That The Commerce Of The Interior Of Africa Offers The Most Tempting Advantages To The Enterprising British Merchant Cannot Be Doubted, For The Two Articles Alone Of Indigo And Ivory Would Repay The Speculator With A Profit Of Nearly 1000 Per Cent.

This circumstance was sufficient to arouse the commercial spirit of the merchants of Glasgow, who, on the return of

The Landers with the information of the discovery of the termination of the Niger, proceeded immediately to form a company, having a capital of L10,000, for establishing a commercial intercourse with the chiefs of the interior of Africa, forgetting at the time, that before they could reach the territories of those chiefs, they had in the persons of King Boy, King Jacket, and King Forday, and the king of the Eboe country, a gauntlet to run through, and a kind of quadruple alliance to extinguish, without which all their efforts would be in vain. The death of Lander put an end to this speculation, as it was then clearly seen that unless the actual constitution of the countries situate on the banks of the Quorra, could be placed under a different authority, and the people brought to a state of positive submission, it were futile to expect any solid or permanent advantages from any commercial relations they might form. The insalubrity of the climate, so very injurious to a European constitution, was also a great drawback to the prosecution of those commercial advantages, which the discovery of the termination of the Niger offered to this country; it was literally sending men to die a premature death to embark them on board of an African trader, and we have the authority of the late Captain Fullerton for stating, that he scarcely ever knew an individual who, although he might escape the pestilential fevers of the country for the second, and even the third or fourth time, that did not eventually die.

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