page_title: Mungo Park (explorer)
section_title: First journey
hierarchical_section_title: Mungo Park (explorer) / Travels into the Interior of Africa / First journey
context_page_description: Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of West Africa. After an exploration of the upper Niger River around 1796, he wrote a popular and influential travel book titled Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in which he theorized the Niger and Congo merged to become the same river. He was killed during a second expedition, having successfully traveled about two-thirds of the way down the Niger. Park's death meant the idea of a Niger-Congo merger remained unproven but it became the leading theory among geographers. The mystery of the Niger's course, which had been speculated about since the Ancient Greeks and was second only to the mystery of the Nile source, was not solved for another 25 years, in 1830, when it was discovered the Niger and Congo were in fact separate rivers.
  If the African Association was the "beginning of the age of African exploration" then Mungo Park was its first successful explorer; he set a standard for all who followed.
context_section_description: On 26 September 1794 Mungo Park offered his services to the African Association, then looking for a successor to Major Daniel Houghton, who had been sent in 1790 to discover the course of the Niger River and had died in the Sahara. Supported by Sir Joseph Banks, Park was selected.
  On 22 May 1795, Park left Portsmouth, England, on the brig Endeavour, a vessel travelling to Gambia to trade for beeswax and ivory.
  On 21 June 1795, he reached the Gambia River and ascended it 200 miles (300 km) to a British trading station named Pisania. On 2 December, accompanied by two local guides, he started for the unknown interior. He chose the route crossing the upper Senegal basin and through the semi-desert region of Kaarta. The journey was full of difficulties, and at Ludamar he was imprisoned by a Moorish chief for four months. On 1 July 1796, he escaped, alone and with nothing but his horse and a pocket compass, and on the 21st reached the long-sought Niger River at Ségou, being the first European to do so. He followed the river downstream 80 miles (130 km) to Silla, where he was obliged to turn back, lacking the resources to go further.
  On his return journey, begun on 29 July, he took a route more to the south than that originally followed, keeping close to the Niger River as far as Bamako, thus tracing its course for some 300 miles (500 km). At Kamalia he fell ill, and owed his life to the kindness of a man in whose house he lived for seven months. Eventually he reached Pisania again on 10 June 1797, returning to Scotland by way of Antigua on 22 December. He had been thought dead, and his return home with news of his exploration of the Niger River evoked great public enthusiasm. An account of his journey was drawn up for the African Association by Bryan Edwards, and his own detailed narrative appeared in 1799 (Travels in the Interior of Africa).
  Park was convinced that: 
  whatever difference there is between the negro and European, in the conformation of the nose, and the colour of the skin, there is none in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feelings of our common nature.
  — Park 1799, p. 82
  Park encountered a group of slaves when traveling through Mandinka country Mali: 
  They were all very inquisitive, but they viewed me at first with looks of horror, and repeatedly asked if my countrymen were cannibals. They were very desirous to know what became of the slaves after they had crossed the salt water. I told them that they were employed in cultivating the land; but they would not believe me; and one of them putting his hand upon the ground, said with great simplicity, "have you really got such ground as this, to set your feet upon?" A deeply-rooted idea that the whites purchase Negroes for the purpose of devouring them, or of selling them to others that they may be devoured hereafter, naturally makes the slaves contemplate a journey towards the Coast with great terror, insomuch that the Slatees are forced to keep them constantly in irons, and watch them very closely, to prevent their escape.
  — Park 1799, p. 319
  His book Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa became a best-seller because it detailed what he observed, what he survived, and the people he encountered. His dispassionate — if not scientific or objective — descriptions set a standard for future travel writers to follow and gave Europeans a glimpse of Africa's humanity and complexity. Park introduced them to a vast continent unexplored by Europeans. If the African Association was the  "beginning of the age of African exploration" then Mungo Park was its first successful explorer, he set a standard for all who followed. After his death, European public and political interest in Africa began to increase. Perhaps the most lasting effect of Park's travels, though, was the influence on European colonial ambitions during the 19th century.
caption: Park was one of the first European explorers of Central Africa, and was one of the first explorers mentioned in Reisen in Central-Afrika – von Mungo Park bis auf Dr. Barth u. Dr. Vogel (1859) (Travels in Central-Africa – from Mungo Park to Dr. Barth and Dr. Vogel)
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