Xll . INTRODUCTION.

scepticism, my uncredited account of the connection 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 beforementioned critics will not be able much longer to maintain their theoretical hypothesis.

The talents, the extraordinary prudence and forbearance, the knowledge of the Arabic language, 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 Muselmen, 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.