The British critic - v. 7-8 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Art. IX. Narrative of a Journey in Egypt, and the Country beyond the Cataracts. By T. Leg/i, Esq. M.P. 4to. 157 pp. 21s. Murray. 1816. Notwithstanding, the ra... more »pid progress, which science has made in all its branches since the revival of learning after the dark ages, it must be confessed, that, with regard to the geography of the iatei ior of Africa, we have not yet gone so far as even to retrace the sleps of the ancients; and have rather lost than gained ground, since the discovery of the passage to India round the Cape of Good Hope three centuries ago. Not to mention, that even that Cape had been sailed around by the early Egyp- 'tiansand Carthaginians, as we learn from Herodotus and Pliny; it would be easy to prove, from monuments of Roman art frequently met with in regions of the interior almost unknown to us, that we had been preceded in many of our discoveries. Of late years, indeed, much has been done towards exploring the inland parts of this vast and interesting continent: and the observations of Mr. Park have confirmed many points both of geography and natural history mentioned in ancient authors, but which had not before been generally received as true, because we had no experi-, ence ourbelves that they were so. We allude, in particular, to the circumstance of the great inland river, the Niger, flowing from the Vest to the East, as asserted by Herodotus (Euterp. ixxii.) and to the account given by the same author, (Melpom. clxxvii.) of the people, who fed on the sweet berries of the Lotus, which is found at this day to be prized in Tunis, and to be the common food of the inhabitants of Ludamar and Bambarra. Ve must also mention, that the rivers of lire, met with in the Peri- plus of Hanno, are fully explained by the description Mr. Park gives, in speaking of nearly th...« less