It is to Mr Barnett’s honour that he paid for the monument, which is of Cornish granite inlaid with plain black. The whole is of British workmanship, designed in Battersea by one of the Chelsea artists, executed in Camberwell, transported by the well-known firm, B. L. Jowel & Co. of Holborn Viaduct, shippers, etc. It was set up by Burroughs. Photographs of the same are to be obtained of Mr Gale, 742 Strand, and a tablet has been erected in Westminster Abbey by American subscription. After Basingstoke’s great effort, several travellers appeared in succession in the M’Korio valley, and completed his work. Each entered after incredible exertions through the Kuru gorge; each descended the river to its mouth, bearing his life in his hands, each survived, and each published a book upon his return to England. Bayley Pasha in 1876, the indomitable Higgs in the same year, poor Lord Charles Hampton in 1878-79, and “Hell or Glory” Powell, in 1880, achieved the exploration of the country. These, together with a few rather noisy continental claimants to similar honours, were the pioneers. Sir Henry Jeorz signed the first treaty with the Noyo of Naya in 1882, thereby overriding the previous arrangement which that sovereign had signed with some German adventurer. Next year a similar footing was obtained in the town of Saràka and the surrounding district by the genius of Captain Ronald, who deposed and exiled the Alemami, forbade polygamy, put down the slave trade with a rigorous hand, publicly burned the Sacred Umbrella, and was on the point of executing a Belgian botanist, when news of his exploits reached England, and he was suddenly recalled by the Secretary of State for War, a personal friend who had long mourned him as dead. Ronald was given an excellent post, and has since enjoyed all that public repute and a wealthy marriage can afford, but the error of his recall was the beginning of a series of official blunders, which all but forfeited the fruit of so much private heroism. [Illustration: CAPTAIN RONALD (BY THE KIND PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER OF “RULERS OF MEN”)] So long as Mr Gladstone continued by his marvellous personal influence to concentrate English opinion upon parochial matters, the valley of the M’Korio remained upon the map as British territory; it was taken by our neighbours and rivals to be in some vague way attached to the British Empire, the Portuguese claim to the settlement at the mouth of the river was tamely submitted to arbitration, upheld, and finally bought out for the monstrous sum of eighty-three thousand seven hundred and forty-six pounds. A few stations scattered along the eleven hundred miles of the stream, each occupied by a mere handful of troops—these and the missionary enterprise peculiar to our race alone maintained the prestige of Great Britain.