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,
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