The following pages contain records of the last Niger Expedition, being the third undertaken either directly by the British Government, or by private enterprise aided by its sanction and pecuniary support.

The first, in 1841, under the conduct of Captain H. D. Trotter, R.N., succeeded only in penetrating as far as Egga, and the disastrous mortality amongst those engaged in it is familiar to all interested in the annals of African discovery. It was accompanied by the Church Missionary Society's Missionary, the Rev. J. F. Schön, who then laid the foundation of that knowledge of West-African languages, which has of late years proved so invaluable an auxiliary to the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Hausa, Ibo, and Yoruba; and also by Mr. Samuel Crowther, a re-captured slave of the Yoruba tribe, at that time about thirty-three years of age, who then displayed so many excellent qualities, that he was in consequence invited to England, and, after a course of study at the Society's Institution at Islington, received ordination from the late Bishop of London. This Expedition, calamitous as it appeared, was one of the proximate causes of the establishment of the Yoruba Mission, now, at its two chief towns, Lagos and Abbeokuta, a flourishing centre of that legitimate commerce which has accompanied the introduction of Christianity.