pulation 1300. 15 miles N. of Wittenberg. NIEMECZ, NIMIEC, or NEMES, a fortified town of European Turkey, in Moldavia, situated on a mountain, at the foot of which runs the river Niemecz, which afterwards joins the Moldava. 76 miles W. N. W. of Jassi, and 280 N. E. of Belgrade. Long. 25. 58. E. Lat. 47. 23. N. NIEMEN, a large river of Lithuania, which rises a few miles south of Minsk, and passes by Grodno and Kowne, where it joins the Wilna. It soon after enters East Prussia, changing its name to Memel, and passes the small but well known town of Tilsit, 7 miles below which it divides into several branches, the two principal of which are called the Russ and the New Gilge. Both fall into the large maritime inlet call ed the Kurische Haf. The Niemen formed for several years the boundary between Russia and Prussia. Unlike most of the Polish rivers, it is deep, full flowing, and navigable, even in summer. It was on a raft in the midst of this river, and near Tilsit, that the first interview took place between Bonaparte and Alexander of Russia, in the end of June 1807. NIEMES, a town in the north of Bohemia, on the Polzen. Population 1900. miles S. of Gablona. 8 NIENBURG, a town of Hanover, the capital of the county of Hoya, situated on the Weser. It has 3500 inhabitants, whose employments are various, viz. weaving linen, cultivating tobacco, and carrying on a traffic in wood and turf. It was once a place of strength, but is now dismantled. 27 miles N. W. of Hanover, and 35 S.S. E. of Bremen. NIENBURG, or MONCH-NIENBURG, a town of Germany, in Saxony, in the duchy of Anhalt-Cothen. It stands at the confluence of the Bude and the Saale. Population 1050. 20 miles S. by E. of Magdeburg. NIENHAUS, or NEUENHAUS, a town of Hanover, in the county of Bentheim, on the small river Dinkel. Population 1100. 115 miles W. by N. of Hanover, and 46 W. N. W. of Osnabruck. NIENKERK, a town of the Prussian states of the Rhine, in the government of Cleves, containing 1100 inhabitants. NIENKERKEN, a pleasant village of Den mark, in the duchy of Sleswick, near Glucksburg. NIEPER. See Dnieper. NIEPOMICE, a small town of Austrian Poland, on the Vistula, 10 miles E. of Cracow. NIERENSTEIN, a village of Germany, in Hesse-Darmstadt, on the west bank of the Rhine. Population 1300. The neighbourhood is noted for its good wine. NIERS, a river of Ireland, in the county of Waterford, which runs into the Suire, 5 miles S. W. of Clonmell. NIERSE, a small river in the west of Germany, which falls into the Maese at Gennep. NIESWICZ, a small town of Russian Lithuania, in the government of Minsk. It is the chief place of a large domain, belonging to prince Radzivil, who has a mansion here. 24 miles N. W. of Sluck. NIESZAWA, a town in the north of Poland, on the Vistula. Population 900. 18 miles S. S. E. of Thorn. NIEVA, an island in Hudson's straits, south-west of Mistake bay. NIEVENHEIM, a village of the Prussian province of Berg and Cleves, in the govern→ ment of Cologne. Population 1100. NIEUIL LES SAINTES, a town in the south-west of France, department of the Lower Charente. Population 2000. NIEUIL LE VEROUL, a town in the southwest of France, in the department of the Lower Charente. Population 1800. NIEUL, a town in the west of France, department of the Lower Charente, near the sea, with 1200 inhabitants. 3 miles N. of La Rochelle. NIEULET, FORT, a small fort in France, near Calais. Its chief use is for the protection of the sluices in that low lying track of country. NIEUPORT, a fortified town of West Flanders, about two miles from the sea coast. The inhabitants, who amount to nearly 3000, are employed in navigation, the herring fishery, and the manufacture of nets, and cordage. It has a tolerably good harbour, but very little trade. miles S. W. of Ostend, and 23 W. S. W. of Bruges. Long. 2. 45. 15. E. Lat. 51. 7. 54. N. 11 NIEVRE, a department in the central part of France, comprehending most part of the province formerly called Nievernois, and bounded by the departments of the Yonne, the Cotes d'Or, the Saone and Loire, the Allier, and the Cher. It has a superficial extent of 2800 square miles, and a population of about 242,000. Its surface is hilly and woody; the soil is in many places barren and sandy; but the climate is mild and salubrious, and there is much picturesque beauty in various situations. The chief mountains in the department are the Morvan, Gravelle, and Beuvray: the principal rivers are the Loire, the Allier, the Nievre, the Yonne, and the Aron. Tillage, from the unproductive nature of the soil, is not much prosecuted: corn is consequently deficient; hemp is raised in considerable quantities; also wine, except in the east of the department. The pastures are tolerable; but grazing, as an art, either for profit or for improving the breed of cattle, is very little understood. On the other hand, the mineral products are of importance; the principal are iron and coals. The country contains a number of forges, and extensive manufactures of hardware. The other manufactures are of woollen stuffs, leather, and glass. This department is divided into four arrondissements, viz. Nevers (the capital), Cosne, Clamecy, and Chateau Chinon. NIEVRE, a river in the central part of France, which falls into the Loire at Nevers, and gives naine to the above depart ment. NIEUW-BEYERLAND, a village of the Netherlands, in South Holland, with 900 inhabitants. NIEUWE PECKEL AA, a large straggling village of the Netherlands, in the province of Groningen, with 2900 inhabitants. 7 miles S. S. W. of Winschoten. NIEUWER SLUYS, a small fortress of the Netherlands, in North Holland, on the water called the Vechte. NIEUWE SCHANS, a small but strong fortress of the Netherlands, in the province of Groningen, situated in a marshy district, on the borders of Friesland. NIEUWKERK, a town of the Netherlands, in the north of Gelderland, adjoining the Zuyder Zee, with a good harbour and 5000 inhabitants. NIEUWKOOP, a village of North Holland, with 1900 inhabitants. 12 miles E. of Leyden. NIEUWKUYK, a village of North Brabant, with 900 inhabitants. 6 miles W. of Bois le Duc. NIEUWLAND, a village of the Netherlands, in North Brabant, with 800 inha bitants. NIEUWOLD, a village in the north-west of the Netherlands, in the province of Groningen, with 1100 inhabitants. NIEUWPOORT, a small town and fortress of the Netherlands, in South Holland, on the Leck. 17 miles E. by N. of Rotterdam. NIF, a village of Anatolia, in Asiatic Turkey, 16 miles E. of Smyrna. NIFAN, a village of Ommon, in Arabia, 80 miles S. W. of Hassek. NIFFO, a small seaport on the Grain coast of Africa. NIGANICHE, an island on the coast of Cape Breton island, and in the south part of the gulf of St Lawrence, to the southward of a cape about four leagues southsouth-west of Achepe harbour, and eight leagues from North Cape. NIGDEH. See Nidegh. NIGER, a small river of England, in Norfolk, which falls into the German ocean at Clay. NIGER, a great river of Central Africa, which has excited an extraordinary interest in modern geographers, by the remarkable nature of the region through which it flows, and still more by our ignorance, and the various and contradictory rumours relative to its course and termination. The name of Niger, so celebrated, and the object of such anxious inquiry, is not known in Africa. The great central stream to which this name is given by Europeans, is, in the ascertained part of its course, known to the negroes under the appellation of Joli-ba, the last syllable being the general term for a river. By the Moors it is called Neel Abeede, or Nile of the Negroes; for in their mind it is unalterably identified with the other great river of Africa, the Egyptian Nile. As the course of the Niger has been the most leading object of modern geogra phical research, some view of the successive theories entertained on the subject, and of the motive of the different exploratory journies undertaken to ascertain it, seems necessary for enabling the reader to form accurate ideas of what is known on the subject. Herodotus, the father of geography as well as history, is the first writer who affords any ideas applicable to this question. He mentions an expedition into the heart of Africa, undertaken by some young Nasamonians, who, being taken prisoners, were carried to a city inhabited by negroes, and situated on the banks of a river flowing to the eastward. This river he infers to be the remote head of the Nile: but from the particulars given, there appears little doubt of its being the great central river of Africa. Strabo, Mela, and Pliny, represent the Nile as rising in the western extremity of Mauritania, then as passing through vast unknown regions, and, according to some accounts, sinking for a great space under ground, before it re-appears in the higher Ethiopia. Ptolemy, however, whose resi dence at Alexandria afforded copious means of information, rejects altogether the idea of any communication between the Niger and the Nile. He describes in considerable detail the course of the former river, representing it as terminated on the west by Mount Mandrus, (Mandingo), and as giving rise to several extensive lakes in the line of its course; but his statements do not include any thing positive as to the direction in which it flows. The next great source of information was from the Saracens or Arabians. In the course of dissensions which arose among their dynasties in Northern Africa, large bodies crossed the desert, and founded kingdoms on the eastern part of the shores of the Niger. The most brilliant of these was Ghana, which, enriched by the gold trade of Wangara, is said to have risen to a high degree of power and splendour. From it, and from the other settlements, their geographers derived impressions very different from those which had prevailed among the ancients. According to their unanimous statement, the Niger flows from east to west, and discharges itself into the sea, by which they understood the Atlantic, or great circumambient ocean. They represent it also as rising from the same source with the Egyptian Nile, and as identified with it, but only in the earliest part of its course. Some of them have asserted that it did not reach the sea, and must therefore have supposed it to lose itself in a lake. Leo Africanus, who became the chief authority to the modern Europeans, retained the delineation of the Niger flowing from east to west, and falling into the ocean; but instead of deriving it from the Egyptian Nile, he makes it flow from the lake of Bornou, situated deep in the interior of Africa. This system was followed in all the European maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where the three great streams of the Senegal, the Gambia, and the Rio Grande, are made the estuaries by which the great central river pours itself into the Atlantic. Even the Faleme was supposed to be a branch first separating itself from, and then uniting with the main trunk. Bartholomew Stibbs, however, having, about the end of the seventeenth century, penetrated to the upper part of the Gambia, brought down a report, that "its original, or head, is nothing near so far in the country as by the geographers has been represented," and that twelve days journey above Barraconda, "fowls walked over it." These assertions, however, being indignantly rejected and argued against by his employer Moore, did not meet with much acceptance from English geographers. In the course of the following century, however, the two great French geographers, Delisle and D'Anville, who had access to all the information which government could collect, became satisfied that this delineation was altogether erroneous. They constructed maps in which the Niger, after the lapse of so many ages, was again represented as flow However correct these observations were He 1 From Silla it flows by the great commercial city of Jenne, soon after passing which, it forms the great lake of Sibby or Dibbie. From the eastern side of this it was reported to issue in numerous streams, which all unite into two great branches, and these at last into one, before it reaches Cabra, the port of Tombuctoo. It thence plunges deep into the unknown regions of Interior Africa; and Europe is still lost in uncertainty as to its farther progress and termination. We shall notice a few of the speculations which have been formed on the subject, with the leading facts by which they are supported. The opinion which, after the discoveries of Park, became generally established, was that of major Rennell, coinciding in some measure with the previous one of D'Anville, by which the Niger, after issuing from the lake Dibbie, was supposed to flow eastward through the countries of Houssa and Cassina, till it was lost in the lakes and marshes of Wangara. The existence of these is attested by the Arabian writers, who, though they have combined their accounts with an assertion relative to the western course of the Niger, which is entirely rejected under this system, may probably be trusted as to the fact that there are such lakes. The evaporation produced in this hot climate, from their extensive surface, may, it is supposed, be sufficient to dispose of all the waters poured into them by this mighty river. A part, it is supposed, may also flow still farther east, and exhaust itself in the lake of Fittre, the Cauga of the Arabians, situated on the southern frontier of the kingdom of Bornou. A very different hypothesis has been started by the travellers into Northern Africa. Jackson and Hornemann both state the universal conviction there to be, that the Niger flows eastward, and joins the Nile, being in fact the Nile itself. The Moors, according to Mr Jackson, express their astonishment when they hear Europeans doubting the identity of the two streams. Hornemann also states, that in Fezzan he never met with any one who entertained a different opinion. Notwithstanding these concurrent testimonies, this opinion has been decidedly rejected by the ablest geographers. The information of Ptolemy, who considers the two streams as entirely distinet, is much to be relied upon. It coincides entirely with that of Browne, which is of still greater weight, as in Darfur he approached very near to the track by which the Niger must have flowed, in order to reach the Nile. He gives an account, how ever, of the source of this last river, as situated in the mountains of Donga; and all the other great rivers of that part of Africa are represented by him as flowing to the west ward. Mr Jackson indeed states the positive assurance he received from a Moorish merchant of Jenne, that he, with some companions, had embarked at that place, sailed down the Niger and the Nile, and arrived by water at Cairo. Without doubting, however, the fidelity of this merchant's report, his details wholly invalidate the inferences drawn from this voyage. The Niger was found by him, in many places, reduced very low, and sometimes so entirely dried up, that it was necessary to take up their boats and carry them over land. In the same manner Hornemann was informed that the communication between the Niger and the Nile was very small, unless in the rainy season. It is evident that these descriptions cannot apply to the stream of the greatest river in the world; and that this rivulet, which would not float a boat, could not be the Niger, after having performed a course of two thousand miles. A more recent hypothesis, the fame of which has nearly absorbed every other, is that by which the Niger is supposed, after a long course through Central and Southern Africa, to pour itself into the Atlantic by the estuary of the Congo. This was originally suggested to Mr Park by a captain Maxwell, who, in the character of a slavetrader, had been accustomed to frequent the last mentioned river. His opinion was founded on the vast quantity of water which it poured into the ocean, and on a rise taking place at a period when no rains had fallen on the southern side of the line. It was argued also, that to suppose so vast a river as the Niger finding its termination in lakes, which there was no reason to suppose of any extraordinary magnitude, was very contrary to the analogies observed in any other part of the world. The lakes, be sides, which form the termination of great rivers, and have no outlet, are usually salt; but these are expressly stated by the Arabian writers to be fresh, which is confirmed by the extreme want of that mineral substance under which all Central Africa labours. The great chain, indeed, called the Mountains of the Moon, which is represented in our maps as forming a belt round the continent, has been supposed to present an insurmountable bar to its progress in this direction. The truth is, however, that this chain is laid down upon very arbitrary principles, a great part of it being conducted through a region entirely unknown to Europeans. There are indeed mountains, both on the east and the west, nearly under the same parallel; but that the chain is carried unbroken from one to the other, is what we have no certain ground to conclude. Even supposing that it should, there are repeated instances in which a great river has forced a passage, even through the most formidable mountain barrier. These arguments made so strong an impression on the public mind, that government, with a liberality and public spirit which is highly laudable, determined to fit out an expedition on a great scale, to ascertain this grand question in modern geography. It was divided into two parts, one of which, of a military character, was commanded by major Peddie, and was destined to penetrate across Western Africa to the Niger, and to descend its stream; the other, of a naval description, was to ascend the Congo in boats. A meeting at some point of the great stream of the Niger-Congo, was triumphantly anticipated. It was at all events hoped, that these vast regions of Central Africa would be erazed from the list of unknown countries. The fatal disappointment of these hopes is but too well known. The party of major Tuckey, overcome by fatigue and the heat of the climate, were seized with a pestilential disorder, which proved fatal to most of them. All the leaders of that of major Peddie fell also a sacrifice to the climate, before they had even approached the Niger. A result so unexpected and dismal threw a deep gloom over the prospects of African discovery. As the expedition under captain Tuckey did not penetrate above 300 or 400 miles up the river, they could observe nothing decisive as to its derivation. On first entering the channel, they were struck with disappointment at its apparent magnitude, which did not suggest any source so remote as their mission supposed. This, how ever, seems to have been owing to the depth of the river, and its being then at the lowest state; for on ascending two or three hundred miles, it assumed a grander aspect, and spread to the breadth of several miles. The river, in the beginning of September, rose to the height of eleven feet, without the occurrence of any rains adequate to produce such an effect. The extraordinary quickness of its rise, too, appeared to indicate that it had issued from some lake that had received almost the whole of its water from the north of the line. For these reasons major Tuckey's opinion leans very strongly in favour of the hypothesis on which his mission had been founded. Some corroboration is also derived, though under rather suspicious circumstances, from the narrative given by Sidi Hamet, a native merchant, to Riley, who was shipwrecked on the coast of Africa. He described himself to have followed the course of the Niger till it took a southeast, and finally a south direction, which it continued to follow at the interior city of VOL. IV. PART II. Wassanah. It was there reported that a communication took place downwards, and terminated at the sea. Mr Bowdich, during his residence in Ashantee, obtained, from the Moorish merchants of that country, a considerable mass of information. The general scope of it may be stated as follows. The Niger, after passing through the Lake Dibbie, separates near Tombuctoo into three branches. One called the Gambaroo flows east-north-east through the countries of Houssa and Cassina, till it terminates in the great lake of Caudee or Chadee (probably the Cauga of the Arabians). Another, bearing the name of Joliba, flows northward to a country called Yahoodee, which carries on a great trade with Tombuctoo. The third, or main stream, under the name of Quolla, flows east-south-east through Gauw, Zamfarra, Noofee, Boussa, and other countries, till after a long course it also separates. One branch rolls eastward, and turning to the north, forms the Egyptian Nile; the other flows southward, and again separating, pours itself into the Southern Atlantic ocean, by several channels, of which the Congo is the principal. This system,, which forms a sort of coalition between all those formerly held on the subject, is liable, we apprehend, to serious objections. This early and permanent separation of a great river into two branches, is a phenomenon very contrary to the general analogy of nature. It is still more improbable that it should take place in so many repeated instances. The existence of two parallel rivers, the Quolla and Gambaroo, rolling through the plain of Soudan, is, however, a very important fact, and serves to explain many of the contradictions that have prevailed on the subject.. The Gambaroo, we conceive, most probably flows westward, and falls into the Niger or Quolla. It will then be the Nile of the Negroes of the Arabians, which is always described by them as flowing in that direction. The identity of the Niger and Nile can by no means be admitted; but the information of Mr Bowdich tends to strengthen the idea of the Niger rolling southwards and reaching the Atlantic. Such is all the information which a se ries of persevering efforts has been able to obtain respecting this most celebrated of the African streams. We regret to say, that the prospect of any farther extension of our knowledge is extremely gloomy. While we are writing, intelligence has arrived that Mr Ritchie has added another name to the list of martyrs in African discovery. There seems now little prospect of any one being able to endure the climate, 21 |