British Nigeri

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. SLOW PROGRESS. The Expedition of 1832?Macgregor Laird?Richard Lander's Death?An Ill-fated Enterprise?The Great Expedition of 1841?The Voyages of the Albert and the Wilberforce?A Melancholy Tale?The Niger Gets a Bad Name. WE now enter on a new phase of Niger history. The explorers had performed...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. SLOW PROGRESS. The Expedition of 1832?Macgregor Laird?Richard Lander's Death?An Ill-fated Enterprise?The Great Expedition of 1841?The Voyages of the Albert and the Wilberforce?A Melancholy Tale?The Niger Gets a Bad Name. WE now enter on a new phase of Niger history. The explorers had performed their part, in so far that they had found out that the river was of immense size and that its banks were densely populated. It remained therefore for traders and philanthropists to open up the country, and the expeditions of the next few years endeavoured to establish friendly relations with the people, in the hope of inducing them to permit free intercourse with Europeans. The Landers, in describing their adventurous journey, so impressed their countrymen with the immense resources of the new land, that, within a year of their return, the first of the trading expeditions had set sail from England. The Government refused to have any connection with the new scheme, which was a speculation on the part of a Liverpool merchant, and although as regards trade it cannot be said to have proved otherwise than a dismal failure, its originator?Macgregor Laird?lived to see that failure often leads to success. Had hardship not undermined his constitution, his old age might have been cheered by the knowledge that his foresight laid the foundation of England's most prosperous possession in West Africa.f The expedition of A Voyage Down the Dark River, by Richard and John Lander, 1832. f Macgregor Laird was born at Greenock in 1808, educated at Edinburgh, and early in life became a partner with his father in an engineering business at Liverpool. This he gave up for African1832 is famous in Niger history, not so much by reason of its being the first of its kind, as because, ...