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442 NIGER NIGHT HAWK tral Africa, its walls enclosing a circumference of more than 20 m. In this part of its course, which must be nearly 1,000 m., its principal tributary is the Sackatoo or Rima river, which joins the main stream from the east near lat. 12 N. The town of Sackatoo is situated on this affluent. Amid the plains of Soodan the width of the Niger varies from 1 to 8 m., and the rate of its current from 5 to 8 m. an hour. Below Yauri it is 2 m. wide, and at Boossa, four days' journey further down, it is divided into three channels and obstructed by rapids. Thence to lat. 7 N. the Niger runs through a low valley in a mountainous country, and the banks are annually inundated, very fertile, and well peopled. The mountains in many places approach both sides of the river, and the val- ley is nowhere very wide or thickly inhab- ited. At a distance of about 250 m. from the sea the Niger receives the waters of the Be- noowe or Tchadda, its greatest affluent, with a volume quite equal to its own above the junc- tion. Near lat. 6 N. the united stream leaves the mountain region and enters an alluvial plain of forest, swamp, and jungle, where it divides into three large branches, the main out- let being the Nun, which flows into the gulf of Guinea near Cape Formosa. Another arm of the delta, extending at right angles with this, is the Benin river ; and the entire region between them and the sea is intersected by nu- merous small rivers, creeks, and lagoons. The Old Calabar river is the principal eastern branch of the delta. The oil-producing palm is an im- portant product of this region. The area of the delta is estimated at 32,000 sq. m., and it is sub- ject to an annual inundation, attaining its max- imum height in August. It is one of the most unhealthy and pestilential tracts in the world. The identity of the modern Niger with the Niger of Ptolemy and Strabo is now generally admitted. Ptolemy describes its upper course with an approach to accuracy, but he believed that its waters were lost in the sands before reaching the sea. Pliny regarded it as an affluent of the Nile, while Leo Africanus be- lieved that it rose near the sources of the Nile and flowed westward. When the Portuguese explored the W. coast of Africa they discover- ed the rivers Senegal, Gambia, and Grande, each of which in succession they supposed to be the Niger, and explored to its source in the hope of reaching Timbuctoo. Even after the real direction of the Niger began to be suspect- ed, it was supposed for some time to be identi- cal with the Congo river, and Mungo Park explored it with this idea. He was the first European traveller who reached the banks of the Niger in the upper part of its course. In his first journey (1796) he traced it for about 160 m. from Bammakoo down to Silla. In his second journey (1805) he embarked upon its waters at Sego, between Bammakoo and Silla, and descended the stream to Boossa, where he was killed. The loss of many of his papers deprived the world of the information which he had gathered, but the deficiency was subse- quently partly supplied by Caillie, who sailed down the river from Jenne to Timbuctoo in 1828. In 1830 Richard and John Lander navi- gated the Niger from Yauri to the sea, and proved that it was not the Congo. The lower portion of the river was subsequently explored by English expeditions in 1832, 1834, and 1841. The last was a government expedition sent out for the suppression of the slave trade ; an attempt was made to establish a model farm on the W. bank, opposite the mouth of the Be- noowe, but the effects of the climate were so fatal to the Europeans that after a short trial the undertaking was abandoned. In 1853 Timbuctoo was visited by the German trav- eller Barth, who in 1854 explored the valley of the river southward to the town of Say, in lat. 13 8' S., ion. 2 5' E. In 1869 Win- wood Reade succeeded in reaching the head waters of the Niger, not far from the source of the river, by a journey inland from Free- town, the capital of Sierra Leone. NIGHT HAWK, a North American goatsuck- er of the subfamily caprimulginw and genus cJiordeiles (Swains.). In the G. Virginianus (Swains.) the length is 9 in., and the extent of wings about 23; the bill is very small Night Hawk (Chordeiles Virginianus). and curved, with a wide gape furnished with a few very short hairs, and the tip hooked ; the wings very long and pointed, the second quill the longest; the tail long, broad, and forked; tarsi short and partly feathered, and toes feeble ; the head large and flat, the eyes and ears large, neck short, and body slender ; the plumage is soft and blended. The male is greenish black above, slightly mottled on the head and back ; wing coverts varied with gray- ish, and the scapulars with yellowish rufous ; a white V-shaped mark on the throat, and ter- minal patch on the tail ; a collar of pale rufous blotches, and grayish mottled on the breast; under parts transversely banded with rufous