16

THE RIDDLE OF THE NIGER

With Ross's departure a peeved silence emanated from Barrow on the subject of the Arctic. It was his chosen terrain, the object of his brightest dreams. That it should be sullied by Ross – who might, horribile dictu, even succeed in finding the North-West Passage – was almost beyond contemplation. Fortunately, Barrow had another enterprise with which to occupy himself. Richard Lander, that ‘very intelligent young man’1 who had survived Clapperton's expedition in search of the Niger, was pressing to complete the task.

Barrow did not have a high opinion of Lander as a serious explorer. There had been all those faults in his journal, as he had pointed out to John Murray. On the other hand, to a snob like Barrow, these faults were only to be expected of a man whose father kept the Fighting Cocks public house in Truro. The poor man obviously knew no better, so why not let him have a second stab at the Niger? ‘No one in my opinion,’ Barrow informed the Colonial Office, ‘would make their way so well and with a bundle of beads and bafts and other trinkets, we could land him somewhere about Bonny and let him find his way.’² And if he died, ran the sub-text, it would be no great loss. Lander himself was aware of his status. His submitted plan ended with the comment that should the expedition perish there was at least the consolation ‘that the gap we may make in society will be hardly noticed at all’.3

Apart from his dispensability there was another aspect of Lander's expedition which appealed enormously to Barrow: it was very, very cheap. Where the Arctic expeditions had run into tens of thousands of pounds, Lander asked only for £100 or so in travelling expenses, plus free passage to his starting point, rudimentary equipment and gifts from official stores (to the value of £96 and £260 respectively) and a pension of £100 for himself and the same amount for his wife while he was away. Lander's brother John was to accompany him free of charge. The shoestring nature of the expedition was outlined in a pathetically supplicatory letter written by Lander to Barrow on 16 October 1829. (The latter's pencilled comments appear in brackets.)

Sir,

In obedience to your desire I have fully considered the proposition contained in Mr. Hay's letter for my journey into Africa. The assistance to be obtained … includes some description of weapons of defence, which … will only be a fowling piece, a small pair of pocket pistols and a sword and tent. It will also be requisite to be furnished with pens and paper and some journal books with a pocket compass and thermometer which I hope may be granted without any expense to me. (Agreed this)

I am not aware whether the allowance for presents will be sufficient but I hope, should it be necessary upon my arrival to the coast, that I may be permitted to exceed the same by a few pounds (only £10) and that some allowance may be granted to the natives who accompany me, which although it may not be a great sum (sum must be specified) yet will be more than I can afford from my own pocket.

I further beg to state that it will be proper for me to be supplied with a small portion of medicine which I hope will also be granted to me free of any expense. (A small medicine chest to be given)

I should particularly wish if there be no objection to it, that my brother, John Lander be permitted to accompany me (agreed to) as my companion on my lonely journey, and in the event of its being complied with that directions for his passage in addition to my own may be given (agreed to – but no salary to be considered) accordingly. This favour, above all, will not, I trust, be denied me, for in the unknown countries through which I shall have to pass, an associate, and that associate my brother, would reconcile me to any danger or difficulty that may attend my progress.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your very humble and faithful servant,

R. Lander.4

Lander's instructions were magnificently vague: he was to find the Niger, follow it to the sea if that was where it went, or if it did not go there then to follow it to Lake Chad, where it might or might not end up, and failing that to follow it to wherever it did go, at which point he could return home by whichever route seemed convenient. The only point on which his orders were specific was that he send interim reports whenever practicable, ‘furnishing the bearer with a note, setting forth the reward he is to have for his trouble, and requesting any English person, to whom it is presented, to pay that reward, on the faith that it will be repaid to him by the British government’.⁵ If Lander was going to die, as was statistically probable, they did not want to send a further expedition to retrieve his findings. Paying some Africans a few pence for his bulletins was much more sensible.

The Colonial Office was not being wholly opportunistic. Barrow had rejected two other proposals as impracticable (they were pursued independently nevertheless but both leaders died at the outset). However, at the end of the day, Lander's was a suicide mission.

Lander's plan was to make his way to Bussa, his last point of contact with the Niger, where he would endeavour to find out more about Mungo Park's fate and if possible recover the journal of his last days, then follow the river downstream to its mouth. He and his brother left Portsmouth on 9 January 1830, bumping their way round the forts and coastal stations which studded the belly of West Africa, at one of which they engaged the services of Pasko, Richard's old guide, as well as Aboudah and Jowdie, his erstwhile wives, before paddling through the surf at Badagry on 22 March to be ‘flung with violence on the burning sands’.16

Lander was not going to make the mistake of previous expeditions. From harsh experience he knew that waistcoats and thick uniforms made poor travelling gear in Africa. Instead, he and his brother were to wear straw hats, long gowns and baggy breeches in the accepted Muslim style. The Badagrians greeted them with due hilarity. Everyone knew that white men wore impracticable costumes of thick cloth. This new manifestation fooled nobody. Giggling, they led the strangers to Chief Adele.

Adele was not a happy man: times had been hard. He had lost all his best generals, one of whom had endured the indignity of having his left hand chopped off and his right hand nailed to his head. In addition Adele's house had caught fire. In it had been his store of gunpowder which blew up spectacularly. As the townspeople approached to see what was happening they discovered that Adele's house had also contained his large collection of loaded muskets. The detonating weapons caused widespread injuries. Then, as a finale, the fire took hold and razed much of Badagry. What was more, Adele informed Lander in sombre tones, he had been very poorly of late.

The tale of woe having been told, Adele informed the Landers that the interior was in far too hazardous a state for them to continue and that, as they were his friends, he could not possibly allow them to leave Badagry. So began the endless process of bribes and haggling with which Lander's party was to make its way inland. With him Lander had brought a selection of gaudy uniforms, fifty yards of fine cloth, fifty razors, 100 combs and pipes, 110 mirrors, two silver medals and 50,000 needles – ‘Whitechapel sharps’ – with which he hoped to fund his progress. A selection was presented to Adele who received them with doleful disdain. The only item to catch his fancy was a naval surgeon's coat but even this he returned sorrowfully, telling Lander that it was meant for a boy and that he was slightly insulted by it. Then he came down to business. What he really wanted was ‘four regimental coats, such as are worn by the King of England, for himself, and forty less splendid than these, for the use of his captains; two long brass guns to run on swivels; fifty muskets; twenty barrels of gunpowder; four handsome swords and forty cutlasses … a half-dozen rockets and a rocket gun with a soldier … capable of undertaking the management of it’.7 There was also the matter of a chest of carpenter's tools and a set of oils and brushes for, as Adele informed Lander, he had mastered all arts from woodwork to painting and lacked only the skill of a tailor.

Lander asked with misplaced sarcasm whether there was anything else the chief wanted. Adele pondered, puffing a long pipe. Yes, he had forgotten to mention four casks of grapeshot and a barrel load of flints plus a large umbrella. He later added to this list a gunboat with 100 English sailors. And some more pipes would not come amiss. This was not a man to be bought off with a few trinkets.

Fortunately, Lander had come prepared for Adele's demands. As well as the usual rubbish he had laid in forty muskets and twenty signal rockets. These he handed over, with the lie that the remainder of Adele's order would be supplied in due course. This did the trick. Adele informed him that the way ahead was now less dangerous than it had been and Lander left the ‘abominable place’⁸ of Badagry with relief. The news that he was going to miss a mass sacrifice of 300 people put an extra spring into his step.

As the Landers made their way through familiar settlements Richard noted that his reception, while not actively hostile, was not the same as when he had last passed that way. Then, he and Clapperton had been seen as ‘messengers of peace’,⁹ the bringers of good, soothers of discord. But now they were heralded as dangerous interlopers. ‘The rapturous exultation,’ wrote Lander, ‘which glowed in the cheeks of the first Europeans that visited this country on being gazed at, admired, caressed, and almost worshipped as a god – joined to the delightful consciousness of his own immeasurable superiority, will, in the present age at least, never be experienced by any other. Alas! What a misfortune! The eager curiosity of the natives has been glutted by satiety – an European is shamefully considered to be no more than a man!’10

The Landers reached the Niger on 17 June 1830 at Bussa, the furthest point downstream that any European – man or god – had penetrated. They were shown a few more relics of Park's expedition which had been salvaged from the river. For an instant, as the local ruler began to unwrap what was obviously a book, their hearts ‘beat high with expectation’.¹¹ Was this the missing journal? Alas, it was no more than Park's book of logarithms containing also a tailor's bill and an invitation to dine with a Mr and Mrs Watson of the Strand. The book was not to be given away, being revered, as the Landers noted, ‘as a household god’.¹² (It was purchased twenty-seven years later by a British officer for the price of a small knife.) However, they were made a gift of a fine robe which they later discovered – although the ruler did not admit it – was the one Park had been wearing when he had drowned.

A trip upstream to Yauri revealed nothing save that the local chief was unfriendly and had no knowledge of Park's journal. ‘How do you think I could have the books of a person that was lost at Bussa?’¹³ he asked coldly, but not unreasonably. But he did sell them a fine shot-gun and a cutlass which Park had sent ashore as a gift. At Yauri the Landers had reached the limits of equatorial prosperity. It disturbed them. On their journey to Bussa they had been impressed at the briskness of the local economy. They had seen people spinning cotton and silk, carving wooden bowls, stitching leather for shoes and saddles, hammering brass and iron into stirrups, bits, chains and fetters. The cloth from Bussa was at least as good, if not as plentiful, as that which was coming out of Manchester. In Yauri, however, the inhabitants were poor and ill-fed, the air was ‘humid and unwholesome, being impregnated with all matter of noxious effluvia … from the large pools of impure water which existed more or less in every quarter of the town’.¹⁴ They tried in vain to buy a canoe for their journey downriver. But Yauri's ruler was not selling. When Lander attempted to convert goods into currency the chief accepted their trinkets but then reneged. All he could offer in return was a female slave, who was accepted reluctantly and given to Pasko.

The Landers were becoming worried. Their money was running out. The ‘Whitechapel sharps’ needles which were ‘warranted superfine and not to be cut in the eye’,15 proved often to have no eye at all. To save face the brothers had to throw most of the remainder away. They still had no canoe. And the peak period for safe navigation of the Niger was upon them. If they did not take advantage of it they might have to wait another year before conditions were right. But the ruler of Yauri would not let them go. His first excuse was that he had to write a letter to King George to explain the fact that he did not have Park's missing journal. It would take him three days. Then came the news that he had suffered a major setback in a war he was waging and needed time to recover. A little while later they received a number of seedy-looking feathers plucked from the ruler's finest ostrich. They were to be given to King George, the chief explained, but as was clear to anybody they were not of the quality one ruler would expect from another. Perhaps the Landers could wait until new feathers were available? He was doing his best to encourage new growth by rubbing twelve pounds of butter into the unfortunate bird's bottom. The Landers would not mind, he added reassuringly, if he deducted the cost of the butter from the amount he owed them. Then he announced that because of continuing hostilities he could not provide an escort to take them overland to Bussa. They would have to stay. Meanwhile they received daily visits from members of government and the chief's family demanding access to their precious medicine chest.

The Landers’ frustration was relieved by the arrival of a letter from Bussa wanting to know why they were being detained and ordering their immediate release. On Sunday 1 August, after a dreary interview with the chief in a courtyard full of swallow droppings, during which they acknowledged their debt to have been fulfilled, they were allowed to go. Feeling that some gesture was needed, they finally acceded to the demand for medicine. They administered a violent purge to the chief, his sister and the entire royal family. Then they left while the going was good.

They arrived in Bussa four days later, and took stock of their situation. The river, they decided, was an unpromising thing, ‘not more than a stone's throw across’.16 Contemplating it from a nearby rock they could hardly believe that Park had died in this miserable stretch of water. Still, it was indisputably the Niger and they intended to follow it to its end which, they believed, was the sea. However, they had been told on their journey from Yauri that it veered eastward and ended at Lake Chad. This disconcerting news would have been welcomed by Barrow, but the Landers greeted it with despair. After all their travails were they merely to end up in the middle of the Sahara?

Their one comfort was the realization that they had an unexpected source of income. Amongst their stores from England had been cans of powdered ‘portable soup’ which they had dismissed after one tasting as ‘worthless and unpalatable’.¹⁷ The people of Bussa treated the contents with equal disdain but the cans became valued style accessories. ‘We have been highly diverted,’ wrote John, ‘to see one man in particular walking at large, and strutting about with “Concentrated Gravy” stuck on his head in no less than four places.’¹⁸ As they sold their soup cans they were relieved to hear that the Niger did not end up in Lake Chad. The mistake had come about through the naming of a tributary of the Niger, the Tshadda or Benue, which did indeed snake northwards towards Lake Chad. But the main river, they were promised, emptied into salt water.

They were also able to add to their collection of Park-abilia by purchasing an iron-sprung leather cushion which had been retrieved from the river at the time of his death. At the same time they heard a tantalizing story concerning Park's journal. A man in the nearby town of Wawa had hoarded a collection of books and papers which had still been in his possession when Clapperton passed through. But since he had not been asked about them he had not volunteered their existence. In the intervening years they had rotted, fallen to pieces and been thrown away. If the story was true, and if the documents were indeed Park's journal, the Landers had answered one of the most burningly pointless questions of West African exploration – Park's route had already been retraced so his journal could offer no geographical information and only in the most unlikely of circumstances would it shed light on his death. Still, they could congratulate themselves on having amassed enough of Park's possessions to be assured a warm welcome in Britain whatever happened. In that quarter, at least, things were looking up.

But their prospects of travelling down the Niger seemed to be diminishing daily. A suitable canoe simply was not to be found. One was on its way, the King of Bussa informed them, but when it arrived it was ridiculously small and inadequate. Moreover, it cost them a large part of their dwindling resources. John Lander was beside himself. ‘There is infinitely more difficulty,’ he fumed, ‘and greater bustle and discussion in simply purchasing a canoe here, than there would be in Europe in drawing up a treaty of peace, or in determining the boundaries of an Empire.’19

Their stay in Bussa lengthened, and their wealth shrank. When they sent their last main article of barter, a donkey, to be sold at a local market and were told that it had been stolen along the way, they determined to leave with or without a canoe. The King replied that such a course would be ‘presumptuous and improper’,²⁰ but finally relented on 19 September. From nowhere a second canoe suddenly materialized and the Landers loaded it up. They took their leave with mixed feelings. For all his obstructiveness the King of Bussa had been a good-humoured and helpful host. But there was no doubting their relief at being free of him. ‘When our people were all embarked on the Niger, and ourselves, we humbly thanked the Almighty for past deliverances, and fervently prayed that He would always be with us and crown our enterprise with success.’²¹

On the whole, He did not smile upon the expedition. Both canoes leaked and required the constant bailing of three men to keep them afloat. And at every stop they were stalled by orders to stay awhile – and a while longer, and a while longer still. A mighty canoe lurked forever beyond the horizon but never materialized. ‘They have played with us as if we were great dolls.’ steamed John. ‘We have been driven about like shuttlecocks … Why this double dealing, this deceit, this chicanery?’22 It took all their skills in diplomacy – and most of their remaining gifts, including Park's precious robe – to maintain the impetus.

Down the Niger they travelled, recruiting teams of paddlers as they went. They passed Mount Kesa, a great volcanic plug rising sheer from the river. They tried to investigate the Benue as it flowed into the Niger, only to be swept back by the current. They were attacked by a herd of hippopotami. It was exciting, but not unbearably dangerous, and despite recurrent bouts of malaria the Landers were reasonably cheerful. Their financial situation improved in dribs and drabs. At some stops they were greeted as the gods they had once been and were showered with presents. Elsewhere, by some quirk of riverine inflation, their remaining stock of needles were in such demand that they were able to get a magnificent price for them. Set against this was the old business of the canoe which they solved by reluctantly stealing one here, borrowing one there, and purchasing for an enormous price another – leaking – elsewhere.

On 22 October they saw a seagull. The coast was near. At the same time the river traffic picked up. They were delighted to see a small vessel shaped iike a common butcher's tray’²³ go hissing past, crewed by ten children. Shortly afterwards they discovered the remains of a European gunpowder barrel. A little later they ‘saw an English iron bar, and feasted our eyes on the graceful cocoanut tree which we had not seen for so long. We were delighted also with the mellow whistling of grey parrots. Trifling as these circumstances may appear, yet they made our hearts beat with delight, and awakened in us a train of very pleasing association. We indulged in a delusive, yet fanciful reverie, and we fondly hoped – but what good would it be to tell of what we fondly hoped?’²⁴

Even at this stage in their travels the Landers were unaware of the effect so-called ‘civilization’ had had on Africa. They had seen the barracoons at Badagry, they had seen lines of slaves being marched south for export, they had even acquired several slaves themselves – albeit as gifts rather than by purchase. They knew full well the extent of the slave trade. But to them it was like a strange local custom, unpleasant but irrelevant to the task in hand. For all the hardships and idiosyncracies of the early stage of their journey the Landers had been treated well. The Africans upriver had bargained straightforwardly: the Landers needed things from them, they wanted things from the Landers; the outcome was generally decided in merchant-like fashion, even though the Landers resented the fact that they came off worst. Downriver, in contrast, lay the most brutal zone of the Niger: that area which had been influenced by Europe and whose inhabitants had learned from the white man the true meaning of rapacity.

The Landers paddled hopefully towards it. At every stop they were warned to go no further, or at least to wait until there was an escort to guide them through the dangers ahead. But the warnings were ignored. John and Richard Lander had had enough of such delaying tactics. Their progress was heartened by signs of prosperity. One village at which they stopped spread along the bank for a full two miles. Everywhere were indications of European culture. Meanwhile ‘the magnificent Niger [seemed] to be slumbering in its own grandeur’.25 Surely the end was in sight!

It was. But not in the way they expected. On 5 November the Landers were overjoyed to encounter a flotilla of canoes flying a variety of flags. They were rather odd flags. Some bore pictures of decanters and glasses, some of chairs and tables, one had a man's leg printed on it but, gloriously, some boats were showing the Union Jack. Moreover, the men in the canoes were wearing shirts and coats.

Only when the canoes unveiled cannons did the Landers realize they had fallen into the hands of pirates. After a prolonged tussle, in which the Landers lost their clothes, Richard's journal, all Park's possessions and every article of value they possessed including their guns, they were hauled ashore and told that they were now the property of King Obie, who was currently away but in a few days’ time they would be taken downstream to meet him, at which point their fate would be decided. In the meantime they were placed under house arrest.

A few days later they were shoved into a canoe, with other slaves, and made the hazardous trip through the Niger's delta. In this they were lucky. The delta was understood only by its inhabitants and the Landers with their upriver crew would have been at a loss. In all likelihood they would have foundered in one of its many branches had it not been for their providential capture.

Somehow John Lander had managed to retain his notebook. Even during their capture he had scribbled down blow-by-blow descriptions of events. Richard's journal having been lost, it was now up to John to record their journey downstream to where King Obie awaited them. He noted everything of interest: other canoes, the size of houses, the loudness of their captors’ voices ‘which Stentor might have envied’,26 and the habit of one fellow slave of brushing her teeth rigorously with a twig – an example of dental hygiene quite astonishing to the two Britons. But nothing struck him so forcibly as the news that there was a British brig lying at the mouth of the river – the Thomas of Liverpool, ostensibly there to buy palm oil.

By the time they reached their destination and were brought before King Obie, John was sufficiently roused by the prospect of salvation and by a few meals of roast yam to let his descriptive powers run wild. Obie, a youngish man, was a sight to behold. ‘His head was graced with a cap shaped like a sugar loaf, and thickly covered with strings of coral and pieces of broken looking glass … his neck, or rather his throat, was encircled with several strings of the same kind of bead, which were fastened so tightly, as in some degree to affect his respiration, and to give his throat and cheeks an inflamed appearance … He wore a short Spanish surtout of red cloth, which fitted close to his person, being much too small … Thirteen or fourteen bracelets (we had the curiosity to count them) decorated each wrist, and to give them full effect, the sleeves of the coat had been cut off … The king's trousers [equally tight]… reached no further than the middle of his legs, the lower parts … being ornamented like the wrists and with precisely the same number of strings of beads; besides which, a string of little brass bells encircled each leg above the ankles.’27

The Landers stared in astonishment at this over-stuffed man in whose hands their destiny rested. With a full sense of occasion Obie ‘shook his feet for the bells to tinkle, sat down with the utmost self-complacency, and looked around him’.²⁸ After a lengthy period during which Obie listened to the Landers’ story through an interpreter, he announced his decision. The white men were his property. However, he was willing to release them to an English ship in exchange for goods to the value of twenty slaves.

The Landers were horrified. This was an outrageously high sum by any standards and certainly by those of the traders who frequented the West African coast. The chances of their ransom being met were reduced still further by Obie's insistence that they could not visit the coast themselves. Instead the business was to be conducted by messengers while the white men stayed where they were. Under these conditions the Landers had no realistic chance of being freed.

The next few days were painful. Weakened by fever and possessing not even a Whitechapel sharp with which to buy food, they were at the mercy of their captors. ‘We have been reduced to the painful necessity of begging,’ wrote John. ‘But we might have addressed our petitions to the stones or trees … never had we greater need of patience and lowliness of spirits. In most African towns and villages we have been regarded as demi-gods [this was wishful thinking] but here, alas, what a contrast! – we are classed with the most degraded and despicable of mankind, and are become slaves in a land of ignorance and barbarism.’²⁹ Ironically, the ignorance and barbarism was of his own culture's making.

By extraordinary good luck, a man stepped forward who was willing to factor their ransom. He was King Boy, a ruler from the coastal region of Brass. He announced that he would undertake the payment owing to Obie in return for a promise from the English ship that he would be paid the required twenty slaves’ worth as well as an extra fifteen slaves’ worth plus a cask of rum for his trouble. The Landers almost fell over themselves to agree and on 12 November bade farewell to King Obie – who was delighted that they had found such a neat solution to their problem and insisted they visit him again should they ever be in the area – before boarding King Boy's canoe. ‘Although distant about sixty miles from the mouth of the river, our journey appeared to me already completed and all our troubles and difficulties I considered at an end,’ Richard later wrote with relief. ‘Already in fond anticipation I was on board the brig, and had found a welcome reception from her commander – had related to him all the hardships and dangers we had undergone, and had been listened to with commiseration – already had I assured myself of his doing all he could to [help us].’30

For the first time in their travels they experienced the joys of swift, easy travel. King Boy's canoe was vast, holding sixty people, quantities of food and trade goods and all the weaponry needed for estuarine warfare. A cannon was strapped to the bows and cutlasses hung ready in case hand-to-hand combat was necessary. Apart from King Boy and his wife there was a captain, a mate, a boatswain, a coxswain and even a cook. It seemed a model of naval efficiency, down to the two enormous speaking trumpets which hung ready at the side of the canoe. With only two inches of gunwale showing above the water they sped downriver, forty paddles plunging in perfect unison.

With freedom in sight, the Landers recovered some of the grouches of civilization. The canoe was too noisy. The Landers had already decided that the men of Brass possessed the loudest voices known to mankind but when they discovered that the speaking trumpets were used not for issuing orders but to add vim to the abuse which the crew hurled at each other throughout the day, they were aghast ‘but we are constrained to submit to it in silence’.³¹ The canoe was also too cramped. When the Landers fell asleep, they were used as a convenient footrest by ‘Mr. and Mrs. Boy … It would be ridiculous to suppose that one can enjoy the refreshment of sleep … when two or more uncovered legs and feet, huge, black, and rough, are traversing one's face and body, stopping up the passages of respiration, and pressing so heavily upon them at times, as to threaten suffocation.’³² The Landers pinched the feet until they moved away. Then, when they were dropping off, the feet crept back. So it went on until the man nearest a speaking trumpet awoke and started a new day.

These were petty inconveniences, which John recorded ungratefully considering that King Boy had saved them from slavery. However, the experience did bring them together in a degree of friendship which would benefit the Landers when they finally arrived at Brass. The town was named after the Duke of Northumberland's gardener, one of the first people who had been sent to West Africa in the interests of science. He had brought back a number of interesting plants and had left behind him a settlement bearing his name. These homely associations meant nothing to the Landers. They saw ‘a wretched, filthy and contemptible place’33 whose houses seemed on the brink of sinking into the ground, and whose inhabitants, human and animal, wandered through the streets in a state of festering emaciation. Overseeing it all was the bleary eye of King Forday, King Boy's father.

King Forday was an amiable drunk, who was amazed that the Landers had travelled down the Niger as far as they had and immediately plied them with rum and held a ceremony in their honour. But he was not so amiable as to lose sight of commercial considerations. He informed the Landers that Boy's deal was perfectly acceptable, but just in case they decided to jump continent he would retain John and all their party, allowing only Richard to go to the Thomas. The two explorers had no choice but to agree.

Richard was paddled down the delta and at 7 a.m. on 17 November saw two European ships lying at anchor. One of them was a Spanish trader. The other was the Thomas. The past year's hardships rolled away. He had found the termination of the Niger, and there was an English boat waiting to sail him home. His ransom would be paid and glory would be his. ‘The emotions of delight,’ he recorded, ‘are quite beyond my powers of description.’³⁴

His delight didn't last long. Of the eight men who crewed the Thomas only four were still alive, and they were bedridden with fever. Only the captain, a man called Lake, was capable of movement and he was half delirious. Hopefully, Lander produced Barrow's orders, which were read to the illiterate Lake by one of his own stricken men. Lander explained that he wanted a bill written for the money owed his captors. Lake exploded. ‘If you think you have a — fool to deal with you are mistaken; I'll not give a b—y flint for your bill, I would not give you a — for it.’35 Richard Lander's hopes were crushed by a torrent of four-letter words. It was worse than anything he had encountered in all his time in Africa. ‘Never in my life did I feel such humiliation as at this moment. On our way through the country we had been treated well; we had been in the habit of making presents as had been expected from us; and, above all, we had maintained our character among the natives by keeping our promises. This was no longer in our power, as my means were all expended … I had promised the price of our ransom should be paid by the first of our countrymen that we might meet with, on the best of all securities.’³⁶

What Richard did not realize was that Lake was at his wits’ end. He was not an inherently bad man. He was stuck inside the bar which ran across the Niger's mouth and had only the prospect of the local pilot, a man who was famed throughout the region for guiding European ships to disaster, to lead him to safety. His crew, the few that remained, were unable to function. Lake was even more desperate than Lander. In the end, this desperation worked in Lander's favour. Lake suddenly awoke to the fact that the hostages were healthy men, some of whom had seagoing experience. If he could get them on board he would have the crew he needed.

When King Boy came aboard to collect his ransom he was given short shrift by Lake. Despite Lander's protestations of Boy's decency Lake replied that if the whole contingent were not freed within three days he would sail without them. And as for getting out of the river, he would be damned if he would pay the pilot a cent. He would find his own way out.

The next day the pilot, who had brought the ship in and had not yet been paid, came up to ask for payment, offering at the same time to lead Lake out again. Lake said he would have nothing to do with him. The pilot calmly pointed out that there were seven brass cannons at the mouth of the river and that if he wasn't paid he would blow Lake out of the water. Lake responded that he did not give a —, and ordered the man off his ship. He then sent his mate, a man named Spittle, to sound the depth of the bar. Spittle was duly captured and held to ransom for £50. Lake did not seem to give a — about this either.

Meanwhile, against all odds, King Boy had returned with John Lander and the other hostages. He delivered them aboard to a volley of curses from Lake who assured him he would not get a penny for his efforts. Then, repenting perhaps of his heartless attitude towards Spittle, he promised Boy that if the mate was not returned immediately he would send 1,000 men-of-war to blast the town and anyone connected with it to smithereens. The captain must have been particularly expressive because, a little while later, Spittle was freed.

The Landers were appalled. King Boy, their friend and saviour, had been dismissed with only a scribbled promise of reward. Their honour had been lost. Moreover, they were now in the hands of a man who seemed a near lunatic, whose behaviour was such that Richard ‘shrunk from him in terror’37 and who, far from delivering them to a safe port, announced that he would drop them on an island off the Cameroons; it was the best he could do.

Lake, on the other hand, was pleased with himself. From a point of near collapse he had single-handedly saved two explorers – not that he cared the slightest about their expedition or their twitterings about honour – had remanned his ship at no cost, had seen off the enemy and was about to do what no European had ever done: navigate the Niger's sand bar.

In their passive drift down the Niger the Landers had never thought what might happen when they reached its mouth. Now they knew. And although neither admitted it, they were very lucky to find a captain as determined as Lake. Compared to the brutality of the coast, their voyage so far had been a tourist trip.

On 26 November, Lake approached the bar but found himself driven back by the sea until he was in five fathoms of water and almost touching dry land directly opposite the coastal battery. This was the most dangerous point in the Landers’ journey. What Lake needed was an offland wind, but it did not come, and he was forced to maintain his position by anchor. At any moment the guns could destroy them. The pilot was spotted watching them through a telescope. Armed Africans waited patiently on the beach to collect the survivors. It was a waiting game which they were happy to play. It could not be long before the war canoes of Brass arrived to claim their money and when they did the Thomas would be at their mercy. As night fell, small fires were lit along the coast.

Whether from fear of the unknown power of Lake's single cannon, or fear of his 1,000 men-of-war, the battery did not fire. Or maybe they had read the tides and knew they had no need. When dawn broke so did the Thomas’s cable. A second, smaller anchor was lowered but not before the ship was almost in the breakers. The watching Africans waved jovially, pointing out places where the crew could land. Spittle assured Richard that in a few minutes it would be every man for himself. Then, at 8 a.m., Lake had his last bit of luck. A sea breeze arose and, by lowering boats to tow him, he was able to scrape over the bar in less than three fathoms.

To the Landers Lake was an abomination. Yet they owed everything to this rude, violent and effective man.

Thanks to a brief encounter with the Black Joke, a tender to a British naval vessel which was patrolling the waters in search of slavers, the Landers did not have to land at Lake's Cameroon island but were deposited at Fernando Po, a British-manned island to the east of the Niger which Richard knew as a haven to which officers like Dixon Denham repaired for a fever-free furlough.

Fernando Po was not free of fever. Lieutenant Stockwell, the resident commander of marines, had recently lost five servants and five children to yellow fever, and malaria was rife. But even this could not quench the Landers’ delight at being in relatively civilized surroundings. They bade farewell to Captain Lake, and that was the last they would see of him. Standing at the port as Lake drew out, they saw a ship with ‘long, raking masts’38 surge from behind a headland. Shots were fired and grappling irons were hurled. Darkness fell before they could gauge the outcome. When morning came, the sea was empty but it was clear what had happened. Neither he nor the Thomas were ever heard of again.

By January the Landers were on a ship to Rio de Janeiro. There they found an English ship, the William Harris, to take them home. On 9 June 1831 they arrived in Portsmouth. The next day Richard was reporting his findings in London.

So, the Niger had been ‘found’ and one of the most controversial questions in African exploration had been answered. It was, in the words of the Edinburgh Review, ’perhaps the most important discovery of the present age’.39 The commercial benefit which Banks had envisaged all those years ago was now within Britain's grasp, as Richard Lander was quick to point out, stating that the discovery of the Niger's mouth heralded the possibility of ‘a water communication … with so extensive a part of Africa that a considerable trade will be opened’.⁴⁰

Yet he and his brother received little approbation from the government and none at all from John Barrow, whose pet theories they had so soundly debunked. Richard got the £100 he had contracted for – paid from a quasi-official slush fund called ‘the King's Bounty’ – and John got what he had been promised: nothing.

They were better treated in other quarters. King William granted them an audience in which he kept them talking for a full hour. And John Murray paid them 1,000 guineas for their journal which, interestingly, he did not allow Barrow to edit as was usual, but instead gave to an Admiralty hydrographer who was the editor of the Nautical Review. Even so, there was a show of disdain for their achievements. As the introduction explains, ‘The accomplished surveyor will look in vain along the list of articles, with which the travellers were supplied, for the instrument of his calling; and that man of science, to form his opinion of it, need only be told, that a common compass was all that they possessed to benefit geography, beyond the observation of their senses … Too much faith must not therefore be reposed in the various serpentine courses of the river on the map, as it is neither warranted by the resources, nor the ability of the travellers.’41

The book did not come out until 1832 by which time John Lander, its primary author, was nearly destitute. Reluctantly, he approached Bathurst for assistance. A position as clerk or messenger in the Colonial Office was what he wanted or, failing that, a sum of money. Neither were forthcoming. Indeed, he was not even sent a reply. ‘May I beg your Lordship will please to inform me what the Government intends doing for me?’⁴² he pleaded again to Bathurst. He was greeted with silence. It would not be the last time he wrote. But he was wasting his time. His reward was still nothing.

Richard fared slightly better, securing a decent job with Customs, his task being to taste wine shipments to see if they had been adulterated. But he soon abandoned this when a consortium of Liverpool merchants approached him to see if he would lead an expedition of two steam-boats to set up factories along the Niger. No longer would he be a humble servant of the government. He would be at the helm of a magnificent industrial venture.

He managed to get his Customs job assigned to his brother John – charging him a stiff commission of £100 for doing so – and in June 1832 set off for Africa. He penetrated 100 miles into the Benue and travelled up the Niger as far as Rabba, only a few towns down from Bussa. This was a changed Lander from the one who had finessed his way from settlement to settlement. This was a conquering Lander. His ships bristled with guns and at one point he was constrained to ‘chastise’ the natives by destroying a town. It was a word he used with increasing frequency and bewilderment. On being attacked in a narrow part of the river by ‘8,000 or 10,000 all armed with muskets and swords, Bonny, Benin and Brass people’, he decided that ‘if these savages are not chastised immediately it will never be safe to go up in a boat or canoe’.⁴³

But he would not be around to do the chastising. During the attack he received a musket ball – a sawn-off piece of copper bolt – in the thigh. It was a high wound, close to the anus, and the bolt could not be removed. When gangrene set in there was nothing that could be done. Lander died at 2 a.m. on 2 February 1834. His ill-starred expedition slunk home a month later, by which time its numbers had dropped from forty-eight to eight.

The Niger conundrum had ended as it had begun, with a white man ambushed in a narrow stretch of river. Only this time there was no mystery and nobody cared.