The last wreck of the Niger Expedition has been extricated
from the fatal river; and the people at the Model Farm, with the relics of the property, have been brought to Fernando Po. To the very last the events have been such as to stamp the expedition with rashness and cruelty : even this supplemental expedition, greatly reduced, and profiting by the experience of previous disas- ters, suffered in proportion. Of eight or ten Whites on board, but two were not laid up with sickness, the commander being one of the two. Again it was a servant of the gentleman who warned Lord Jowl RUSSELL of the utter failure of the expedition, that helped to rescue the Wilberforce on returning from its second voyage : a Black boy, who had learned the use of the steam-engine on board Mr. JAMIESON'S trading steamer, worked the engine of the Wilberforce as it passed the delta! The expedition has effected some discoveries. It has dis- covered that which was told to its projectors before it sailed from England, that the slave-traffic which it was equipped to suppress in the Bight of Biafra had already ceased there; and that the legiti- mate commerce, which it was to introduce, had been rising and flou- rishing in the Bight for twenty years. It also discovered, what was told to its projectors before it left England, that the site chosen for an agricultural settlement could not be approached without immi- nent risk to the lives of Europeans. Another notable achievement has been, that the expedition went up the river about two-thirds of the distance previously ascended by merchant-vessels ; and its crowning feat is, that in attempting to carry out the plans of the African Civilization Society, by carrying up merchandise, it has for the time expelled honest commerce—the very thing that it was to establish ! What next ?
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