INTERIOR COUNTRIES OF AFRICA. 



FEZZAN, BORNOU, CASHNA TOMBUCTOO, HOUSSA a 

 DAR-FUR, &c. 



IT having been long a subject of complaint that Europeans know 

 very little, if any thing, of the interior districts of Africa, a number of 

 learned and opulent individuals formed themselves into a society for 

 the purpose of exploring them. The association was formed on the 

 9th of June, in the year 1788 ; and on the same day a committee of its 

 members, viz. lord Rawdon, the Bishop of Landaff, sir Joseph Banks, 

 Mr. Beaufoy, and Mr. Stuart, were invested with the direction of 

 its funds, the management of the correspondence, and the choice of 

 persons to whom the geographical mission was to be assigned. Per~ 

 suaded of the importance of the object which the association had in 

 view, their committee lost no time in executing the plan which it 

 had formed. Two gentlemen were recommended to them; and ap- 

 pearing to be eminently qualified for making the projected researches, 

 they were chosen. One was Mr. Ledyard; the other a Mr. Lucas. 



' Mr. Ledyard undertook, at his own desire, the difficult and peri- 

 lous task of traversing from east to west, in the latitude attributed to 

 the Niger, the widest part of the continent of Africa. On this bold 

 adventure he left London June 30, 1788, and arrived at Cairo on the 

 19th of August. 



' Here he transmitted such accounts to his employers as manifest 

 him to have been a traveller who observed, reflected, and compared; 

 and such was the information which he collected here from the tra- 

 velling slave-merchants, and from others, respecting the interior dis- 

 tricts of Africa, that he was impatient to explore them. He wrote to 

 the committee, that his next communication would be from Sennaar. 

 (six hundred miles to the south of Cairo:) but death attributed to 

 various causes, arrested him at the commencement of his researches, 

 and disappointed the hopes which were entertained of his projected 

 journey. 



' Mr. Lucas embarked for Tripoli, October 18, 1788, with instruc- 

 tions to proceed over the desert of Zahara to Fezzan, to collect, and to 

 transmit, by way of Tripoli, whatever intelligence the people of Fez- 

 zan, or the traders thither, might be able to afford respecting the in- 

 terior of the continent ; and to return by the way of Gambia, or the 

 coast of Guinea. 



' Instructions to undertake great enterprises, are more easily given 

 than executed. So Mr. Lucas found ; only a part of the plan was this 

 geographical missionary able to carry into execution. He set out, in- 

 deed, mounted on a handsome mule, presented to him by the bey, the 

 pasha's eldest son, in company with the shereefs, for the kingdom of 

 Fezzan, intending to penetrate from Tripoli even to Gambia; but his 



