MARKET PLACE, ST. LOUIS.

THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER CHAPTER I AN 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