THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER

CHAPTER I

AX ABORTIVE START

Dr. Henry BarTH, the greatest traveller of modern times, our illustrious predecessor on the Niger, was a prisoner at Massenya. Loaded with chains, and in hourly expectation of death, he was still devoted to his work,

and had the superb courage to write — " The best way of winning the blacks from their barbarism is to create centres on the great rivers. The civilizing influence will then

spread naturally, following the water-highways."

In his generous dream, which might be his last, he consoled himself in thinking that soon the ideas of tolerance

and progress would advance by the river-roads, by the

" moving paths," as he called them, to the very heart of