Mungo Park was born on the 10th of September, 1771, the son of a
farmer at Fowlshiels, near Selkirk. After studying medicine in
Edinburgh, he went out, at the age of twenty-one, assistant-surgeon
in a ship bound for the East Indies. When he came back the African
Society was in want of an explorer, to take the place of Major
Houghton, who had died. Mungo Park volunteered, was accepted, and
in his twenty-fourth year, on the 22nd of May, 1795, he sailed for
the coasts of Senegal, where he arrived in June.
Thence he proceeded on the travels of which this book is the record.
He was absent from England for a little more than two years and a
half; returned a few days before Christmas, 1797. He was then
twenty-six years old. The African Association published the first
edition of his travels as "Travels in the Interior Districts of
Africa, 1795-7, by Mungo Park, with an Appendix containing
Geographical Illustrations of Africa, by Major Rennell."
Park married, and settled at Peebles in medical practice, but was
persuaded by the Government to go out again. He sailed from
Portsmouth on the 30th of January, 1805, resolved to trace the Niger
to its source or perish in the attempt. He perished. The natives
attacked him while passing through a narrow strait of the river at
Boussa, and killed him, with all that remained of his party, except
one slave. The record of this fatal voyage, partly gathered from
his journals, and closed by evidences of the manner of his death,
was first published in 1815, as "The Journal of a Mission to the
Interior of Africa in 1805, by Mungo Park, together with other
Documents, Official and Private, relating to the same Mission. To
which is prefixed an Account of the Life of Mr. Park."
H. M.
CHAPTER I - JOURNEY FROM PORTSMOUTH TO THE GAMBIA
Soon after my return from the East Indies in 1793, having learned
that the noblemen and gentlemen associated for the purpose of
prosecuting discoveries in the interior of Africa were desirous of
engaging a person to explore that continent, by the way of the
Gambia river, I took occasion, through means of the President of the
Royal Society, to whom I had the honour to be known, of offering
myself for that service. I had been informed that a gentleman of
the name of Houghton, a captain in the army, and formerly fort-major
at Goree, had already sailed to the Gambia, under the direction of
the Association, and that there was reason to apprehend he had
fallen a sacrifice to the climate, or perished in some contest with
the natives. But this intelligence, instead of deterring me from my
purpose, animated me to persist in the offer of my services with the
greater solicitude. I had a passionate desire to examine into the
productions of a country so little known, and to become
experimentally acquainted with the modes of life and character of
the natives.
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