Note (return) — PLAN
Reading edition
The Society of Encouragement for National Industry in France, has granted prizes for various discoveries in the arts and sciences; but I wish government, or some society of our own country, would offer a liberal prize for the best mode of colonising Africa, and for meliorating the condition of the inhabitants of that vast and little known continent. A well-digested plan for the discovery of this continent might be followed by the most desirable events. The efforts of the African Association have, to say the least, been lamentably disastrous; little good can be anticipated from the efforts of solitary or scientific travellers in a country where science is not cultivated, and where the travellers know little or nothing of the 173 general language of Africa, or of the manners and dispositions of the natives.