Travels in the Interior of Africa — Volume 01
by Mungo Park
- Pages
- about 165
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 3 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
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.”
A short sample. Read the whole book
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