Search for the Niger

Mungo Park · 1795 CE – 1797 CE · Earth

Reach the Niger and ascertain its course and, if possible, its rise and termination.

Historical context

European geographers could not agree which way the Niger flowed or where it ended, though the people Park met on the road told him it ran towards the rising sun. He reached it from the Gambia in 1796 and came back; his second attempt, in 1805, cost him his life.

The voyage, step by step

1. A surgeon lands in Africa

   21 June 1795

   On 21 June 1795 a twenty-three-year-old Scottish surgeon anchors at Jillifree, on the north bank of the Gambia, with orders to find the Niger.

2. Fever at Pisania

   2 December 1795

   At Dr Laidley’s trading post he spends five months learning Mandinka and fighting fever, then sets out inland on 2 December 1795.

3. Four months a prisoner

   12 March 1796

   From 12 March 1796 Ali, the emir of Ludamar, holds him at Benowm and then Bubaker; robbed, threatened and half starved, he is taken to Jarra with Ali’s horsemen at the end of May, and flees on 2 July when Ali’s men come to take him back.

4. The Niger at last

   20 July 1796

   In his journal entry for 20 July 1796 he sees the great river glittering in the morning sun near Ségou and flowing east, as the people he met had told him it would.

5. Refused at Ségou

   23 July 1796

   Mansong, king of Bambara, will not let a ragged stranger cross the river to the royal town, but on 23 July sends him five thousand cowries to buy food on the road.

6. Turning back at Silla

   29 July 1796

   On 29 July 1796 a fisherman’s canoe brings him to Silla; sick, penniless and with the rains set in, he decides to go no further.

7. Given up for dead

   10 June 1797

   Nursed at Kamalia by Karfa Taura, he walks back to the Gambia with a slave caravan and reaches Pisania on 10 June 1797, eighteen months after leaving it.

Outcome

Reached the Niger near Ségou in July 1796, saw it flow east, followed it to Silla and came back alive in 1797; a second expedition, begun in 1805, ended with his death on the river, early in 1806 by his guide Isaaco’s reckoning.

Mungo Park

Scottish surgeon and explorer who journeyed to the Niger River and reported its course to Europe.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Mungo Park — Wikipedia
• Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797Mungo Park · W. Bulmer and Co., London (Project Gutenberg) · 1799
• The Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa, in the Year 1805, with an Account of the Life of Mr. Park and Isaaco’s JournalMungo Park; edited by John Whishaw · John Murray, London (Project Gutenberg) · 1815

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