In

now sitting a forlorn outcast in a foreign lated amongst the negroes, might thus be land, the guest of a poor negro woman, and employed in disseminating its milder doccheered by the sympathy which he finds in trines. Both Jews and Pagans have, in the simple songs of her household. Anon several instances, since been led to peruse he sees him despairing, dying in the depths the Holy Scriptures both of the Old and of the African wilderness, roused by con- New Testament openly in the schools of templation of the extraordinary beauty of our African Missions-of which we are glad a small moss in fructification-by observing to observe, in the reports before us, there the delicate conformations of its roots, are traces in the neighborhood of the Galeaves, and capsula-to the sublime inspir-boon River. ing thought that (in his own language) the Park was quietly prosecuting his profesBeing who planted, watered, and brought sion as a surgeon in the little town of to perfection, in that obscure part of the Peebles, but with a heart still set upon a world, a thing which appeared of so small future career of discovery-for we call to importance, would not look with unconcern mind the little anecdote Sir Walter Scott upon the situation and sufferings of crea-was so fond of repeating of his plumbing tures formed after his own image. Park the depth of the pools in the Tweed, by had risen to the source of all true courage, pitching in pebbles, and watching and meaand imbibed resolution and fortitude at the suring the undulating circles on the surface. fountain-head, before seeking to brave the He was soon called upon to undertake the dangers which had already proved fatal to second and fatal expedition that terminated the previous travellers of the African Asso- his career, but did not close it until he had ciation of 1778, Ledyard, Lucas, and followed the Niger to Boussah, forty miles Houghton. With that unswerving reliance only from Rabbah, the point to which this which he placed in Providence to sustain most interesting of African rivers has been his energies and direct his steps, this young navigated upwards from the ocean. surgeon of twenty-four, arrived on the speaking of the Niger, we know it to be banks of the Gambia 21st June, 1795, per- debated whether the great river now destined severed undauntedly through a series of to be known as such in modern geography, dangers and difficulties, of which there be really the Nigir of the ancients, rising in could have been no previous conception, Mount Atlas, and losing itself in the desert. and in spite of plunder, privation, and And, indeed, it is doubtful if the Nigir of Moorish captivity, at length had "the in- the ancients were situated southwards of expressible satisfaction of seeing the long- the Sahará at all. But we feel entitled to sought majestic Niger, glittering in the assume that river to be the Niger-the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at modern Niger-which, rising under the Westminster, and flowing slowly from west name Joliba, amidst the Kisseh mountains, to east." Park thus solved the greatest flows eastward past the half-fabled Timgeographical problem of his day. He con- buctoo, and, trending to the south under firmed to the Niger the course ascribed to the name of Quorra, finds its way to the sea it by the ancients, and actually followed in that immense Delta stretching its base the eastwardly direction of the river a dis- from the Bight of Benin to the Bight of tance of thirty miles, from Sego to Silla. Biafra. That another and a greater In the course of his travels he afforded a stream might realize our pre-conceived clue to the sources of the Niger, the Sene- notions of the far-famed Niger, might roll gal and the Gambia. His Moorish capti- its waters upon other parallels further vity in the desert city of Benowm enabled athwart the vast African interior, and lose him to define, to some extent, the limits of itself in the thirsty sands; or as a separate Moorish and Negro dominion in Africa. river fall into an inland sea; And, most important of all, he discovered tributary swell the same great stream by the mode of proselytism practised by the travelling from an opposite source-all this Moors for the propagation of Mahomme- now scarcely remains open for conjecture. danism amongst pagan children, by plying The Niger of which we speak, is at all their thirst for knowledge with the doctrines events that on which Timbuctoo has its of the Koran, administered as morning and port of Kabra. And the day seems not evening instructions in reading, to those far distant when British enterprise will employed as domestic slaves during the day. trace backwards the track of those devoted Park suggested that a short introduction to men, who, amidst the raging storms of Christianity, printed in Arabic and circu-November, 1805, floated through sickness VOL. XII.-No. IV.

33

or as a

and assault hundreds of miles upon the gination had arisen respecting Timbuctoo on

tide of the Niger, the precursors of peaceful intercourse with Europe.

the principle omne ignotum pro magnifico. But, alas! they were ruthlessly dissipated Richard Lander, the servant of Clapper- by the stubborn statements of Adams, a ton, who, justly or unjustly, has been vagabond American sailor, whose accounts styled the most successful of African travel- of its mud edifices conform so strictly to lers, perfected the discoveries rather of the outline of other African cities, that we Park than of Clapperton. He determined must believe them, though reducing this the course of the Niger to the sea. We faneied scene of imperial splendor below pretend not to arbitrate if Park or Clapper- the level of Drogheda or Dundalk. The ton should wear the palm as discoverers. Landers accordingly found in the habitaBut if, in territorial extent, in linear dis- tions of Yarribah, only collections of clay tance, the successive journeys of Denham, walls, thatched roofs, mud floors, and cow Clapperton, and Oudney, and of Clapperton dung. The very court yards which enclosed and Lander, resolving themselves into the the hovels of the chiefs, were given up to feat of completing a journey across the his Noah's ark of sheep, goats, pigs, and African Continent from Tripoli to Sockatoo, poultry, since probably even a prince triand again from Tripoli to Benin, for the butary to the Fellatah power, could not first time by Europeans, might appear the boast the riches of a Fellatah settler comgreater; we should say that in their ulti-prising generally horses and cattle. The mate consequences, the discoveries of Park, drudgery to which females are consigned, directed as they were almost singly towards is proof of the low state of civilization, the Niger, and promising as they do to open which could not, indeed, be presumed to up a highway of nations into the African be very exalted, where travellers like the interior, are incomparably the more mo- Landers paid their way handsomely in mentous. In confirmation of this view we have now occasion to take up the career of Richard Lander, and his triumphant descent of the Niger from Boussah, the scene of the death of Mungo Park, to the bosom of the Atlantic by the river Nun.

needles, tin plate, and metal buttons. Yet the political power of Borgou, a neighboring kingdom, and the number of its dependencies, formed themes for enlargement. Nikeh, its capital, was reputed as one of the largest cities of Central Africa, and said to hold subject to it seventy towns.

The brothers Lander, Richard and John, had certainly no very munificent encourage- It is necessary to mention that on reachment held out to them by the British Go- ing Boussah by overland journey, the vernment on the return of Richard to Eng- Landers embarked upon the Niger and asland after closing the eyes of Clapperton cended to Yaureh, with a view to recover Richard's gratuity in the event of returning the papers of Park. Clapperton had been successful from a new expedition, was to be deluded into a visit to Yaurch (which visit £100 sterling. John's nothing whatever; involved the necessity of a present to the for John was but permitted to accompany king who deluded him) by a futile promise his brother. Well was it for the record of of receiving Park's journals. The Landers their discoveries that John Lander did so. now found nothing but a few books and In a conflict with the natives, Richard's scraps of writing of no importance, cherishjournal perished. John's alone being pre-ed, however, as "white man's fetishes," or served, was, with some degree of absurdity, charms; for Park had found it his interest put into his brother's name, and so pub- to encourage the Negro notion that if a lished. As if Richard's being the only authorized Government discoveries, none other were genuine.

Moor's fetish were good, that of a white man must be better. The Landers found Yaureh to be a large walled city of twenty The route of Richard Lander, then, in or thirty miles circuit. Not that we are 1830, from Badagry to Boussah, coinciding to understand all this inclosed space to be so far with Clapperton's in 1826 and his occupied by streets and houses. In Africa, own in 1827, lics through the Yarribah the huts stand together in clusters, with country from the coast to the Niger. Yar- their relative pastures and tillage grounds ribah is the seat of cotton manufacture. annexed, even within such walled enclo At no time and at no place nigher than the sures. The population, nevertheless, apEgyptian era, and the Nile, has Africa been peared sufficiently redundant to exhibit the celebrated otherwise than fabulously for too familiar signs of great poverty amidst its architecture. Splendid visions of ima-manifest fertility. Sovereignty, in Africa,

is not very dignified. Considering the latah empire-the rule of the nomadic conslight elevation of his demeanor, habits, querors and Shepherd Kings of Sockatoo and pursuits, above those of the meanest over the Central African principalitiesaround him, the secret of the prince's des- widely and firmly as Clapperton had found potic power is palpably a mystery. As for it extended, had undergone serious changes his exchequer, excepting such petty tribute even at the period of the Landers' visit; as tolls and gifts from strangers, merchants, and the Fellatahs, whilst losing their hold and passengers, and possibly a direct con- on the central regions, were extending their cern in trade,- -revenue their African ma- conquests to the west. jesties positively seem to have none. It is The Niger flows eastward 120 miles frequently forgotten that the Niger has from Rabbah in a volume of water eight been navigated, as by the Landers, upwards miles wide, through well cultivated, from Boussah. At and near Boussah, both thickly inhabited shores, with large cities at above and below, it is contracted, according intervals along the banks. At the close of to their statement (which ought to be at- the reach, where the river again trends tentively weighed), to a narrow span, and southward to the sea, the trading town of probably separates into re-uniting branches, Eggah occupies a low position close to the since, further up, as well as further down, river, sometimes inundated by the waters, it regains its amplitude and spreads out in and housing a portion of its inhabitants, as each case into a magnificent sheet of water in China, in large roofed canoes, floating on several miles in breadth. In the assent to the water. Portuguese cloths from Benin, Yaureh, it is partially broad and spacious, exposed for sale at Eggab, gave the Lanbut broken more frequently by rocks into ders their first indications of an approach narrow channels, occasioning a navigation to the sea. Hence to Kacundah the Landifficult and even dangerous to the large ders noticed a fine shore, covered with nucanoes. Below Boussah, the Niger is merous villages. Forty miles below Kanavigable to Patashie, a fruitful and finely cundah, they saw the influx of the Chadwooded island. Twenty miles thence to dah, three or four miles in breadth at its Lever (the highest point to which Becroft junction with the Niger, and the trading subsequently ascended in the Ethiope) the mart of Kuttum-Karafféh at the point of channel is full of rocks and sandbanks, ren-union. The Chaddah was covered with dering the progress difficult. But from numerous canoes. At Damugoo they noLever to the ocean the river is broad and noble, sometimes as broad as six, seldom less than one, and averaging usually two or three miles. Where they are not flat and marshy, the banks are beautifully wooded, with singing birds amongst the branches, and green festoons of creeping plants drooping from the trees. Lofty mountains, gloomy and romantic, border the lower Niger, fringed with stunted shrubs and overhanging precipices.

1

ticed another symptom of the neighborhood of the sea-the scanty clothing of the natives was of Manchester cotton. In a scuffle with the natives below Kirree, Richard Lander lost his journal. The country below Kirree to Eboe, presented the appearance of an alluvial swamp covered with villages concealed in vast entangled forests -a desert, save for the number of people coming down the river. There was no grain in the fields; no cattle were on From Rabbah, the point to which the the meadows; the banana, the plantain, latest expedition penetrated, it is interest- and the yam, trees and roots alone, with ing to compare notes with the brothers fish caught from the river, furnished the Lander. Rabbah was descried by the inhabitants their food. But even then the Landers from the opposite shore of Zago-Landers remarked, what has proved so shey, and is described by them as the larg-striking to recent observation, that the est and most flourishing city of Nyffeh, sur-palm tree afforded not only a refreshing rounded by a fertile corn country, boasting of horned cattle remarkable for their size, and horses admired for their strength and beauty. Rabbah has since been levelled

juice, but palm oil sufficient for an extensive trade. The Delta of the Niger in fact commences at Kirree, where a branch (apparently the Ethiope) diverges to Benin. About seventy miles further, at Eboe, it As we shall have occasion to advert to separates into numerous channels, interthe political condition of these countries, secting the country in every direction, and and particularly to the cause of the fall of entering the Atlantic by numerous estuaRabbah, it is proper to state that the Fel-ries. Eboe, where the habitations are

with the dust.

formed of yellow clay, thatched with palms, and sheltered with trees, is filled with a busy, bad, dissolute, cruel, but commercial race. Obie, the king of Eboe, put a ransom of twenty bars on the Landers, and detained them until king Boy of Brass Town, "speculating for the rise," took their book or bill for thirty-five, and they were conveyed by King Boy on board the English brig Thomas, lying in the mouth of the Nun, passing on their way through the immense swamps of the Nun river covered with impenetrable forests of mangrove, where Brass Town stands on a creek half buried in mud.

lumbine, a fine brig of 200 tons. They left Liverpool 19th July, 1832, and having obtained a supply of Kroomen on the coast of Guinea, reached the mouth of the Nun in three months after quitting Liverpool, crossed the difficult bar (but had scarcely done so ere the work of death commenced), and there they lost the captain and one of the engineers of the Quorra. The steamers ascended the river. The Columbine anchored within reach of the sea breezes. Neither land nor mud was visible to the steamers for thirty miles upwards, mangrove trees alone marking the channel. Ulcers, guinea worms, and cutaneous erupThe entire course of the Niger then is tions, covered the persons of the miserable this: Rising amid the mountains of Kisseh, inhabitants of the swamps. At length the two hundred miles from Sierra Leone, it river grew wider, the banks higher, the passes through the countries of Foota Jallo woods thicker, the trees more stately. The and Kankan, taking its course at Bamma- mangrove thickets disappeared. A hunkoo over the fine plain of Bambarra, pass-dred and sixty miles up they arrived at ing Sego, the capital, in volume equal to Eboe. The population in the Delta, from the Thames at Westminster, flowing north the sea to Eboe, they estimated not to exwesterly into and through Lake Dibbie, till ceed four thousand adults, but here they it passes Timbuctoo, thence passing to had now a town of from eight hundred to a Yaureh, and from Yaureh to the sea, after thousand houses, with an average of six to a course of altogether more than three a household. A little above Eboe, large thousand miles. The base of the triangle branches issued from the river to Benin forming the Delta of the Niger, is three and Bonny. Higher up, the Quorra was a hundred miles in length from Cape For-mile and a half broad. The scenery still mosa to Old Calabar. Its vertex at Kirree improved, but death continued to deal is a hundred and seventy miles inland; forth havoc. Fifteen out of thirty-seven and its area is twenty-four thousand square miles, equal to half the superficies of England. The Delta of the Niger is one dreary swamp, whence death and disease are exhaled by the smiting rays of the tropical sun, from the dark and gloomy shades of the mangrove forests, those amphibious trees that extend their roots with their branches over the swampy soil, till multiplied enormously in their watery stations.

men died within a few days. The sick at length caught sight of the mountains, stretching before them the promise of a better climate. They reached Attah, perched upon lofty overhanging cliffs two hundred feet perpendicular. And they pronounced it the only place on the river where a European could possibly exist for any lengthof time.

The river above Attah forces its way through the mountains (sandstone resting The geographical question of the Niger on granite), all of flat summits and equal was settled by the Landers. All subse- height, apparently 2500 to 3000 feet above quent attempts to explore the stream, the level of the river. Bokweh or Iccoreh whether originating in government enter- Island Market, the largest on the river, is prise or private speculation, have had in held every ten days on a sand bank, attendview the establishment of commercial in-ed by thousands of people from distances tercourse. Mr. Macgregor Laird, and Mr. of two and three hundred miles. The suOldfield, were the sole survivors of the first perior reach is described as opening to the Liverpool commercial expedition, to which view an immense river, three thousand Richard Lander fell a victim. He died at yards wide, as far as the eye could reach, Fernando Po, 16th February, 1834, of a flowing majestically between lofty banks, gunshot wound received on the Niger. studded with clumps of trees and brushThis ill-fated expedition consisted of two wood, like a gentleman's park. Smoke steamers built expressly for the occasion arose from the towns. Canoes in large the Quorra, 112 feet in length, and the numbers floated on the river, in security Alburkah, constructed entirely of wrought and peace. Between Eboe and the coniron, and only 70 feet long; with the Co-fluence of the Chaddah, Mr. Laird com

putes that there may be forty towns and [ Fundah, and less than fifty miles from the villages, occurring as they do every two or banks of the Chaddah. At length Mr. three miles, and averaging a thousand inhabitants each.

The mortality which had attended the expedition of Laird and Oldfield, led to the reflection, whether, amidst the numerous outlets of the Niger, a better access might not be discovered, than by the dead

They

Oldfield, in the Alburkah, descended the Quorra in June, 1834-all the Europeans Mr. Laird visited Fundah, situated upon who had accompanied him dead-and even a creek of the Chaddah.. The king's pa- the black crew diminished and disorderly. lace is an immense assemblage of circular Mr. Becroft subsequently entered the huts, covering nine or ten acres, inclosed river, in September, 1836, and ascended to with a mud wall fifteen feet high. Mr. Attah-Kuddah, near the mouth of the Laird subsequently descended in the Quor-Chaddah; trading successfully for three ra to the coast; but Lander and Oldfield months, with the casualty of only one resolved on penetrating to Boussah in the death and two cases of illness. Alburkah. They first, however, entered the Chaddah, and ascended it a hundred miles. The breadth of the Quorra above its junction with the Chaddah was found by Oldfield to continue about 3500 yards. Numerous islands intercepted the view of ly swamps of the Nun. An approach by the banks, and prevented the position of the Benin River was suggested by Mr. many tributaries of the river being defined. Jamieson of Liverpool, who, at his own The steam-vessel forced its way through expense, built the Ethiope steamer, at channels but recently filled with water, and Liverpool, in command of which Captain choked with long grass and numerous shells. Becroft entered the Benin in April, 1840, The population was found to be so dense, with a ship's company of fifteen Europeans that, on descrying one town, four or five and a complement of Kroomen. others were discovered in succession, with found it a fine bold river, varying in depth natives in every direction, as thick as crowds from six to three fathoms, as far as forty on market days in England. Eleven large miles from the sea; but, at that point, a and populous towns, within a stone's throw bifurcation took place. Both branches of each other, extend up the river imme- were ascended, but were found to be not diately after passing Eggah-gineh, or Ba- only very tortuous, but navigable only forty chinkuh, a place under the dominion of or fifty miles up respectively. Moreover Edressah, a tributary of the Fellatahs. the water of both these streams was so The Alburkah anchored before Rabbah on different in its character from that of the the 18th September, between five and six Niger, that Captain Becroft was satisfied. hundred miles from the sea. To Oldfield they had no connexion with that river. He the town seemed immense. Its inhabitants found his way, however, to the Niger by he computed at 40,000. Inhabited by a its Warree branch, which joins the Benin mixture of Houssahs, Yarribahs, Ibeddohs, a short distance from its mouth. But the and Nyfféhs, it was nevertheless tributary entrance proved much more intricate than to Sockatoo, and under the rule of the Fel- by the Nun, and quite as bad in respect of latahs. These individuals, holding the swamps. The first officer of the Ethiope, paramount power in Soudan, are not ne- two seamen, and two boys, were carried groes, but, according to Oldfield, have off by sickness. Captain Becroft in this woolly hair; and, like the Tuaryks, or tribes instance traded up the Niger to Rabbah, of the desert, carefully cover the mouth and and remained there for some time experinose, leaving the eyes alone visible. Rab-encing great kindness from chiefs and peobah, from its favorable position in the cen- ple. He found indigo of native preparatre of a populous country, commanded an tion in the market (in small quantity only extensive traffic. It was visited by Arabs for their own consumption), and cotton from Tripoli, and by merchants from Tim-tobes of native make and dye. Expecting buctoo and Bornou as well as by traders to ascend from this point to Boussah, he from the Guinea Coast. The attempts of found his progression the fourth day imLander and Oldfield to reach Boussah had peded by rapids impassable to a steamer of to be abandoned. But before finally quit-thirty horse power, and he returned to the ting the river, Mr. Oldfield learned some coast on the 30th October. important particulars respecting the great When at the Lever rapids referred to, town of Toto, the largest in that part of Captain Becroft was thirty or forty miles the country, situated thirty miles east of from Boussah, to which point Mungo Park