THE EUROPEAN SLAVE TRADE 341 of the European slave trade on the south and the Moorish conquest on the north.

It was only very gradually that the conscience of humanity revolted against a means of making profit so opposed to every conception of freedom and justice. But the movements of thought of the eighteenth century, which emancipated Europe, had also their result upon the West Coast of Africa. There wanted still a few years to the centenary of the Treaty of Utrecht, when the slave trade was abolished, at least in name, in 1807.

It was unfortunately far from being abolished in fact, and the greater part of the nineteenth century saw unavailing efforts made by European governments to put an end to the exportation of slaves from Africa by sea.

The early part of the nineteenth century witnessed also determined efforts made by European exploration to penetrate the mystery of Central Africa. England took a brilliant part in this movement on the West Coast, and, in the early part of the century, the principal exploring parties were led by Englishmen. Mungo Park, sent out by the Royal Geographical Society, made his first journey, travelling in from the Gambia, in 1796, and struck the Niger at Segou. His second journey ended fatally at Boussa in 1805. Between 18 10 and 1825 English expeditions made many attempts to reach the interior from the coast. When Rene Caillie, the French explorer, who eventually reached Timbuctoo in 1828, disembarked at St. Louis in 18 16, with the intention of penetrating, if possible, to the Niger, he found that ** nothing was talked of there but the English expeditions into the interior." It was with the expedition of Major Grey in 18 1 8 that he first started for the interior. I find it stated in a French account that England spent upwards of ;76o,ooo at this time upon exploration.

Efforts to reach the interior were made from the north coast as well as from the south. Hornemann attempted in 18 10 to cross the continent from Tripoli to Ashantee,