Starting on 21 June he travelled miles up the Gambia River before striking out east into the unknown interior. At one point he was imprisoned by a Moorish chief for four months, but he escaped and eventually found the River Niger. After tracing its route for miles he made his way back west to The Gambia. He returned to Scotland on 22 December , long after he had been given up for dead.
Park settled back to a routine life in the Borders. He married in , and in set up practice as a doctor in Peebles. In September Mungo Park accepted a government invitation to lead a further expedition to the Niger. Second in command was his brother in law, who had been commissioned as a lieutenant. The full expedition that set off inland from The Gambia comprised three officers and some 40 other Europeans, mostly British soldiers, plus local guides and a number of slaves.
The expedition reached the River Niger in August , by which time only 11 Europeans were still alive, the remainder having died of dysentery or fever. Many of the Europeans became sick and died, the natives were hostile to the large, armed group, and provisions were more difficult to come by.
Within a year a large number of the party had died, and Mungo's last communication was dated near the end of Some time afterward the story was told of Mungo's fate. He and the remaining group had reached the Niger and successfully traveled many miles by boat. Eventually there boat was lost in the rapids, and they were attacked by unfriendly natives. Only a single native guide survived the journey. Served in all major wars between and the Civil War. Joseph Banks Botanist who accompanied Cook on his first voyage of exploration.
Park was to join these ranks both as a doctor and as an explorer. He excelled and graduated in Having finished his studies, he spent the summer doing botanical fieldwork in the Scottish Highlands. But this was not enough to sate the curiosity of the young man, and his gaze turned eastwards, to the mysterious Orient. He returned having written papers on a new species of Sumatran fish.
With his passion for botany and natural history, he shared many of the characteristics of the naturalist Charles Darwin , who was to follow him some years later. He travelled some miles up the Gambia River, and it was on this voyage that he was captured and imprisoned for 4 months by a Moorish chief. The conditions of his imprisonment can only be imagined. Somehow, he managed to escape with the help of a slave-trader, but further disaster was to befall him when he succumbed to a serious fever and only just managed to survive.
On his return to Scotland in December , after two years of travelling, including his return journey going via the West Indies, he had actually been presumed dead!
Park greatly surprised everyone by returning relatively unscathed! Banks was offended when Park demanded a large sum to explore Australia for the Royal Society.
In Banks and Park came to an arrangement—Park was to lead an expedition to follow the Niger to its end. His part consisted of 30 soldiers from the Royal Africa Corps garrisoned at Goree they were offered extra pay and the promise of a discharge on return , plus officers including his brother-in-law Alexander Anderson, who agreed to join the trip, and four boat builders from Portsmouth who would construct a forty-foot boat when they reached the river.
In all 40 Europeans traveled with Park. Against logic and advice, Mungo Park set off from the Gambia in the rainy season—within ten days his men were falling to dysentery.
After five weeks one man was dead, seven mules were lost, and the expedition's baggage was mostly destroyed by fire. Park's letters back to London made no mention of his problems. By the time the expedition reached Sandsanding on the Niger only eleven of the original 40 Europeans were still alive.
The party rested for two months but the deaths continued. By November 19 only five of them remained alive even Alexander Anderson was dead. Sending the native guide, Isaaco, back to Laidley with his journals, Park was determined to continue.
Park, Lieutenant Martyn who had become an alcoholic on native beer , and three soldiers set off downstream from Segu in a converted canoe, christened the HMS Joliba. Each man had fifteen muskets but little in the way of other supplies. When Isaaco reached Laidley in the Gambia news had already reached the coast of Park's death—coming under fire at the Bussa Rapids, after a journey of over 1, miles on the river, Park and his small party were drowned. Isaaco was sent back to discover the truth, but the only remains to be discovered was Mungo Park's munitions belt.
The irony was that having avoided contact with local Muslims by keeping to the center of the river, they were in turn mistaken for Muslim raiders and shot at. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
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