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the Sultan hello. ,-who, when Clapperton asked him, an-
swered, that " of the great river, we know not its source,
nor of any one who has seen it. It rushes and precipitates
itself through - the country front left to right,..and contains
many islands inhabited by fishermen, herdsmen, husband-
men, and settlers. As to the variety of its animals, birds,
and fish', it is only knoWn to the Lord Creator."
Among the more formidable difficulties in this country to
travellers, there are none more alarming and insuperable
than those arising from climate. Imminent dangers arising
-from the presence of savage men or animals are of a tran-
sient nature, and capable Of being guarded against by vigi-
lance and strength ; but the secret and devastating operations
of a pestilential climate are too subtle and deadly to permit
in almost any shape of device for counteraction. The
treachery of the tribes of Africa has done little towards de-
stroying travellers and explorers, compared with the destruc-
tive and exterminating influences of her noxious clime •, and
it is almostsolely to this that the slow progress of African
discovery is to be attributed. The banks of the Joliba,
Quarra, or Niger, seem invisibly sentinelled by an ever-re-
pelling power.
In the ensuing paper a -brief recapitulation of all former
and modern attempts to discover the source of the Niger,
and the misfortunes, failures, and partial successes that have
attended upon the travels and investigations of inquirers,
will show the absolute fatality attending in some shape or
other all expeditions of a similar nature to what has just de-
spatched homeward its new addition to the catalogue of ca-
lamities which have already been its precursors.

The first notice in history on this point appears in Here-
dotus, who states, in his " Geograhy of Africa," that some
young Nassamonians, a people who dwelt on ie borders of
the Mediterranean, travelled in a westerly direction from
Egypt until they came to a large river full of crocodiles, and,
flowing towards the rising sun, and they were conducted by
the natives to a considerable city situated ou the banks. The
difficulty of determining the expression due west at this pe-
riod of time leaves the passage doubtful. Colonel Leake,
however, in a recent letter read by him in the Geological So-
ciety, considers that they travelled along the Nigel-, and the
city to which they were conducted was Timbuctoo.
Strabo speaks little of the Niger, but Pliny largely ; he
traces it through Mauritania, but falls into the error of He-
rodotus, who considers the Nile and Niger one river. Mela
was the most reasonable geographer, and coincides as to the
general opinion of the source of the Niger, but with proper
candour acknowledges that no one knew what became of it at
the centre of the continent. Ptolemy, whose account of the
Niger is very vague, closes all that the ancients knew of it.
From the Arabians some fuller accounts of the geography
of the country are to be gleaned. Abulfeda and Adrisi knew
it until it reached:the Atlantic Ocean, or " Sea of Darkness,"
and to distinguish it from the Nile, called it the" Nile of the
Negroes."

The maritime enterprise of the Portuguese led them early
into the interior ; but though they obtained a considerable
store of information respecting the Niger, they turned it to
but little account. In their maps a remarkable circumstance
is observable regarding the position of Tirnbuctoo. This city
is placed so near the sea as to excite suspicion of its being the
same as that on the Niger, and another place called Tamnou-
cane, on the Senegal, is mentioned as ans►vering their Tim-
buctoo.

The source of the Niger, however, as well as it-course, re-
mained in obsuritv till English geography and travellers took
the field. With treat 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 who went to expliire 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 tar as Jarra, he was
plundered and deierted by the Moors who accompanied him,
and he died, after several days' wandering, from hunger and
exhaust!on.

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 tunes, been seriously affected. But soon after
his arrival at Kamalia, he 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. Ile
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 grave ; I then felt myself as it
were left a second Lime lonely and friendless amidst the
wilds of Africa." _ _

Of this melancholy affair, be 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 Sandansiug, 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,
7nd a long succession of rapids and extracts, this voyage, one
of the must 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 Boossai
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
Nizer. 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 Peddle, to reach the
Niger by Park's route from the Gambia ; this party ascended
the river Nunez, but were equally unfortunate with the Con-
gou 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 unite
disregarded. lie lay in a damp spot in the open air, and his
disease becoming nazi avated, 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 French Society of Geography, has since pene-
trated to Timhuctoo, and thence to Morocco, appears to
have been insured by his following the example of Hornetnann
and Burckhardt, in assurhing 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 surprises 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 Arawan ; but
that 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, "Heis a Kaffer—let him 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 governments, 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.