Note 94 — Chapter XIII
Reading edition
The following extract, from the introduction to “Tuckey’s Unfortunate Expedition to explore the River Congo,” is curious as coinciding, as regards another portion of the globe, with the above remark.
“He named it” (alluding to Diego Cam) “the Congo, as that was the name of the country through which it flowed; but he afterwards found that the natives called it the Zaire, two names which, since that time, have been used indiscriminately by Europeans. It now appears that Zaire is the general appellative for any great river, like the Nile in North Africa, and the Ganges in Hindoostan; and that the native name of the individual river in question is Moienzi enzaddi, or the river which absorbs all other rivers.”—Introduction, page xi.