In Investigating The Advantages Which May Be Supposed To Flow To The Country By The Discoveries Of The Landers, We

Fear that they have been much over-rated, for great and almost insuperable obstacles have to be surmounted, before the

Savages of Africa can be brought to relinquish their usual habits, or in any manner to forego those advantages which the traffic in human flesh so bountifully presents to them. The chiefs, who rule over the uncivilized hordes, who are located on the banks of the Quorra, are all engaged in a kind of commercial relation with the Europeans, by whom it is found necessary to conciliate them, by sometimes, the most obsequious conduct, degrading to a man of civilization, when shown towards an ignorant, tyrannical, and despotic tyrant. Any attempt to force a channel of commerce, beyond the territories of these savage chiefs, without having first, either by presents or other means, obtained their co-operation, is too visionary a scheme for even the most enterprising adventurer to dare to undertake. King Jacket and King Boy, with the king of Eboe, may be said to be in the command of the estuary of the Niger, and, therefore, any attempt to establish a channel of commerce without allowing them to participate in the profits, or to be permitted to exact a duty on all goods passing by water through their territory, must necessarily prove abortive. The jealousy of their character would be aroused, they would see in the traffic of the European a gradual decline of their own emoluments, and by degrees a total exclusion from those branches of commerce, from which they had hitherto derived the greatest profit. 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. Notwithstanding, however, the latter serious drawback to the prosecution of our geographical knowledge of the interior of Africa, there are yet to be found amongst us some hardy, gallant spirits, who, fearless of every danger, and willing to undergo every privation which the human constitution can endure, are still anxious to expose themselves to such appalling perils, for the promotion of science and the general welfare of the human race. Amongst those individuals, a young gentleman of the name of Coulthurst has rendered himself conspicuous. He was the only surviving son of C. Coulthurst, Esquire, of Sandirvay, near Norwich, and was thirty-five years of age at the time of his death. He was educated at Eton, studied afterwards at Brazen Nose College, Oxford, and then went to Barbadoes, but from his infancy his heart was set on African enterprise. His family are still in possession of some of his Eton school books, in which maps of Africa, with his supposed travels into the interior, are delineated; and at Barbadoes he used to take long walks in the heat of the day, in order to season himself for the further exposure, which he never ceased to contemplate. His eager desires also took a poetical form, and a soliloquy of Mungo Park, and other pieces of a similar description, of considerable merit, were written by him at different times. The stimulus that at length decided him, however, was the success of the Landers. He feared that if he delayed longer, another expedition would be fitted out on a grand scale, and leave nothing which an individual could attempt.

It was in December 1831, that Messrs. Coulthurst and Tyrwhitt were introduced to the council of the Geographical Society, as being about to proceed at their own expense to the mouth of the Quorra, with the view of endeavouring to penetrate thence eastward to the Bahr-Abiad; and although their preparations were not on such a scale as to warrant any very sanguine hopes of success, yet it was felt to be a duty on the part of the society to patronize so spirited an undertaking. They were accordingly placed in communication with Colonel Leake, and other members of the late African Association, whose advice it was thought could not fail to be of service to them. They were also introduced to Captain Owen and to Mr. Lander, the value of whose experience in planning their operations was obvious. And the expedition being brought under the notice of his majesty's government, the loan of a chronometer was obtained for it, with strong letters of introduction and recommendation to the officers commanding the naval and military forces of the crown along the African coast.

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