152 
EUROPE AND AFRICA 
let was in the Bight of Benin. In 1832 and 1841, two ill- 
starred expeditions were organized and sent to explore and 
trade on the Lower Niger, but returned with a loss of from 
thirty to sixty per cent of their crews and little profit. 
MacGregor Laird — the energetic Liverpool merchant and 
chief promoter of these enterprises — was not discouraged; 
but fathered a third well-equipped party of scientific and 
experienced men, under the direction of Dr. William B. 
Baikie in 1854. This went out in the Pleiad, carrying some 
missionaries and a mixed cargo, and explored the Lower 
Niger and the Benué successfully. From 1857 to 1864 a 
consular agent — Dr. Baikie — was maintained at Lokoja 
(at the confluence of the Niger and the Benué),! and a 
number of companies began to send ships there at irregular 
intervals; but no real progress was made by the British in 
developing the trade of the region till the seventies. 
In 1877, George Goldie Taubman (later Sir George T. 
Goldie) accompanied an exploring expedition to the Niger. 
He soon saw the fallacy of attempting to create a prosperous 
trade through the medium of a few poorly equipped trading 
posts and of a number of weak and rival trading corpora- 
tions, engaged in a cutthroat competition, yet unable to 
maintain a steady intercourse with the chief trade centers. 
These steamship companies possessed neither the capital, 
the resources, nor the influence requisite for the opening of 
such a large territory to the commerce of the world. After 
considerable manipulation, he succeeded, two years later, 
in uniting all the various interests on the Niger into one 
organization, known as the “United African Company,” 
with a capital amounting approximately to £125,000. 
Its success was rapid. A regular system of trading sta- 
tions was established and a fair-sized fleet of ships was kept 
busy on a regular schedule between Great Britain, the West 
1 See map on p. 171.