’My dear Richard, if you had not been with me, I should have died long ago.  I can only thank you with my latest breath for your kindness and attachment to me, and if I could have lived to return with you, you should have been placed beyond the reach of want, but God will reward you.’” He survived some days, and appeared even to rally a little, but one morning, Lander was alarmed by a peculiar rattling sound in his throat, and hastening to the bed-side found him sitting up, and staring wildly around; some indistinct words quivered on his lips, he strove but ineffectually to give them utterance, and expired without a struggle or a sigh.

Bello seems to have repented in some degree of his harsh conduct, especially after the news arrived of a great victory gained by his troops over the sultan of Bornou.  He allowed Lander to perform the funeral obsequies with every mark of respect, agreeably to the sultan’s own directions at Jungavie, a small village on a rising ground, about five miles to the S. E. of Sockatoo.  Lander performed the last sad office of reading the English service over the remains of his generous and intrepid master; a house was erected over his grave;

“And he was left alone in his glory.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Lander may now be said to be in the interior of Africa, a solitary wanderer, dependent entirely on his own resources, at the same time that he received from sultan Bello, all the requisite means to enable him to return to his native country, allowing him to choose his own road, though advising him to prefer that which led through the great Desert, but Lander having already had many dealings with the Arabs, preferred the track through the negro countries.

On arriving at Kano, on his return route, Lander formed a spirited and highly laudable design, which proved him to be possessed of a mind much superior to his station, and this was nothing less than an attempt to resolve the great question, respecting the termination of the Niger, which he hoped to effect by proceeding to Funda, and thence to Benin by water.  Striking off to the eastward of the route, on which, in company with his late master, he had reached Kano, he passed several walled towns, all inhabited by natives of Houssa, tributary to the Fellatas, and early on the third day from Bebajie, (as he spells it,) arrived at the foot of a high craggy mountain, called Almena, from a ruined town said to have been built by a queen of the Fantee nation, some five hundred years ago.  Mahomet, Lander’s servant, who had travelled far and near, and knew all the traditions of the country, gave the following story:—­About five hundred years ago, a queen of the Fantee nation having quarrelled with her husband about a golden stool, in other words, we presume about the throne, probably after her husband’s death, fled from her dominions with a great number of her subjects, and built a large town at the foot