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Transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition by David Price,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR OF AFRICA - VOLUME 1




INTRODUCTION



Mungo Park was born on the 10th of September, 1771, the son of a farmerat Fowlshiels, near Selkirk.  After studying medicine in Edinburgh,he went out, at the age of twenty-one, assistant-surgeon in a ship boundfor the East Indies.  When he came back the African Society wasin want of an explorer, to take the place of Major Houghton, who haddied.  Mungo Park volunteered, was accepted, and in his twenty-fourthyear, 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-sixyears old.  The African Association published the first editionof his travels as “Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa,1795-7, by Mungo Park, with an Appendix containing Geographical Illustrationsof Africa, by Major Rennell.”

Park married, and settled at Peebles in medical practice, but was persuadedby the Government to go out again.  He sailed from Portsmouth onthe 30th of January, 1805, resolved to trace the Niger to its sourceor perish in the attempt.  He perished.  The natives attackedhim while passing through a narrow strait of the river at Boussa, andkilled 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 publishedin 1815, as “The Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africain 1805, by Mungo Park, together with other Documents, Official andPrivate, relating to the same Mission.  To which is prefixed anAccount 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 thatthe noblemen and gentlemen associated for the purpose of prosecutingdiscoveries in the interior of Africa were desirous of engaging a personto 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 thehonour to be known, of offering myself for that service.  I hadbeen informed that a gentleman of the name of Houghton, a captain inthe army, and formerly fort-major at Goree, had already sailed to theGambia, under the direction of the Association, and that there was reasonto apprehend he had fallen a sacrifice to the climate, or perished insome contest with the natives.  But this intelligence, insteadof deterring me from my purpose, animated me to persist in the offerof my services with the greater solicitude.  I had a passionatedesire to examine into the productions of a country so little known,and to become experimentally acquainted with the modes of life and characterof the natives.  I knew that I was able to bear fatigue, and Irelied on my youth and the strength of my constitution to preserve mefrom the effects of the climate.  The salary which the committeeallowed was sufficiently large, and I made no stipulation for futurereward.  If I should perish in my journey, I was willing that myhopes and expectations should perish with me; and if I should succeedin rendering the geography of Africa more familiar to my countrymen,and in opening to their ambition and industry new sources of wealthand new channels of commerce, I knew that I was in the hands of menof honour, who would not fail to bestow that remuneration which my successfulservices should appear to them to merit.  The committee of theAssociation having made such inquiries as they thought necessary, declaredthemselves satisfied with the qualifications that I possessed, and acceptedme for the service; and, with that liberality which on all occasionsdistinguishes their conduct, gave me every encouragement which it wasin their power to grant, or which I could with propriety ask.

It was at first proposed that I should accompany Mr. James Willis, whowas then recently appointed consul at Senegambia, and whose countenancein that capacity, it was thought, might have served and protected me;but Government afterwards rescinded his appointment, and I lost thatadvantage.  The kindness of the committee, however, supplied allthat was necessary.  Being favoured by the secretary of the Association,the late Henry Beaufoy, Esq., with a recommendation to Dr. John Laidley(a gentleman who had resided many years at an English factory on thebanks of the Gambia), and furnished with a letter of credit on him for£200, I took my passage in the brig Endeavour - a smallvessel trading to the Gambia for beeswax and ivory, commanded by Captain