Travels into the Interior of Africa

by Mungo Park

  May 28th – We departed from Koomboo, and slept at a Foulah town, about seven miles to the westward; from which, on the day following, having crossed a considerable branch of the Gambia, called Neola Koba, we reached a well-inhabited part of the country. Here are several towns within sight of each other, collectively called Tenda, but each is distinguished also by its particular name. We lodged at one of them, called Koba Tenda, where we remained the day following, in order to procure provisions for our support in crossing the Simbani woods. On the 30th we reached Jallacotta, a considerable town, but much infested by Foulah banditti, who come through the woods from Bondou, and steal everything they can lay their hands on. A few days before our arrival they had stolen twenty head of cattle, and on the day following made a second attempt, but were beaten off, and one of them taken prisoner. Here one of the slaves belonging to the coffle, who had travelled with great difficulty for the last three days, was found unable to proceed any farther; his master (a singing man) proposed therefore to exchange him for a young girl belonging to one of the townspeople. The poor girl was ignorant of her fate until the bundles were all tied up in the morning, and the coffle ready to depart; when coming with some other young women to see the coffle set out, her master took her by the hand and delivered her to the singing man. Never was a face of serenity more suddenly changed into one of the deepest distress; the terror she manifested on having the load put upon her head, and the rope fastened round her neck, and the sorrow with which she bade adieu to her companions, were truly affecting. About nine o’clock we crossed a large plain covered with ciboa trees (a species of palm), and came to the river Nerico, a branch of the Gambia. This was but a small river at this time, but in the rainy season it is often dangerous to travellers. As soon as we had crossed this river, the singing men began to vociferate a particular song, expressive of their joy at having got safe into the west country, or, as they expressed it, the land of the setting sun. The country was found to be very level, and the soil a mixture of clay and sand. In the afternoon it rained hard, and we had recourse to the common Negro umbrella, a large ciboa leaf, which, being placed upon the head, completely defends the whole body from the rain. We lodged for the night under the shade of a large tabba tree, near the ruins of a village. On the morning following we crossed a stream called Noulico, and about two o’clock, to my infinite joy, I saw myself once more on the banks of the Gambia, which at this place, being deep and smooth, is navigable; but the people told me that a little lower down, the stream is so shallow that the coffles frequently cross it on foot. On the south side of the river, opposite to this place, is a large plain of clayey ground, called Toombi Toorila. It is a sort of morass, in which people are frequently lost, it being more than a day’s journey across it. In the afternoon we met a man and two women, with bundles of cotton cloth upon their heads. They were going, they said, for Dentila, to purchase iron, there being a great scarcity of that article on the Gambia. A little before it was dark, we arrived at a village in the kingdom of Woolli, called Seesukunda. Near this village there are great plenty of nitta trees, and the slaves in passing along had collected large bunches of the fruit; but such was the superstition of the inhabitants that they would not permit any of the fruit to be brought into the village. They had been told, they said, that some catastrophe would happen to the place when people lived upon nittas, and neglected to cultivate corn.

  June 2nd – We departed from Seesukunda, and passed a number of villages, at none of which was the coffle permitted to stop, although we were all very much fatigued; it was four o’clock in the afternoon before we reached Baraconda, where we rested one day. Departing from Baraconda on the morning of the 4th, we reached in a few hours Medina, the capital of the king of Woolli’s dominions, from whom the reader may recollect I received a hospitable reception in the beginning of December 1795 in my journey eastward.* I immediately enquired concerning the health of my good old benefactor, and learned with great concern that he was dangerously ill. As Karfa would not allow the coffle to stop, I could not present my respects to the king in person; but I sent him word by the officer to whom we paid customs, that his prayers for my safety had not been unavailing. We continued our route until sunset, when we lodged at a small village a little to the westward of Kootakunda, and on the day following arrived at Jindey, where, eighteen months before, I had parted from my friend Dr Laidley, an interval during which I had not beheld the face of a Christian, nor once heard the delightful sound of my native language.

  Being now arrived within a short distance of Pisania, from whence my journey originally commenced, and learning that my friend Karfa was not likely to meet with an immediate opportunity of selling his slaves on the Gambia, it occurred to me to suggest to him that he would find it for his interest to leave them at Jindey until a market should offer. Karfa agreed with me in this opinion, and hired, from the chief man of the town, huts for their accommodation, and a piece of land on which to employ them in raising corn and other provisions for their maintenance. With regard to himself, he declared that he would not quit me until my departure from Africa. We set out accordingly, Karfa, myself, and one of the Foulahs belonging to the coffle, early on the morning of the 9th; but although I was now approaching the end of my tedious and toilsome journey, and expected in another day to meet with countrymen and friends, I could not part, for the last time, with my unfortunate fellow-travellers, doomed, as I knew most of them to be, to a life of captivity and slavery, in a foreign land, without great emotion. During a wearisome peregrination of more than five hundred British miles, exposed to the burning rays of a tropical sun, these poor slaves, amidst their own infinitely greater sufferings, would commiserate mine; and frequently of their own accord, bring water to quench my thirst, and at night collect branches and leaves to prepare me a bed in the wilderness. We parted with reciprocal expressions of regret and benediction. My good wishes and prayers were all I could bestow upon them, and it afforded me some consolation to be told, that they were sensible I had no more to give.

  My anxiety to get forward admitting of no delay on the road, we reached Tendacunda in the evening, and were hospitably received at the house of an aged black female called Seniora Camilla, a person who had resided many years at the English factory, and spoke our language. I was known to her before I had left the Gambia, at the outset of my journey; but my dress and figure were now so different from the usual appearance of a European, that she was very excusable in mistaking me for a Moor. When I told her my name and country, she surveyed me with great astonishment, and seemed unwilling to give credit to the testimony of her senses. She assured me that none of the traders on the Gambia ever expected to see me again; having been informed long ago, that the Moors of Ludamar had murdered me, as they had murdered Major Houghton. I enquired for my two attendants, Johnson and Demba, and learned with great sorrow that neither of them was returned. Karfa, who had never before heard people converse in English, listened to us with great attention. Everything he saw seemed wonderful. The furniture of the house, the chairs, etc, and particularly beds with curtains, were objects of his great admiration; and he asked me a thousand questions concerning the utility and necessity of different articles, to some of which I found it difficult to give satisfactory answers.

  On the morning of the 10th, Mr Robert Ainsley, having learnt that I was at Tendacunda, came to meet me, and politely offered me the use of his horse. He informed me that Dr Laidley had removed all his property to a place called Kaye, a little farther down the river, and that he was then gone to Doomasansa with his vessel to purchase rice, but would return in a day or two. He therefore invited me to stay with him at Pisania until the Doctor’s return. I accepted the invitation, and being accompanied by my friend Karfa, reached Pisania about ten o’clock. Mr Ainsley’s schooner was lying at anchor before the place. This was the most surprising object which Karfa had yet seen. He could not easily comprehend the use of the masts, sails, and rigging, nor did he conceive that it was possible, by any sort of con
trivance, to make so large a body move forwards by the common force of the wind. The manner of fastening together the different planks which composed the vessel, and filling up the seams so as to exclude the water, was perfectly new to him; and I found that the schooner, with her cable and anchor, kept Karfa in deep meditation the greater part of the day.

  About noon, on the 12th, Dr Laidley returned from Doomasansa, and received me with great joy and satisfaction, as one risen from the dead. Finding that the wearing apparel which I had left under his care was not sold nor sent to England, I lost no time in resuming the English dress, and disrobing my chin of its venerable encumbrance. Karfa surveyed me in my British apparel with great delight, but regretted exceedingly that I had taken off my beard, the loss of which, he said, had converted me from a man into a boy. Dr Laidley readily undertook to discharge all the pecuniary engagements I had entered into since my departure from the Gambia, and took my draft upon the Association for the amount. My agreement with Karfa (as I have already related) was to pay him the value of one prime slave, for which I had given him my bill upon Dr Laidley before we departed from Kamalia; for, in case of my death on the road, I was unwilling that my benefactor should be a loser. But this good creature had continued to manifest towards me so much kindness, that I thought I made him but an inadequate recompense, when I told him that he was now to receive double the sum I had originally promised, and Dr Laidley assured him that he was ready to deliver the goods to that amount whenever he thought proper to send for them. Karfa was overpowered by this unexpected token of my gratitude, and still more so when he heard that I intended to send a handsome present to the good old schoolmaster, Fankooma, at Malacotta. He promised to carry up the goods along with his own, and Dr Laidley assured him that he would exert himself in assisting him to dispose of his slaves to the best advantage, the moment a slave vessel should arrive. These and other instances of attention and kindness shown him by Dr Laidley, were not lost upon Karfa. He would often say to me, ‘My journey has indeed been prosperous!’ But, observing the improved state of our manufactures, and our manifest superiority in the arts of civilised life, he would sometimes appear pensive, and exclaim, with an involuntary sigh, fato fing inta feng, ‘black men are nothing.’ At other times he would ask me, with great seriousness, what could possibly have induced me, who was no trader, to think of exploring so miserable a country as Africa? He meant by this, to signify that, after what I must have witnessed in my own country, nothing in Africa could, in his opinion, deserve a moment’s attention. I have preserved these little traits of character in this worthy Negro, not only from regard to the man, but also because they appear to me to demonstrate that he possessed a mind above his condition; and to such of my readers as love to contemplate human nature in all its varieties, and to trace its progress from rudeness to refinement, I hope the account I have given of this poor African will not be unacceptable.

  No European vessel had arrived at Gambia for many months previous to my return from the interior; and as the rainy season was now setting in, I persuaded Karfa to return to his people at Jindey. He parted with me on the 14th with great tenderness; but as I had little hopes of being able to quit Africa for the remainder of the year, I told him, as the fact was, that I expected to see him again before my departure. In this, however, I was luckily disappointed, and my narrative now hastens to its conclusion, for, on the 15th, the ship Charlestown, an American vessel, commanded by Mr Charles Harris, entered the river. She came for slaves, intending to touch at Goree to fill up, and to proceed from thence to South Carolina. As the European merchants on the Gambia had at this time a great many slaves on hand, they agreed with the captain to purchase the whole of his cargo, consisting chiefly of rum and tobacco, and deliver him slaves to the amount, in the course of two days. This afforded me such an opportunity of returning (though by a circuitous route) to my native country, as I thought was not to be neglected. I therefore immediately engaged my passage in this vessel for America; and having taken leave of Dr Laidley, to whose kindness I was so largely indebted, and my other friends on the river, I embarked at Kaye on the 17th day of June.

  Our passage down the river was tedious and fatiguing, and the weather was so hot, moist, and unhealthy, that before our arrival at Goree, four of the seamen, the surgeon, and three of the slaves had died of fevers. At Goree we were detained for want of provisions until the beginning of October.

  The number of slaves received on board this vessel, both on the Gambia and at Goree, was one hundred and thirty, of whom about twenty-five had been, I suppose, of free condition in Africa, as most of them being Bushreens, could write a little Arabic. Nine of them had become captives in the religious war between Abdulkader and Damel, mentioned in the latter part of the preceding chapter; two of the others had seen me as I passed through Bondou, and many of them had heard of me in the interior countries. My conversation with them in their native language gave them great comfort; and as the surgeon was dead, I consented to act in a medical capacity in his room for the remainder of the voyage. They had, in truth, need of every consolation in my power to bestow, not that I observed any wanton acts of cruelty practised either by the master or the seamen towards them, but the mode of confining and securing Negroes in the American slave ships (owing chiefly to the weakness of their crews), being abundantly more rigid and severe than in British vessels employed in the same traffic, made these poor creatures to suffer greatly, and a general sickness prevailed amongst them. Besides the three who died on the Gambia, and six or eight while we remained at Goree, eleven perished at sea, and many of the survivors were reduced to a very weak and emaciated condition.

  In the midst of these distresses, the vessel, after having been three weeks at sea, became so extremely leaky as to require constant exertion at the pumps. It was found necessary, therefore, to take some of the ablest of the Negro men out of irons, and employ them in this labour, in which they were often worked beyond their strength. This produced a complication of miseries not easily to be described. We were, however, relieved much sooner than I expected, for the leak continuing to gain upon us, notwithstanding our utmost exertions to clear the vessel, the seamen insisted on bearing away for the West Indies, as affording the only chance of saving our lives. Accordingly after some objections on the part of the master, we directed our course for Antigua, and fortunately made that island in about thirty-five days after our departure from Goree. Yet even at this juncture we narrowly escaped destruction, for on approaching the north-west side of the island we struck on the Diamond Rock, and got into St. John’s harbour with great difficulty. The vessel was afterwards condemned as unfit for sea, and the slaves, as I have heard, were ordered to be sold for the benefit of the owners.

  At this island I remained ten days, when the Chesterfield Packet, homeward bound from the Leeward Islands, touching at St John’s for the Antigua mail, I took my passage in that vessel. We sailed on the 24th of November, and after a short but tempestuous voyage, arrived at Falmouth on the 22nd of December, from whence I immediately set out for London, having been absent from England two years and seven months.

  Afterword to the First Journey

  In 1797, the fledgling British Museum occupied Montagu House, a lordly home surrounded by wooded gardens in what is now central London. Early on Christmas Day that year, James Dickson was alone in the gardens. Dickson, a Scottish seedsman, was so absorbed by his task that he did not hear anyone enter the side gate. So when he looked up and saw a man coming towards him through the gloom, he believed he was seeing the ghost of a man who was supposed to be deep in the heart of Africa. It was his brother-in-law, Mungo Park.

  It was through Dickson that Park had met Sir Joseph Banks, a man with a unique position in British society. One of the wealthiest people in the country, and one of the best connected too, Banks had decided early in his life not to become involved directly in politics. Instead he devoted his talent and his considerable means to the pursuit of scientific interests. He had, for instance,
paid a small fortune for the privilege of being the botanist to accompany Captain James Cook on his second voyage around the world. In 1771, Banks returned from the South Seas to a hero’s welcome in London – at the time he was as famous as Cook. Seven years later, he was elected president of the country’s leading scientific organisation, the Royal Society. Settled in London, Banks now enjoyed the friendship of King George III, who gave him care of the royal gardens at Kew. Banks also became adviser on scientific matters to His Majesty’s government, a one-man Department of Science. He was also an active member of London’s intellectual and social life, a frequenter of the dinners of a string of clubs and societies including the Royal Society Club, the Society of Dilettanti, the Society of Arts and a little-known group called the Saturday’s Club.

  Nothing is known of the Saturday’s Club until nine of its dozen members met for dinner at the St Alban’s Tavern on 9 June 1788 – not a Saturday, note, but a Monday – and created the Association for the Promotion of the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, the African Association for short. Banks and his friends Lord Rawdon (later Marquis of Hastings and Governor-General of India), the anti-slavery MP Henry Beaufoy and the Scottish improver Sir John Sinclair, founder of the Board of Agriculture, were among the members. The resolution they voted on that day stressed the geographical nature of their project:

  That as no species of information is more ardently desired, or more generally useful, than that which improves the science of Geography; and as the vast continent of Africa, notwithstanding the efforts of the ancients, and the wishes of the moderns, is still in a great measure unexplored, the members of this Club do form themselves into an Association for promoting the discovery of the inland parts of that quarter of the world.