By RICHARD and JOHN LANDER.
_With Portraits, Engravings, and a Map, showing the course of the
Niger._
With slight encouragement from the Colonial Office, these young men set
out on an enterprise which in all previous instances had led to death;
and all who knew the nature of the climate, and the hardships they
must encounter, predicted that the only news their countrymen would
ever receive concerning them, would be some obscure rumour of their
destruction. The narrative shows how often such predictions were on
the point of being verified. There is scarcely a misery to be endured
by human nature that these young men have not encountered; they have
been frequently on the brink of death--they have been imprisoned--they
have been sold as slaves--they have been plundered, and obliged to swim
for their lives, not sure, in the end, that they were not swimming
into greater danger--and, to crown the whole, they have been brutally
treated and nearly sacrificed to the cupidity and revenge of savages
by one of their own countrymen. In spite of all these obstacles, by
means of patience and perseverance, by enthusiasm and resignation, by
courage and long-suffering, they finally triumphed over every species
of resistance, and, what is more, completely gained their object.
The result of Captain Clapperton’s discoveries was a very shrewd guess
that the Niger flowed westward, and into the Bight of Benin. With the
view of ascertaining this, the Landers were set down at the same point
of the coast of Guinea where the former expedition had commenced.