The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-02-08 00:00:00

buctoo.
The source of the Niger, however, as well as it course, re-
mained in obsurity till English geography and travellers took
the field. With Great Britian, a new era in the progress of
African geography commenced; and in 1788 a number of
wealthy and philanthropic individuals formed themselves into
a society for the express purpose of promoting discovery in
that country.
Mr. John Ledyard was the first person despatched under
the auspices of the " African AsSociation" upon the mission:
he had already been round the world with Captain Cook, and
had undergone hardships and privations in a journey through
Russia, which, as the exploits of a single traveller, stand un-
rivalled. In June, 1788, he departed and reached Cairo in
the month of August following—when becoming impatient
and vexed by the delay of the caravan with which he was to
have travelled, his anxious mind sunk under disappointment,
and death quickly terminated his career. His instructions
were, to have penetrated into Africa by way of Egypt, and to
traverse the continent in the latitude of the Niger.

Mr. Lucas was the next wlip went to explore the Niger.
The journey of this traveller is remarkable for the additions
he contributed to African geography, but he did not penetrate
further than to the south of Mesurata, five days' journey
from Tripoli. In his account of the Fezzan merchants, who
crossed the Niger at a ferry two miles south of Cassena, may
propably be discerned the ferry of Comie, below Boossa.
Major Houghton, on the part of the African Association,
next undertook the task. Travelling as far as Jarra, he was
plundered and deserted by the Moors who accompanied him,
and he died, after several days' wandering, from hunger and
exhaustion.
Mungo Park, in 1795, next took up this hazardous enter-
prise. The terrible sufferings that Park underwent are
related in his own journal. In his first journey he nearly
fell a prey. Having encountered all the horrors of the rainy
season, and being worn down with fatigue, his health had,
at different times, been seriously affected. But soon after
his arrival at Kamalia' lie fell into a severe and dangerous fit
'of sickness, by which he was closely confined for upwards of
a month. His life was preserved by the hospitality and be-
nevolence of Karfa Taura, a negro, who received him into his
house, and attended'him with the kindest solicitude.
In Park's second expedition, arranged with the Secretary
for Colonial Affairs, the plan was to send him with a detach-
ment of soldiers, and a few seamen and carpenters, to con-
struct vessels for the navigation of the Niger. With these
thirty-five soldiers, their lieutenant, and the others, he ar-
rived at the wished-for point, ready to embark on the Niger,
but the rains destroyed his men with a fatal rapidity. He
lost the whole of his companions, except Lieutenant Martyn
and three soldiers, of whom one was in a state of mental de-
rangement. The death of his friend and brother-in-law,
Mr. Anderson, affected him most deeply. "No event,"
says he, " ever threw the smallest gloom over my mind, till
I laid Mr. Anderson in the gravel I then felt myself as it
were left a second Lime lonely and friendless amidst the
wilds of Africa."
Of this melancholy affair, he writes to Lord Camden thus
—" Your lordship will recollect that I always spoke of the
rainy season with horror, as being extremely fatal to Euro-
peans; and our journey from the Gambia to the Niger will
furnish a melancholy proof of it. We had no contest with
the natives, nor were any of us killed by wild animals,
or any other accident ; and yet, I am sorry to say, that of
44 Europeans who left the Gambia in perfect health, five
only are at present alive." Dated Sandansing, Nov. 17,
1805.
At this most trying moment, however, his habitual con-
stancy did not forsake him. Though about to embark on a
vast and unknown river, through the midst of savage nations,
and a long succession of rapids and extracts, this voyage, one
of the most formidable ever attempted, was to be undertaken
by him in a crazy and ill-appointed vessel, which, principally
by his own labour, he had constructed of two old patched
and worn-out canoes, manned only by a few negroes and
four Europeans.
From Sandansing, Park embarked with the intention of
descending the river to its mouth ; but, on reaching Boossa,
was attacked by the natives and killed, after having previ-
ously suffered imprisonment more than three months.
The strong determination of Park to persevere in his de-
sign of tracing the course of the river to its termination, is
thus expressed in one
of his letters from this place:—
" Though all the Europeans who are with me shall die, and
though I myself were half-dead, I would still persevere ; and
if I could not succeed in the object of my journey, I would
at last-die in the Niger."
H. Hornemann, a German traveller, was sent out by the
association, but he contributed little to the knowledge on the
Niger. At the same time, and by the same parties, another
German, M. Roeutzen, set out, but he is supposed to have
been murdered by his servant, a man of suspicious character.
The next person who is supposed to have visited Timbuc-
too was an American seaman, named Adams, but his narra-
tive throws no additional light on the course of the Niger.
In 1816 Captain Tuckey, of the Royal Navy, with an ex-
pedition under his direction, was sent out to penetrate into
Africa by the river Congou, and so to arrive at the Niger.
The fate of this expedition was the counterpart of its follow-
ers ; 280 miles from the coast was the extent of its progress,
and the question was as far as ever from being decided. At
the same time, another party, consisting of 100 men, were
placed under the direction cf Major Peddie, to reach the
Niger by Park's route from the Gambia ; this party ascended
the river Nunez, but were equally unfortunate with the Con-

you expedition.
Captain Clapperton's expedition was disastrous at its very
outset. Himself, Captain Pearce, and Dr. Morrison, had
the imprudence to sleep in the open air for two successive
nights, on the swampy and unwholesome coast, by which
they were all attacked with fever, and the two latter fell vic-
tims in the course of a fortnight, leaving Clapperton to pro-
ceed alone. Clapperton, accompanied by Lander, visited
Boossa, the place of Park's death. He had imbibed a strong
aversion to descending the Niger, and made no secret of it
to Lander. His firm conviction was, that whoever attempted
to go down this river would fall by the attacks of the natives.
Clapperton crossed the river at Comiex, below Boossa, and
arrived soon after at Socatoo.
The successful progress of Clapperton through the interior
thus far is well known; but, sad to say, the first lesson that
ought to have been taught him by his two friends was Quite
disregarded. He lay in a damp spot in the open air, and his
disease becoming aggravated, he exclaimed, " Richard, I feel
myself dying." He then delivered his papers to Lander,
with directions for his guidance, and,shortly after died.
M. Lacaille's safety, who, inspired by the premium pro-
posed by the Freneh-Soeiety of Geograp .1, less -sincevne-
trated to Timbuctoo, and thence to Morocco, appears to
have been insured by his following the example of Hornemann
and Burckhardt, in assuming the character of a Mahometan.
Major Laing was another victim to these expeditions; and
he met with a more tragical fate than any of his predecessors.
The bigotry and rapacity of the Moors first put him in peril
of his life. Laing was first surprised in the desert by a party
of Tuaricks, who plundered him and left him for dead, hav-
ing inflicted twenty-four sabre wounds on him, from which
he almost miraculously recovered. At Timbuctoo he found
a kindly reception from the Sheik Boubokar, so long as he
had power to protect him, but the fortune of war had thrown
this city into the hands of another chief, to whom Boubokar
was obliged to act viceroy, and who despatched him an order
which compelled him to send off Major Laing as expelled
from the country. The good old chief accordingly put Major
Laing under the charge of Barbooski, an Arab chief, who
undertook to conduct him in. safety as far as Aravian ; but
hat traitor on finding Major Laing completely in his power,
murdered him, and took possession of his property.
The spirit of intolerance displayed by some of the African
tribes is not, however, unrelieved by instances of genuine
pity. Once, when Lander was lying at the foot of a tree,
almost expiring with fatigue and thirst, he implored nume-
rous passengers for a drop of water, but they said to each
other, " He is a Kaffer—lethiin die.
Yet there was found
at last a good Samaritan, who, amid the reproaches of his
countrymen, relieved a suffering fellow-mortal.
The Lander expedition is of too recent date to need our
entering into particulars. The mournful assassination of
Richard Lander was coupled with strange circumstances,
" white man will never reach Eboe this time," was an excla-
mation that greeted his ears from King Jack, a relative of
King Roy, and one of the heartless and sullen chiefs who
ruled over the marsh country on the banks of the Brass
River, uttered while his eyes sparkled with malignity. The
subsequent ambuscades of the natives lower down the river,
and the murderous discharges of musquetry while the boats
were pushing off, fully showed the meaning of the threat,
and, from the effects of the musket-wound he received, Lan-
der died on his arrival at Fernando Po.
The last expedition, the lamentable accounts of which have
just reached us, adds to these records of fatality perhaps a
more frightful instance than any that have preceded it. In
former cases, a single and valuable life has been sacrificed,
or in cases where numbers constituted the expedition, the
largest average of lives sacrificed was in the second expedi-
tion under Park ; but when souls, exceeding more than half
a hundred, have been rashly hazarded and sacrificed, as in
the present case, it is to be feared that so appalling an in-
stance will, from its alarming nature, be the strongest pre-
ventive, both on the minds of individuals and the feeling of
this or future govern9nts, towards attempting a similar un-
dertaking.

The Duke of Sutherland is about to erect a church at his
sole expense in the colliery district of the parish of Lilleshall.