In 1823 he went with Major Colebrook (one of the Royal Commissioners of inquiry into the state of the British Colonies) to the Cape of Good Hope, and returned to England in the following year. In 1825, when Captain Clapperton and Major Denham returned from their travels in the interior of Africa, Lander, charmed, as he says, by the very sound of the word 'Africa,' and impelled by his inborn love of adventure, offered to accompany the former officer in a second expedition to that continent, notwithstanding the efforts of all his friends to dissuade him. Amongst these may be mentioned Mr. George Croker Fox, who offered Lander, by way of a counter-temptation, a more lucrative post in South America. However, Lander's proposal was gladly accepted by Clapperton, and the adventurous youngster remained with his employer up to the hour of the Captain's death at Soccatoo, in the interior, in April, 1827. He then made his homeward-way, alone, by land to Badagry on the coast, and arrived at Portsmouth with Clapperton's papers in April, 1828, much debilitated by fevers contracted during his long sojourn in a pestiferous climate. In the December of the following year Richard Lander published a most entertaining account of his travels, dating the first part of the introduction to the book, 'Truro, Oct. 29th, 1829.' To this work is prefixed his portrait, in his Eastern travelling costume. Now comes his most important voyage of discovery. Having arranged, under the auspices of the Government, a second expedition to West Africa, not only with a view to commerce, but also in the hope of doing something which should lead to the suppression of the slave-trade and of human sacrifices, he embarked with his brother John in the merchant-vessel _Alert_ at Portsmouth, on the 8th January, 1830. He says the party went out 'with the fixed determination to risk everything, even life itself, towards the final accomplishment of their object. Confidence in ourselves and in the natives will be our best panoply, and an English Testament our best fetish.' The Colonial Secretary granted an allowance of £100 a year to Mrs. Richard Lander during her husband's absence, and the traveller was himself to receive a gratuity of £100 on his return to England. The little expedition arrived at Cape Coast Castle on the 22nd February, 1830, and was conveyed thence on board H.M.'s Brig _Clinker_ to Accra, where they landed on the 22nd March. On the 17th June, after a toilsome and dangerous journey overland, they reached Boussa on the West bank of the Niger, the place where, it will be remembered, Mungo Park met with a similar fate to that which was ultimately to befall Lander. Thence they ascended the river to Yaoorie, a distance of about 100 miles; and this place, the extreme point of the expedition, they reached on the 27th June. On the 2nd August they returned to Boussa, where they embarked in canoes in order to descend the stream--considering that such a method