This new venture, however, ended in disaster. On the way back Lander was shot, and was only kept alive till Fernando Po was reached. With him ended for the time being Macgregor Laird’s enterprise. Though carried out with splendid persistence and self-sacrifice, its results were sadly negative, while out of the forty-nine Europeans who had been engaged in it only nine survived the fevers. For several years nothing more was done to turn what was only too well named “the white man’s grave” to further account. In 1840, however, Governor Beecroft ascended the river to within thirty miles of Bussa, and got back without much loss of life, though adding but little to our knowledge of the geography of the region. Meanwhile philanthropists were as much interested in the opening up of the Niger basin to European influence as was the commercial world. Laird’s expedition, though having trade as its primary object, “hoped also to aid in suppressing the slave trade, in introducing true religion, civilisation, and humanising influences among natives whose barbarism had hitherto been only heightened by European connection.” These unselfish aims were further emphasised in 1841, when the Government, still undaunted by the fatal character of the work, sent out three steamers with the object of making treaties with the Niger chiefs for the suppression of the slave trade. A model farm was to be established at the confluence of the Benué and the main river, to teach the natives better methods of agriculture, and generally the foundations were to be laid of the great British Empire of which M‘Queen had dreamed. Thus, in some small way, expiation was to be made for the sins of earlier generations. Everything that science and forethought could suggest was done to make this expedition a success, but unhappily no way had yet been found to ward off the insidious attacks of malaria, or counteract the effects of the fever germs once they had gained a footing in the system. The result was death and disaster. No higher point than Egga was reached, and that only by one steamer. Out of one hundred and forty-five men, forty-eight died within the two months the vessels were in the river. The project of turning the Niger to profitable account, in the face of such frightful mortality and deadly climatic conditions, seemed now to be utterly hopeless. From Major Houghton downwards, death by violence, privation, or disease had been the fate of whoever had attempted to open it up to European influence. No other river had such a romantic history of heroic self-sacrifice--none such a martyr roll--none such a record of heroism and precious blood apparently uselessly thrown away.