AFRICAN ASSOCIATION. 77 



fibly, and without attracting the notice of their barbarous 

 customers, raised the kantary by which the gum is measured, 

 from five hundred to two thousand pounds weight. 



CHAPTER VII. 



Early Proceedings of the African Aasociatton — Ledyard, 

 Lucasy Houghton. 



The preceding narrative of French and English dis- 

 coveries proves the imperfect success with which the earher 

 attempts to penetrate into the interior of Africa, though 

 made by the most powerflil nations of Europe, were at- 

 tended. While the remotest extremities of land and sea in 

 other quarters of the globe had been reached by British en- 

 terprise, this vast region remained an unseemly blank in the 

 map of t'ne earth. Such a ciicumstance was felt as dis- 

 creditable to a great maritime and commercial nation, as 

 well as to the sciences upon which the extension of geogra- 

 phical knowledge depends. To remove this reproach, a 

 body of spirited individuals formed themselves into what 

 G2 



