The Litchfield County Post

It is worthy of remark, that, by the success which has attended the efforts of Maj. Denham, and his enterprising fellow travellers, to penetrate the interior of Africa, they have fully ascertained the truth of the theory advanced and so ingeniously supported by the enlightened Spaniard who travelled in Africa and Arabia some years ago, under the auspices of Napoleon, and under the feigned name of Ali Bey, in the character of a Turk: namely, that there must exist an immense Lake or Sea, in the central regions of Africa. The English travellers, above mentioned, reached and examined an interior Lake, 200 miles long and 150 broad, called Lake Tchad.

If Maj. Denham's account be correct, this is one of the most remarkable lakes in the world. It is thus described:

Nat. Intel.
"It is situate in 16 deg. of E. long., and 13 1/2 of N. lat.; is about 2,000 miles long from E. to W. by 150 broad, and occupies nearly the precise situation of Wangara, as laid down in Arrowsmith's Map, in which swamp the Joliba or Niger is supposed to terminate. It covers a surface about as large as the two American Lakes, Erie and Ontario, both together. The Tchad receives a river called the Yeou, about fifty yards broad in the dry season, which has its source about 400 miles distant in the S. W. and which was well ascertained not to be the Niger. Another river, six times as large, with a delta of 50 miles broad at its embouchure, flows into the Lake from the S. and is called the Shary, which may be, but most probably is not, the river alluded to. What is rather a puzzling fact in physical geography, this Lake, though it has no efflux, is fresh, and yet saline incrustations are found in some parts of the country around, and small salt pools are found close to its Northern margin. The Lake Tchad has a number of islands on its Eastern side, which are inhabited by the Biddomahs, a race of piratical savages, who come in a fleet of a hundred boats, and rob and carry into slavery the people living near its banks. The Lake swells greatly when the periodical rains fall, and vast numbers of lions, elephants, and hyenas, driven from their retreats on its banks by the waters, destroy the small crop of the villagers, and carry off the cattle or the women who are sent to watch the fields. Sometimes those animals attack the villages."