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Updated: June 28, 2025
The place, however, where the boat struck and the unfortunate crew perished was pointed out to him. It was in the eastern of three channels into which the river is here divided. A low flat island of about a quarter of a mile in breadth lies between the town of Boussa and the fatal spot.
In this expedition, Captain Clapperton died of the fever of the country. His faithful servant, Lander, after publishing his journal, returned to Africa, in 1830, with his brother, landed at Badagry, and again crossed the country to the Niger. At Boussa, they obtained the first authentic information of the death of Park, and recovered his gun, robe, and other relics.
Park, however, at length launched his schooner on the Niger, passed the city of Timbuctoo, and, with two or three Englishmen, followed the river more than a thousand miles to Boussa.
After proceeding a short distance the stream gradually widened to two miles, in some places the water being very shallow, but in others of considerable depth. Steering directly northward they voyaged on for four days, having passed, they were told, all the dangerous rocks and sandbanks which are to be found above Youri or below Boussa.
What was their astonishment the next day to receive a visit from the widow Zuma! who appeared, however, woefully changed, being clad in very humble apparel of country cloth. Having quarrelled with the ruler of Wawa, she had made her escape over the city wall in the night, travelling on foot to Boussa, where she had since taken up her abode.
Boussa, Clapperton says in his journal, is a large town with extensive walls, situated on an island in the Quorra, and that to reach it he had to cross in a canoe, while his horse swam over. After Clapperton had offered the sultan the presents he had brought for him, he inquired about the white men who had been lost in the river.
From the narratives of Park, Clapperton, Lander, and Caillié, confirmed by Bairkie and Barth, the latter of whom explored the banks of the Niger from Timbuctoo to Boussa, it has been ascertained to be a noble stream, navigable for nearly twenty-five hundred miles, with an average width of more than half a mile, and an average depth of three fathoms, comparing favorably with our own Mississippi.
On this they immediately sent a message to the King of Boussa, saying that as they were unable to continue their journey in the direction they had proposed, they would feel deeply obliged if he would lend them a canoe, by which they might proceed down the river to the salt water, and that they would remunerate him to the best of their ability.
That not the least injury was done to him at Youri, or by the people of that country; that the people of Boussa had killed them, and taken all their riches; that the books in his possession were given him by the iman of Boussa; that they were lying on the top of the goods in the boat when she was taken; that not a soul was left alive belonging to the boat; that the bodies of two black men were found in the boat, chained together; that the white men jumped overboard; that the boat was made of two canoes joined fast together, with an awning or roof behind; that he, the sultan, had a gun, double barrelled, and a sword, and two books, that had belonged to those in the boat; that he would give the books whenever Clapperton went himself to Youri for them, but not until then.
Having succeeded in effecting his purchases, he returned to the mouth of the Nun, thence to reascend the Niger for the third time, and endeavour to penetrate as far up the river as Boussa.
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