THE DEATH OF RICHARD LANDER. 
21 
further supply of goods, which he imprudently displayed 
on a sand-bank before he had passed the Delta. He 
thus excited the cupidity of the natives, who attacked 
him from the banks, and in numerous canoes. Aban- 
doning the launch, he attempted to escape down the 
river, keeping his pursuers at bay with a few guns, but 
was unhappily wounded by a musket ball, and survived 
but a few days after his arrival at Fernando Po, where 
lie the mortal remains of this amiable and enterprising 
traveller; surrounded now by many of our comrades, 
victims of the fatal climate of the Niger. 
Mr. Oldfield, after surmounting very great difficulties, 
W’as obliged to abandon the river. The two steamers 
were left to decay at Fernando Po, and thus terminated 
this spirited, but unsuccessful and fatal enterprise. 
The river had been subsequently navigated' by Mr. 
Becroft, a veteran on the coast of Africa, to whose 
prompt exertions the ‘Albert’ was subsequently Indebted 
for salvation. He succeeded in getting fifty miles 
beyond Rabba, when he was stopped by rocks and 
rapids which it was found impossible to pass. 
We have thus endeavoured briefly, to make the 
reader acquainted with the progress of discovery, in 
this part of Africa, previously to the fitting out of the 
expedition of which the following pages are the 
tive. 
narra- 
