Search for the Niger
Mungo Park · 1795 CE – 1797 CE · Earth
Find the course of the Niger River.
Historical context
The Niger was Europe's most tantalising river: its course ran the wrong way for every map. Park's journey into the interior cost him his life on a second attempt.
The voyage, step by step
A surgeon lands in Africa
1795 CE
A twenty-four-year-old Scottish surgeon comes ashore at the mouth of the Gambia with orders to follow the Niger.
Fever at Pisania
2 December 1795
At a small trading factory up the river he spends five months learning Mandinka and shaking with malaria.
Four months a prisoner
1796 CE
Detained by the emir of Ludamar, he is kept in a hut, mocked and half starved until the rains let him slip away.
The Niger at last
20 July 1796
On 20 July 1796 he sees the great river glittering in the morning sun and, to his astonishment, flowing east.
Refused at Ségou
1796 CE
The Bambara king Mansong will not receive a ragged stranger, but sends him food and five thousand cowries to travel on.
Turning back at Silla
1796 CE
Sick, penniless and warned of hostile country downstream, he turns back within reach of the city he came to find.
Given up for dead
June 1797
He walks back to the Gambia with a slave caravan and reaches Pisania in June 1797, nineteen months after leaving it.
Outcome
Reached the Niger at Segou.
Mungo Park
Scottish surgeon and explorer who journeyed to the Niger River and reported its course to Europe.
Sources
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