TONE AND STANLEY.

CHAPTER ONE.

INTRODUCTORY.

INTRODUCTION--THE AFRICAN ASSOCIATION--LEDYARD--LUCAS--FIRST INFORMATION
RESPECTING THE NIGER, OR QUORRA, AND THE GAMBIA--TIMBUCTOO HEARD OF--
THOMPSON AND JOBSON'S VOYAGE UP THE GAMBIA--MAJOR HAUGHTON'S EXPEDITION
AND DEATH.

When the fathers of the present generation were young men, and George
the Third ruled the land, they imagined that the whole interior of
Africa was one howling wilderness of burning sand, roamed over by brown
tribes in the north and south, and by black tribes--if human beings
there were--on either side of the equator, and along the west coast.

The maps then existing afforded them no information. Of the Mountains
of the Moon they knew about as much as of the mountains in the moon.
The Nile was not explored--its sources unknown--the course of the Niger
was a mystery. They were aware that the elephant, rhinoceros,
cameleopard, zebra, lion and many other strange beasts ranged over its
sandy deserts; but very little more about them than the fact of their
existence was known. They knew that on the north coast dwelt the
descendants of the Greek and Roman colonists, and of their Arab
conquerors--that there were such places as Tangiers, Tripoli, Tunis,
Algiers with its piratical cruisers who carried off white men into
slavery; Morocco, with an emperor addicted to cutting off heads; Salee,
which sent forth its rovers far over the ocean to plunder merchantmen;
and a few other towns and forts, for the possession of which Europeans
had occasionally knocked their heads together.

From the west coast they had heard that ivory and gold-dust was to be
procured, as well as an abundant supply of negroes, whose happy lot it
was to be carried off to cultivate the plantations of the West Indies
and America; but, except that they worshipped fetishes, of their manners
and customs, or at what distance from the coast they came, their
ignorance was profound. They possibly were acquainted with the fact
that the Portuguese had settlements at Loango, Angola, and Benguela; and
that Hottentots and Kaffirs were to be found at the Cape, where a colony
had been taken from the Dutch, but with that colony, except in the
immediate neighbourhood of Cape Town, where ships to and from India
touched, they were but slightly acquainted.

Eastward, if they troubled their heads about the matter, they had a
notion that there was a terribly wild coast, inhabited by fierce
savages