Xll . INTRODUCTION.

scepticism, my uncredited account of the con- nection of the two Niles of Africa, continues

daily to receive additional confirmation from all the African travellers themselves. And thus. Time, (to use the words of a

' learned and most

intelligent writer), ** which is more obscure in

its course than the Nile, and in its termination than the Niger," is disclosing all these things

:

so that I now begin to think that the before- mentioned critics will not be able much longer

to maintain their theoretical hypothesis. ^

The talents, the extraordinary prudence and

forbearance, the knowledge of the Arabic lan- guage, and other essential qualifications in an African traveller, which the ever-to-be-lamented Burckhardt so eminently possessed, gave me the

greatest hopes of his success in his arduous

enterprise, until I discovered, when reading

hisTravels, that he was poor and despised, though

a Muselman,

There is too much reason to apprehend that he was suspected, if not discovered by the Musel- men, or he would not have been secluded from

their meals and society : the Muselmen never

{sherlk taam) eat or divide food with those they

suspect of deception, nor do they ever refuse to

partake offood with a Muselman, unless they do

suspect him of treachery or deception ; this

principle prevails so universally among them, that

i Vide the Rev. C. C. Colton's Lacon, sect. 587. p. 260,

261.

^ See various letters on Africa, in this work, p, 443.