These are brave words, truly, about what after all was merely a “mental discovery,” and taken alone, they might only evoke a smile, if we did not know that they are those of a man of no ordinary genius and power of insight. Looking back seventy years after he wrote, we can see how truly prophetic he was in most that he wrote, and that he was no more the blatant patriot than the geographical dreamer. His genius for looking ahead was as great as for looking around. Take, for instance, his warning of the danger of a French advance from the Senegal to the Niger, and its far-reaching consequence, if carried out, to our commercial and political position in West Central Africa. He it was who foresaw nearly seventy years before its accomplishment the necessity of a Chartered Company to take full advantage of our (then prospective) position on the Niger, and the results that would ensue without such a method of developing the resources of that region. Of these matters, however, we shall treat in their proper place. Enough for the moment if we show how thoroughly M‘Queen had made himself master of the geographical problems then before the public, as well as of the political and commercial situation that was to follow the opening up of the Niger to European intercourse. Only now, after more than half a century of gross and irreparable mismanagement in West Africa, we are waking up to the wisdom of his views, and striving in some measure to carry them into effect. CHAPTER XXVI. _THE TERMINATION OF THE NIGER._ Unhappily for the stay-at-home geographer, no matter how skilfully he may set forth the discoveries made in his study, his triumph can only come after they have been demonstrated by actual travel, and even then the credit that falls to his share is small. The case of M‘Queen is one in point. We have no evidence that his theory regarding the Niger’s termination made any special impression upon the general opinion of the time. Unfortunately for him, too, his views were published immediately after several disastrous attempts from the West Coast to settle the question he had so ably worked out, so that Government and people alike were disposed to fight shy of the fatal region.