Mungo Park: the Scottish surgeon who found the direction of the Niger

Until the end of the 18th century, European geographers were not sure of one basic fact about the Niger, the largest river of West Africa: in which direction does it flow? To find the answer, a learned society in London sent a 24-year-old Scottish doctor. His name was Mungo Park.

A young surgeon from Scotland

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mungo Park was born on 10 September 1771 at Fowlshiels, near the Scottish town of Selkirk, and trained as a surgeon at Edinburgh University. In 1792 he was appointed medical officer on a trading ship bound for the East Indies. His study of the plants and animals of Sumatra drew the attention of the African Association in London. The same society sent him to find the true course of the Niger.

Park’s travel book, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, was published in London in 1799. Britannica gives the year of publication as 1797, but the title page of the first edition bears 1799. In it Park writes that he sailed from Portsmouth on the ship Endeavour on 22 May 1795 and anchored at the mouth of the Gambia on 21 June.

Five months at Pisania

According to Britannica, Park went about 200 miles up the Gambia to a British trading post called Pisania, which is today called Karantaba in the Gambia. Park writes that on 5 July 1795 he reached the house of Dr Laidley there, who took him in. He suffered from fever there and learnt Mandingo, the language commonly spoken in the area. He also mentions the animals of the river: sharks were plentiful near the mouth, and further up there were crocodiles and hippopotamuses, which he always found “timid and inoffensive”.

Captivity at Benowm

Park writes that on 2 December 1795 he left Pisania for the interior with a few companions. According to Britannica, despite fever and severe hardship, he crossed the upper basin of the Senegal river. Then, in a region called Ludamar, he was stopped by its ruler, Ali. According to Park, he was held prisoner in the tent settlement of Benowm, on the edge of the desert, where hunger and thirst were his greatest sufferings. Britannica writes that after four months in captivity he escaped on 1 July 1796, with almost nothing except a horse and a compass.

“The great water of the west”

For the next three weeks he travelled alone and in poverty through the land of Bambara. Park writes that in the villages along the way people laughed at the sight of him, because he walked, driving his weak horse before him. In one village he was told that the next morning he would see the Niger, which the local people call “Joliba”, meaning “the great water”. He writes that the thought, and the buzzing of mosquitoes, kept him awake all night.

According to Britannica, on 20 July 1796 he reached Ségou, which is today in Mali. Park writes that as he passed through marshy ground, a companion cried out “geo affili”, meaning “see the water”. In his words: “I saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission; the long sought for majestic Niger, glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward.”

Park writes that he was not surprised that the river flowed east. When he left Europe he had kept the opposite direction in mind, but along the way people of various nations had repeatedly told him that the river flows “towards the rising sun”. Thus the centuries-old question of the direction of the Niger was settled.

A tiny moss and the return

According to Britannica, Park went about 80 miles down the river to Silla, then was forced to turn back when his supplies ran out. The return journey was made on foot and by a more southerly route. According to Park, robbers on the way took everything from him, even his clothes, and left him alone in the wilderness. He writes that he was 500 miles from the nearest European settlement and was beginning to lose heart, when the beauty of a tiny moss plant suddenly caught his eye. The whole plant was no larger than the tip of his finger, but the delicate structure of its roots and leaves restored his courage. He rose and soon reached a village.

According to Britannica, at a place called Kamalia he lay seriously ill with fever for seven months. He then returned to Pisania with a merchant’s caravan on 10 June 1797. Park writes that the ship on which he left the Gambia, being leaky, put in at the West Indian island of Antigua. From there he boarded another ship and reached the English port of Falmouth on 22 December 1797. He had been away from England for two years and seven months. According to Britannica, his book was very popular and he became famous.

The second expedition

According to Britannica, after his marriage Park practised as a doctor in the Scottish town of Peebles, until the government gave him command of a second expedition to the Niger. He left Pisania with 40 Europeans, but when he reached the Niger near Bamako on 19 August 1805, only 11 were alive. On 19 November 1805 he set out by boat down the river from Sansanding with eight companions, hoping to reach the sea by the end of January 1806. According to Britannica, it became known in 1812 that at Bussa, about 1,000 miles downstream, he was attacked amid the rocky rapids of the river and drowned. His death is believed to have occurred in 1806. Bussa is today in Nigeria.

Next instalment: Mirza Abu Taleb Khan: from Lucknow to London.