AFRICAN TRAVELLERS.—Letters from Alexandria, of the beginning of May, mention
the death of Captain Woodfall, a gentleman who had been sent out by the African Society to explore the interior of Africa. Captain Woodfall was to have penetrated into Africa through Abyssinia, and had arrived at Kourdefan, in the last-mentioned country, where death put a stop to his career.
THE NIGER.—It appears that the two Landers after landing at Badagry, on the 22nd March 1830, proceeded to Landers, where they remained for three months, and during which time they also visited Yaowri. At the end of the three months, the waters being then at their height, they embarked on the river, there called the Quolla ; which they descended rapidly, until they reached Funda ; which town they as- certained to be situated at least two degrees farther east than the maps exhibit it. Near Funda, the Quolla or Niger is joined by a large river which is said to come from the lake Tchad,—the Libya Palus of ancient geography, concerning which so many conjectures have been indulged, and which had hitherto been looked on as the receptacle of the Niger. Besides this stream, the Tchad is said to send forth others to the eastward,—not improbably the Congo, between which and the Quolla a communication is thus established, though not in the way that Parke supposed. At some distance below Funda, the travellers were chased by a fleet of man-of-war canoes belonging to the King of the sur- rounding district ; and in attempting to escape from them, their boat was swamped, and the whole of their journals and instruments lost. They were then only ten days' journey from the coast ; which they ulti- mately reached by the Nun river, a few miles east from Cape Formosa. They reached the sea on the 30t1; November. Their black servant, An- tonio, who left them when they reached the coast, after ascending the Nun river, again descended by another branch, which proved to be the New Calabar; thus proving that the hypothesis of Reichard was cor- r2ct, and that the Benin and the New Calabar were in reality mouths of the Niger. The Landers calculate that the length of the Niger from Boussa to the sea is about nine hundred miles ; but, from the loss of their instruments, these latter calculations are in a great measure con- jectural.
FRENCH PLAcEmEst.—" If we deduct," says M. Benoiston de CM. teauneuf, in his work on official salaries, "from a population of 32,000,000 of individuals, 16,000,000 for the females, and three-fifths of the males that have not attained their twentieth year, we shall find that in France one man out of every ten is paid by government ; and that out of 615,192 persons, receiving from the Treasury the annual sum of 351,000,000 of francs, 2,170 individuals, placed at the head of the adminis- tration of the courts of justice, of the church, the finances, and the army, receive 32,000,000 francs, or nearly one-eleventh of the total expendi- ture."
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