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.

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