George III.; and the example of both the great discoverer and
the good king has been so powerfully impressed on all the subsequent
attempts of English adventurers, that there has been scarcely a voyage
to new regions which has not been expressly devised to carry with it
some benefit to their people.

When the spirit of discovery was thus once awakened, a succession of
intelligent and daring men were stimulated to the pursuit; and the
memorable James Bruce, who had begun life as a lawyer, grown weary of
the profession, and turned traveller through the South of Europe at a
period when the man who ventured across the Pyrenees was a hero;
gallantly fixed his eyes on Africa, as a region of wonders, of which
Europe had no other knowledge than as a land of lions, of men more
savage than the lions, and of treasures of ivory and gold teeming and
unexhausted since the days of Solomon. The hope of solving the old
classic problem, the source of the Nile, pointed his steps to
Abyssinia, and after a six years' preparation in his consulate of
Algiers, he set forward on his dangerous journey, and arrived at the
source of the Bahr-el-Azrek, (the Blue River,) one of the branches of
the great river. Unluckily he had been misdirected, for the true Nile
is the Bahr-el-Abiad, (the White River.)

His volumes, published in 1790, excited equal curiosity and censure;
but the censure died away, the curiosity survived, and a succession of
travellers, chiefly sustained by the African Association, penetrated
by various routes into Africa.

The discovery of the course of the Niger was now the great object. And
Mungo Park, a bold and intelligent discoverer, gave a strong
excitement to the public feeling by his "Travels," published towards
the close of the century. His adventures were told in a strain of good
sense and simplicity which fully gratified the public taste. And on
his unfortunate death, which happened in a second exploration of the
Niger in 1805, another expedition was fitted out under Captain Tuckey,
an experienced seaman, to ascertain the presumed identity of the Congo
with the Niger. But the sea-coast of Africa is deadly to Europeans,
and this effort failed through general disease.

The next experiment was made by land--from Tripoli across the Great
Desert--under Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney. This effort was
partially baffled by sickness, but still more by the arts of the
native chiefs, who are singularly jealous of strangers. In a