that a stale One !
As I have not Messrs. Beechey's work here,
nor indeed have I any books—l cannot say how
far off, nor in what direction, is placed the rocky
range, 400 or 500 feet high, on the skirts of
the Desert (p. 258) ; but if these rocky hills
be continuous, and if they cross my assumed
course of the river, there is an end of my hy-
pothesis, and I shall abandon it as readily as I
took it up, whenever it is disproved by facts; but
if this range be, as I conjecture it to be,
at a considerable distance from the coast,
nothing short of an actual inspection of
the range itself can prove it to be confirm

ous. And, after all, supposing this range
really to be in -the way, have I not as great
a claim to an opening in it as my censor has to
suppose one in the:great central chain, which is
many thousand feet high, and above a hundred
miles broad, to let through the Quarra into the
Bight of Benin (p. 239) to join the Formosa,
which makes such advances up the country, by
what authority I know not, in the map appended
to Captain Clapperton's book ?

I am further censured for speaking slightly of
D'Anville and Rennell. I appeal to my book
i❑ proof of my having spoken of them with the
greatest respect. But when I have shown that
in regard to the Ptolemian geography these dis-
tinguished geographers have committed no fewer
than ten material errors (I could have much in-

creased the number), citing Ptolemy as their au-
thority—surely when I saw that Ptolemy gave no
such authority, I was not to be deterred by
great
names from doing justice to the Alexan-
drian philosopher.

But I must hasten to conclude, and leave
many points unanswered ; particularly the attack
on my rectification of Ptolemy's longitude. The
merits of this part of the subject can be under-
stood only by reading what both have said. I
must just observe, however, that my reasonings
and facts on this subject are by no means con-
fined to the western coast, but affect the whole
of the interior of Africa, the geography of which
I have rectified, as far as Ptolemy is concerned,
by drawing his first meridian through the west-
ernmost of the Cape Verds ; and the number of
concordant instances cited by me seems to place
this part of my dissertation on a foundation little
short of demonstration ; whereas, if the first me-
ridian be drawn through Ferro, my censor will
find, if Ptolemy is to be listened to at all, that
a number of places mentioned by that geogra-
pher, some of which I have noticed, would be
transferred into the valley of the Nile of Egypt;
and this will still be the result, even after ad-'
mitting the proposition made in the Quarterly
Review, of paring away several degrees of lon-
gitude from the western coast (p. 231); for,

however this paring away may affect the coast
and the mouth of the Salathus, it leaves all my
reasoning on the interior untouched.
I have now only to notice two complimen-
tary passages which have got, I know not by
what chance, into the phial of wrath which has
been poured out on my small octavo, and which
appeared like oases in the desert—but like oases
which are not presented to the African wan-
derer until every attempt had been made to
beat out his brains and to render him insensible

to even the most refreshing breeze. But one of
these compliments is loaded with a rider—it is
that in which the writer is pleased to say that I
am " a scholar ;" but immediately to this sup-
posed scholarship is attributed my predilection
for " ancient classical authorities." Although I
feel that my title to scholarship is. very slender,
I plead guilty to the charge of the predilection
of which I am accused ; but not guilty to the
charge of " disregard to modern authdrities."
If I have cited in my work Herodotus and
Ptolemy, I have also cited Denham and Clap-
perton, and, unhappily for him, Browne, who,
though a modern, falls under the anathema
(p. 235). However, my scholarship, humble
as I know it to be, will not allow me

to subscribe to the critique on the word
TUVEI32.XXEDO. I have no Greek author or lexi-
con with me, but, taking the word crt,u,Pai.),.co
as it strikes me now, I cannot persuade my,elf
that it means to " suppose" or to " conjecture,"
in the sense given to it in the Quarterly Re-
view. The preposition and the verb com-
posing the word mean neither more nor less than
" to throw together," in Latin con and jacio—
out of which I cannot, by any analogy, make
any thing like " conjecture" or " supposition."
I believe, indeed, the word sometimes means to
" consider ;" but then the word " consider" has

no reference to opinion or " conjecture," but
to a deep operation of the mind when it is
wholly condensed and fixed on one subject ; in
which sense I think I have met with it either. in

Aristotle or Thucydides: but I here speak un-
der correction, as I trust wholly to memory and
a faint recollection.

But I will here finish by expressing my hope
that those who may read the critique will for-
bear to make up their minds till they have
looked into the work criticised. I hope and be-
lieve that it is written without any thing like
pretension, and I cannot help 'flattering myself,
that those who may read my Dissertation will
acquit me of the sweeping accusation of having
" come to conclusions contrary to known facts."
I remain, Sir, &c.
Margate, July 24, 1829. R. S. DONKIN.