Gazette Of The United States

LONDON, Sept. 25.

The information communicated by the African Society is equally interesting to the philosopher, and the merchant. The former will rejoice that while Mr. Bruce is publishing his description of Abyssinia, and other eastern parts, and M. Gordon, another Scotch gentleman, who is Dutch Governor at the Cape, is preparing his journey from the land of the Hottentots through Caffraria, the munificence and discernment of this English Association has used, and is still urging, the properest means for exploring the great northern mass of Africa, and discovering the secrets of those vast inland provinces, which have hitherto been considered as inaccessible. The attention and enterprise of the merchant will be excited to the discovery of a new and boundless market, an hundred millions of Africans eagerly coveting his commodities, for which they can make him the most valuable returns; but, not able at present to obtain them, except by the land conveyance of 3000 miles from the Mediterranean, subjected to the complicated disadvantages of a high price, inferior quality, and various exactions from the despotic governments of Barbary. Yet, from the highest reaches of the Gambia, the English trader might arrive, by a journey of four hundreds of miles from his ships, to the same markets, which the Fezzaners find it their interest to frequent, notwithstanding the above inconveniencies; a new prospect of commercial intercourse, the most magnificent that the history of the world has ever at any time presented.