The interest which was felt in a portrait of Henry Bone, R.A., which I had the pleasure of presenting to the Royal Institution of Cornwall, induced me to offer for the acceptance of that Society the portraits of two other Truro worthies; which I thought (though the engravings possess no great merit as works of art) might at least serve as reminders of the energy, skill, and determination possessed by two Truro men—half a century ago;[95] and, almost as a matter of course, Richard Lander's name found a place among the Cornish Worthies, whose stories I am attempting to write. I am just old enough to remember the commencement, on the 16th June, 1835, of the erection of the column designed by P. Sambell, jun., to the memory of Richard Lander, which stands at the top of Lemon Street, and (owing to bad workmanship) the fall of a considerable portion of it on the 21st of May, 1836. Amongst other reminiscences I may perhaps also mention that my father has told me that, on the occasion of laying the foundation-stone of the column, he was one of those who formed the procession, and that he and the late Mr. Humphry Willyams, of Carnanton, then led by the hand Richard Lander's child. On that occasion, as on a more recent one of higher importance at Truro, viz., the laying of the foundation-stone of the new Cathedral, the Masonic ceremony was followed by a religious service.

Although generally spoken of as the Brothers Lander, it should be borne in mind that to Richard, the elder brother, the world is mainly indebted for the discovery of the course of the lower portion of 'the lordly Niger' (as Longfellow calls the river). John, the younger brother, had considerable powers of observation and some poetic taste, and was by trade a printer. He accompanied Richard simply from affectionate motives (and certainly without promise of any pecuniary reward), on the second of Richard's three expeditions to Africa, from which the brothers returned safely; but John will appear no further (except incidentally) in the remarks which I have to offer. He was born in 1807, and died in 1839 in consequence of illness contracted during his one voyage to Africa.

Richard Lemon Lander, the heroic but unfortunate traveller, whose name will ever be associated with the splendid discovery of the course and termination of that mysterious and fatal river, which some of the ancients confounded with the Nile, and which the Moors of Northern Africa still call 'the Nile of the Negroes,'[96] was the fourth of six children, and was born at his father's house, the 'Dolphin Inn,' Truro (then called 'The Fighting Cocks'), on the 8th February, 1804, the day on which Colonel Lemon was elected M.P. for the town. Hence his second name; and hence also a certain appropriateness in the site which was chosen at the top of Lemon Street for his statue, the work of a Cornish sculptor, the late N. N. Burnard. In the midst of his unfeigned humility in his account of his parents, he nevertheless boasts that, as his father's name began with a Lan and his mother's maiden name (Penrose) with a Pen, no one could deny his claim to being a right Cornishman. But Colonel J. Lambrick Vivian informs me that Lander came from an older and a better stock than he was himself aware of. The family can be traced, in St. Just at least, as early as 1619, at which time a Richard Lander married Thomasine Bosaverne, one of a good old Cornish family. The Polwheles and Landers also intermarried. Richard's grandfather, a noted wrestler, lived near the Land's End.

Of Lander's early life in Truro I can learn little further than that he went to "old Pascoe's" school in Coomb's Lane, and was one of those few favourites of his master, who was thought worthy to receive one of the then newly-coined 1s. 6d. pieces. Richard seems to have been a merry, bright-eyed lad, somewhat below the usual height,[97] but he was always of a roving, adventurous spirit, and, when only eleven years old, accompanied a merchant to the West Indies, whence, after a residence there of three years, and having been attacked by fever in St. Domingo, he returned to England in 1818, and lived as a servant in various wealthy families, with some of whom he visited the continent of Europe.

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 must at last solve the mighty problem somehow—though of course in utter uncertainty as to whither the stream might lead them.

As they proceeded, difficulties and dangers increased. At Kirree they were plundered and cruelly ill-treated; and at Eboe they were made prisoners by the Negro King, who demanded a large sum for their ransom, which, after long delay, was procured. At length they reached the mouth of the Nun branch of the Niger; and on the 1st December, 1830, they were put on shore at Fernando Po; and ultimately, after first visiting Rio Janeiro, they reached Portsmouth on the 9th June, 1831.