An Indelible Stain Will It Be Upon The Merchants Of Liverpool, Who Could So Far Forget That They Were Englishmen,

As to make a horde of barbarous savages their instruments for the destruction of an expedition by which the general

Interests of the human race might be promoted, our commercial relations extended, and ultimately, the blessings of Christianity diffused over the dark and unenlightened children of Africa.

As a palliative to the statement of John Lander, and as some relief to the dark picture which we have just exhibited, it must be confessed, that when the circumstances are taken into consideration, which have already been detailed, when Lander first visited the Eboe country, his conduct was not exactly regulated by prudence or policy, in proceeding towards a country, not in the simple guise and unostentatious manner of the solitary traveller, but attended by a force sufficient to excite the fears and jealousy of the native chiefs, and to instil into their suspicious minds the belief, that the travellers, whom they had formerly seen in their country, had returned, equipped with the means of subjugating the country, and reducing the chiefs themselves, perhaps to a state of slavery. The very vessels in which they presented themselves, were sufficient to strike terror and alarm into the minds of the superstitious natives. They knew not by what character to describe them; to their ignorant and untutored understandings, they appeared to be impelled by some power of witchcraft, for which they could not in the least account; to behold a large vessel impelled even against the stream with no inconsiderable velocity, and no power manifested by which that speed could be obtained, set their minds a wondering, and obtained for Lander the character of the devil.

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