vinced me of my error by
calling me by my name. Our meeting was a melancholy one, for he had
buried his companion. Notwithstanding the state of weakness in which
I found Captain Clapperton, he yet spoke of returning to Sudan after
the rains." But this was not to be, and a month later we find the two
explorers turning homewards to Tripoli, where they arrived at the end
of January.

But, with all his long travelling in Africa, Clapperton had not seen
the Niger, and, although the effects of his fever had not worn away,
he spent but two months in England before he was off again. This time
he sailed to the Gulf of Guinea, and from a place on the coast near
the modern Lagos he started by a new and untried route to reach the
interior of the great Dark Continent. It was September 1825 when he
left the coast with his companions. Before the month was over, the
other Europeans had died from the pestilential climate of Nigeria,
and Clapperton, alone with his faithful servant, Richard Lander,
pushed on. At last he saw the great Niger near the spot where Mungo
Park and his companions had perished. At Bussa they made out the tragic
story of his end. They had descended the river from Timbuktu to Bussa,
when the boat struck upon some rocks. Natives from the banks shot at
them with arrows; the white men then, seeing all was lost, jumped into
the river and were drowned. The Niger claimed its explorer in the end,
and the words of Mungo Park must have occurred to Clapperton as he
stood and watched: "Though I myself were half-dead, I would still
persevere; and if I could not succeed in the object of my journey,
I would at least die on the Niger."

From Bussa, Clapperton made his way to Kano and Sokoto; but on 13th
April 1827, broken down by fever, he died in the arms of his faithful
servant. With his master's papers and journal, Lander made his way
home, thus establishing for the first time a direct connection between
Benin and Tripoli, the west coast and the north.

Still the mouth of the Niger had not been found. This discovery was
reserved for this very Richard Lander and his brother John.

Just a year after the death of Clapperton a young Frenchman, Rene Caille,
tempted by the offer of ten thousand francs offered by the French
Geographical Society for the first traveller who should reach that
mysterious city, entered Timbuktu 20th April 1829, after a year's
journey from Sierra Leone. And from his pen we get the first direct
account