It may well be conceived with what anguish Sir Fowell Buxton received the melancholy tidings of the Niger Expedition. Deeply did he sympathise with the sufferings of the brave men who had attempted to carry out his plans; nor was he less dejected at feeling that the door was closed, for the present at least, through which he had hoped that so many blessings might have been poured upon Africa. His health, which had been undermined before, became gradually more feeble, and he could no longer bear any sustained mental exertion, especially if attended by any sense of responsibility. To a man, the law of whose nature it was, to be at work, with head, hand, and heart, it was no slight trial to be thus prematurely laid aside. He was only fifty-five years of age, but already the evening was come of his day of ceaseless toil, nor was its close brightened by the beams of success and joy. The idea of what he so forcibly termed “the incomparable horrors” of the Slave Trade, had fastened itself on his mind with the most vivid reality; the burning and plundered villages of Africa, the ships traversing the Atlantic with their cargoes of torture, —these pictures were ever before him. When unconscious that he was observed, he would at times utter such groans as if his heart were sinking beneath its load.