by Mungo Park
Which part of ‘that quarter of the world’ would they investigate first? The choice soon became obvious: since antiquity, Africa was known to have two extraordinary rivers, the Nile and the Niger. On some maps these two rivers were shown to be connected, the Niger running across the continent and joining the Nile, which then ran due north to the Mediterranean. Somewhere along the Niger, they knew, there was a great trading city called Timbuktu where gold was in such abundance that even the slaves were adorned with it.
Within two weeks of the Saturday’s Club dinner, Banks and his friends had agreed upon a plan to bisect the northern half of the continent in search of the Niger: they would send one explorer south from Tripoli in Libya and another west from the Red Sea coast of Sudan. In so doing, they were to usher in the great age of overland exploration.
Within two weeks, they had also engaged two travellers. John Ledyard was an American who had sailed on Cook’s last voyage and was intent on becoming the first person to circumnavigate the world by land. He was sent to make the east-west crossing ‘as nearly as possible in the direction of the Niger’, as it was put in his instructions, ‘with which River, and with the Towns and Countries on its borders, he shall endeavour to make himself acquainted’. Unfortunately he died in Cairo before he could even begin his journey. The other traveller was Simon Lucas, King George III’s Oriental Interpreter, who volunteered to sail to Tripoli. In one way, Lucas seemed an ideal candidate for the job. As a youth, he had been captured by pirates and sold as a slave to the emperor of Morocco, so he knew the language and mentality of the region. But he was no adventurer and lacked the temperament to travel into Africa; before he had even left the Mediterranean coast for the interior, he decided to return to London.
While their first travellers were out in the field, Banks and his colleagues on the committee of the African Association were busy collecting information on the interior from other sources, including dispatches from British consuls along the North African coast. They also tried to make contact with Moorish traders passing through London. From two of these men – Ben Ali and Shabeni – they learned a great deal about travelling conditions in the interior. Ben Ali, who had already been to Timbuktu, went further than mere words and offered to take one of the Association’s travellers into the heart of Africa. But his terms were too steep and his behaviour too bizarre: before an agreement could be reached, Ben Ali had disappeared.
The Association’s plans were now changed to reflect this newly-acquired knowledge: the Committee decided to approach the interior from the Gambia River. This time, they chose an Irishman, Major Daniel Houghton. Houghton had travelled in Morocco and spent several years serving at the fort on Ile de Gorée, just off the Senegalese coast (near present-day Dakar), so was well-seasoned. In October 1790, he sailed for the Gambia River, made contact with Dr Laidley, a British slave trader operating along the river, enjoyed the hospitality of the King of Wuli – who assured him he could walk to Timbuktu ‘with only a stick in my hand’ – and then set off for the interior. On 1 September 1791, he sent Laidley the following note: ‘Major Houghton’s compliments to Dr Laidley, is in good health on his way to Tombuctoo, robbed of all his goods by Fenda Bucar’s son.’ After that, silence. It was not until the African Association’s annual meeting of 1794, held at the Thatched House Tavern in Pall Mall, that the secretary, Henry Beaufoy, announced the Committee’s belief that Houghton had been murdered. Beaufoy also announced that an application had been ‘received from Mr Mungo Park to engage in the service of the Association as a Geographical Missionary’.
Park had enjoyed Sir Joseph Banks’ patronage for some years before he offered his services to the Association. Through Banks, Park had been employed as assistant surgeon on an East India Company ship sailing for Bencoolen in Sumatra and had had his paper Eight small fishes from the coast of Sumatra read before the fledgling Linnaean Society (another of Banks’ endeavours). In May 1794 Park had written to his brother that ‘I have … got Sir Joseph’s word that if I wish to travel he will apply to the African Association.’ As we know, he did wish to travel, Banks made the arrangements and Park had the pleasure of seeing the Niger, as he described it, ‘glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster.’
Park returned to Britain in triumph. He was the first Association traveller to reach the interior and live to tell the tale and, what’s more, he had settled one of the puzzles of African geography. He might not know where the Niger terminated, but he could confirm that it flowed to the east.
Banks lost no time in spreading the news of Park’s and the Association’s success. The timing was fortuitous – the war against the French was going badly, Napoleon had defeated the Austrians, the Royal Navy was close to mutiny over bad conditions and worse leadership. Things were so bad that the French had even managed to make a landing in Wales the previous year. Park’s success was a welcome diversion and the press were happy to play it up: several newspapers ran stories in the weeks after his return. The Times went so far as to claim that Park had made contact with a great city, twice the size of London, whose people were keen to trade with Britain.
London’s beau monde was no less welcoming to the celebrity traveller. Banks and Earl Spencer, a member of the Association and brother of the notorious socialite Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, guaranteed Park’s entry into society, and for a while the twenty-six-year-old Scottish crofter’s son found himself the centre of attention in London’s grand houses. Such was his reputation that the Duchess of Devonshire went as far as to glorify events of the night following his arrival on the Niger in a song, which was put to music by the Italian composer G. G. Ferrari and illustrated with an engraving by the duchess’s companion (and successor) Lady Elizabeth Foster:
Song from Mr Park’s Travels
The loud wind roar’d,
the rain fell fast,
the white man yielded to the blast:
he sat him down beneath our tree,
for weary, sad and faint was he,
and ah! no wife of mother’s care,
for him the milk or corn prepare;
for him the milk or corn prepare …
When Sir Joseph Banks had come home from his voyage round the world he was only too happy to perform in London’s salons and, no doubt, to keep his male friends entertained over the port with racier stories of his sexual exploits. But Park did not have the temperament for this sort of society.
He had grown up on the Scottish Borders – dour, demanding country – and had then trained as a doctor in Edinburgh. He had first travelled to London at the invitation of his brother-in-law Dickson, who had then brought him to the attention of Sir Joseph Banks. Banks had soon recognised Park’s strength, resourcefulness, intelligence and other qualities – Henry Beaufoy, the Association’s Secretary, called him ‘a young man of no mean talents’. To have survived the many social occasions held at Banks’ Soho Square house, Park must have had the necessary social accomplishments. But on his return from Africa, he soon began to tire of his celebrity. The backlash was inevitable. Where the Duchess of Devonshire had lavished attention on him, her friend Lady Holland now described him as having ‘neither fancy or genius, and if he does fib it is dully.’
The African Association was due to hold its annual meeting of subscribers in May, as usual, and Banks wanted an account of Park’s travels to be ready by then, along with a new map of the area. The map was to be drawn by Major James Rennell, a former East India Company Surveyor-General and now the African Association’s honorary geographer. Rennell had a daunting task, for although Park had been sent out with some £65 worth of scientific equipment, including a pocket sextant, a magnetic compass and a thermometer from the master-maker Edward Troughton, he was soon robbed of everything but the compass. From then on, his observations became less specific, less scientific. On several occasions he almost lost whatever notes he had been able to make, which he carried tucked inside his hat. Just before reaching safety on his way out of the int
erior, stripped of what little he possessed, he had had his hat returned to him presumably because his assailants believed the papers were some sort of magic juju.
The task of helping Park write up his notes fell to the Association’s new secretary, Bryan Edwards. This was to prove a controversial choice. There was no doubting Edwards’ literary talents – his History of the British West Indies was highly praised when it appeared in 1794 and earned him a Fellowship at the Royal Society. By the time of Park’s return, Edwards was an MP and the owner of a bank in Southampton. But he was also the proprietor of large Jamaican estates that relied on slave labour. New laws had made it illegal to hold people in slavery within Britain in the late 1780s, but there was no legislation against slavery or the slave trade elsewhere in the world. There was, however, a growing and increasingly vocal opposition to the trade in Britain (legislation against the slave trade was finally passed by the British parliament in 1807). Members of the African Association were at the forefront of the campaign against the trade, most obviously the leading anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce. But it was Bryan Edwards, the Association’s pro-slavery Secretary, who was given the task of encouraging Park in his literary endeavours and of preparing a brief account of his travels for the members. Meanwhile Banks was making other plans.
Banks’ interests literally reached around the world. Among his many activities in 1788, for instance, he had founded the African Association, overseen the first Australian settlements and campaigned for tea plants to be shipped from China to India. Lord Hobart, the Foreign Secretary, was not exaggerating when he wrote to Banks that ‘Wide as the world is, traces of you are to be found in every corner of it.’ In May 1798, Park still had the full account of his travels to write, but Banks was already planning his protégé’s next voyage, the exploration of the interior of Australia. He had already written to the Home Office suggesting they employ Park for that purpose.
Park spent the summer of 1798 at home in Foulshiels on the Scottish borders, but on 9 September was at the Home Office in London. The meeting appeared to have been successful – the government certainly had the impression that the explorer would be heading to Australia for them. But Park soon informed his patron that he would not be sailing south. Banks was furious. ‘Till your absence from London,’ he wrote, ‘you always appeared to solicit [the appointment] with eagerness’ Park complained that the fee he was being offered did not match his status, but Dickson, his brother-in-law, suggested otherwise: ‘I have found out from his sister, which is my wife,’ he wrote to Banks from Covent Garden, ‘that there is some private connection, a love affair in Scotland, but no money in it (what a pity it is men should be such fools that might be of use to their country); that is the cause of it.’ A love affair indeed! During the summer of 1798, Park had fallen for Alison Anderson, the daughter of his former master. But Alison was in Scotland and Park was in England, with a book to write.
Once again, Bryan Edwards offered to edit the traveller’s pages, though neither men seemed to enjoy the task at first: Edwards’ letters to Banks during this time are full of complaints at Park’s lack of talent and application, ‘the occurrences which he relates are so unimportant, that it requires some skill in composition and arrangement.’ It wasn’t until November 1798 that Park hit his stride and Edwards began to relax, describing Park’s account of his captivity in Ludamar as ‘extremely well done’. By the end of January, the conversion was complete and Edwards was full of praise: ‘Park goes on triumphantly,’ he wrote to Banks. ‘He improves in his style so much by practice that his journal now requires but little correction; and some parts, which he has lately sent me, are equal to anything in the English Language.’
Park’s audience seemed to share Edwards’ opinion. Travels into the Interior of Africa was published in April 1799. The entire first run of around fifteen hundred copies sold in a week and two further editions sold out that first year. The critics liked it too, with the Gentleman’s Magazine setting the tone by claiming that ‘Few books of Voyages and Travels have been more favourably received.’ The success of Park’s Travels ensured a full house for the African Association’s general meeting on Saturday 25 May 1799. Edwards was expected to outline the Association’s progress to members, while Banks, as Treasurer, would give a financial report. But Edwards was too ill to attend the meeting and Banks spoke in his place. The world had been transformed in the eleven years of the Association’s existence and the French, who were now in control of much of Europe, had clear designs on Africa, as they had shown by invading Egypt the previous year, though Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile had forced Napoleon to scale down his ambitions. Here, if ever, was a moment for Banks to beat the Association’s drum and he wasted no time in doing just that.
Banks began by praising Park’s many remarkable qualities, his ‘strength to make exertions, constitution to endure fatigue and temper to bear insults with patience, courage to undertake hazardous enterprises when practicable, and judgment to set limits to his adventure.’ Then he turned to the significance of Park’s discovery. ‘We have already by Mr. Park’s means opened a Gate into the Interior of Africa, into which it is easy for every Nation to enter and to extend its commerce and discovery from the West to the Eastern side of that immense continent.’ It was but a short journey from the Gambia to the Niger rivers and British trade could easily take control of central Africa’s markets, once the British government had smoothed the way: ‘A detachment of 500 chosen troops would soon make that Road easy, and would Build Embarkations upon the Joliba [Niger] – if 200 of these were to embark with Field pieces they would be able to overcome the whole Forces which Africa could bring against them.’
With the book launched and the meeting over, Park went north. With both his reputation and his finances enhanced he now decided it was time to ensure his posterity in another way: in Scotland he married Alison and settled down to life in the country. The only cloud on his horizon was his inability to find work as a surgeon.
Without any appropriate work, once the scars from his African journey had healed, the fevers had eased, the stories been told and retold, Park began to long for new adventures. In July of 1800 he heard that British forces had recaptured the Ile de Gorée, off the Senegalese coast, and wrote to Banks pointing out its possible significance in developing trade with the African interior. In 1801, there was renewed talk of an expedition to New South Wales. In the spring of that year, the doctor was in London to discuss the proposal with Banks. On 12 March he wrote a letter home, which reveals much of his mood at the time:
My lovely Ailie, nothing gives me more pleasure than to write to you, and the reason why I delayed a day last time was to get some money to send to you. You say you are wishing to spend a note upon yourself. My sweet Ailie, you may be sure I approve of it. What is mine is yours, and I receive much pleasure from your goodness in consulting me about such a trifle. I wish I had thousands to give you, but I know that my Ailie will be contented with what we have, and we shall live in the hope of seeing better days … I am happy to know you will go to New South Wales with me, my sweet wife. You are everything that I could desire; and wherever we go, you may be sure of one thing, that I shall always love you.
Nothing came of the Australian project, but in the meantime there were changes at home: at the end of 1801, Park, his wife and child made the short move to Peebles to take up a medical practice. It seems he was as energetic as a local doctor as he had been as a traveller. The practice provided only a meagre living, but there were the consolations of home, the countryside and of some inspired company, including that of the novelist Sir Walter Scott. But Park was restless, could not forget Africa and, around this time, told Scott he ‘would rather brave Africa and all its horrors than wear out his life in long and toilsome rides over cold and lonely heaths and gloomy hills.’ Alongside the desire to get back to Africa, there was also a motive: he had guessed the Niger’s source and settled the question of its direction, but the matter of its termi
nation and of Timbuktu had still to be resolved. He felt that he should be the one to answer the outstanding questions about the Niger. In October 1803, there was also the calling: a letter arrived summoning him to the Colonial Office in London.
The plan proposed by Lord Hobart of the Colonial Office was not what Park had been expecting. Instead of being sent on a geographical mission to search for the end of the Niger, he was asked to conduct negotiations on trade treaties with the various rulers and also to build a string of forts between the Gambia and Niger rivers. To make all this possible, he was to be accompanied by a gunboat and a small force of British redcoats.
A change in administration in London put the plan on hold – it took most of 1804 for the new ministry of Prime Minister Pitt to establish itself. During this time, Park returned to Scotland. With him travelled a Moor by the name of Sidi Omback Boubi, a government-sponsored Arabic tutor, who must have caused quite a stir in Scotland by abstaining from drinking alcohol and by his habit of slaughtering his own food. By the autumn of 1804, the new Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Camden, had had time to consider the project. Camden was unenthusiastic about the military objectives. Instead, he wanted ‘a Journey of Enquiry without any military attendance upon it’, paid for by the government, but organised by the African Association.
Major Rennell, the Association’s geographer, had studied the information brought back by Park, sent by Houghton and gleaned from the Moors in London and concluded that ‘it can scarcely be doubted that the Joliba or Niger terminates in lakes in the eastern quarter of Africa.’ Park arrived in London insisting that the Niger would be found to flow into the Congo and from there into the Atlantic. To prove it, he suggested taking thirty soldiers and six carpenters, crossing from the Gambia to the Niger, building boats and sailing to the end of the river. Rennell was convinced Park would end up stranded in the middle of nowhere. Banks agreed with Rennell that it was ‘one of the most hazardous [expeditions] a man can undertake’, fraught with ‘the most frightful hazards’, but still believed Park should go.
