Richard, a distinguished African traveller, was born in Cornwall in 1804. He was brought up as a printer, but abandoned that trade to enter the service of Captain Clapperston, whom he accompanied on his second journey to Africa in 1822. This expedition was attended with important results. (See Clapperston.) Returning to England in 1829, Lander submitted to government a plan for exploring the course of the Niger, which was accepted. He solved the great problem of the course of that river, by tracing it down from Yaouri, above Boussa, to its mouth in the Bight of Benin, and returned to England in 1831, after an absence of a year and a half. In the following year he again set out with his brother, with the view of tracing it up to Timbuctoo. The expedition proved a total failure. Richard Lander was killed in an encounter with the natives, and his brother perished from the effects of the climate. (See Africa.)