Mungo Park (1771–1806)

This is an all-action account of 24 yr old Scottish surgeon Mungo Park's expedition to trace the source of the Niger. I'd had pictures of steamy jungles, but Park's journey from the Gambia and into Mali, is much more of a progress through sundry villages (under very different rulers) and arid desert...all overshadowed by an ongoing war between local kingdoms, and constant raids by the truly dastardly Moors.
I think the one thing that stands out from the account is what a lovely guy Mungo Park show more is. Having read various old travelogues, the writers tend very much to a jingoistic scorn for the locals...Park treats those he meets as his equals, his assessment based solely on their actions.
But the Moors truly merit their description as "the rudest savages on earth"; the highlight for me was their effort to humiliate the 'kaffir' Park by bringing a wild hog into the assembly for him to eat. Park notes (with, we feel, considerable satisfaction) that far from running at the Christian, the hog "began to attack indiscriminately every person that came in his way, and at last took shelter under the couch upon which the king was sitting."
After Park's year long odyssey, the endless difficulties, the heroism, one feels that the following years, publishing his memoirs, marrying and working as a doctor in Peebles, is a huge anti-climax.
The short second part tells of his second trip to the Niger, leading a military expedition ten years later (1805.) Setting off ill-advisedly in the rainy season, and hampered by a bunch of men less resiliant than himself, this is a very different journey, as fever, dysentery, animals, hunger...and Moors...bring endless insurmountable challenges. The final section is based on account by an African guide, and is very sad after such amazingly determined efforts.
A total hero, up there with Ernest Shackleton and Belarusian war hero Tuvia Bielski in my pantheon of Incredible People. show less

Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa was published in 1799 and this fact colors everything. Mungo Park was generations ahead of his time, future African explorers like Burton and Livingstone were not even born yet. He was the first famous British explorer of Africa with dozens to follow over the next 80 years or so, while his predecessors were mostly Portuguese from the 15th and 16th who explored North East Africa.

Park was unencumbered by a tradition of African exploration show more literature, indeed he was one of the first. He wrote in a simple factual style that has more in common with 20th century modernism than the filigreed 19th century. It remains highly readable and entertaining. There is incident and adventure throughout and mercifully little 'geography'. It rightly made Park famous, but also sealed his doom when he pushed his luck for a second trip. Park was selfless in the quest for knowledge, indomitable in the face of adversity, and (occasionally) a humanist - which is more than can be said for many racist colonialists who followed. show less

Mungo has an amazing ability to sketch characters in a few laconic phrases (notably the many kings he meets), shows an attention to linguistic, geographical, and botanical detail that enriches his work and makes him a great example of your imperial "Africa hand", kind of a Dark Continent proto-comptroller. Only then he gets more and more attenuated, less and less human, except instead of turning bloody like Speke or Conrad's Kurtz, he just dries up in the Sahara, a cross between TE Lawrence, show more post-Ring Frodo Baggins, a holy man and a desert ghost. And as he returns to the orbit of England he reinflates, and we get a lot of horribly self-righteous pro-slavery enabling colonial garbage. But the ghost must have remained in him, because from what I hear he returned, and finally made it to Timbuktu, and then died. This is compelling. show less

In 1795-96 Mungo Park, young Scottish surgeon then barely 24 years old, was commissioned by the London African Society to go and explore West Africa and follow the Niger river; right in territories then completely unknown of the Europeans. The journey promises to be dangerous: a captain Houghton had done the same travel shortly before, and, never came back. It turned out he had been killed by the Moors. Never mind! The young man still throws himself into the adventure!

If his journey will be show more a failure (he will reach the Niger during the rainy season, completely dispossessed, having no choice but to turn back) the diary he kept and that will be published upon his return remains one of the most important account by an European upon Africa back then. Beyond the typical (caricatural now) odyssey of the white man under the tropics (the heat, the fever, the lions and the mosquitoes...) the book constitutes a precious outlook for two reasons. First, he describes an Africa from before colonialism - its powerful kingdoms; its intricate tribal political system; the trade and conflictual relationships tying all these people, including the Mandingoes, of which he not only speaks the language but take the time, in whole chapters, to describe the characters, way of life, rituals and traditions... Then, and strikingly for a white man at the time, because he is devoid of racial prejudices (he actually destroys them), him who will be robbed, witness to all sorts of weird and at times cruel traditions, but, also, the guest of local chiefs, or rely upon the help and precious hospitality of common villagers (despite his skin colour and his faith as a Christian making him more than once quite suspicious).

In fact, in here only the Moors get bad press. Terrorising the surrounding black kingdoms, their religious fanaticism makes them, according to Park, arrogant and dangerously aggressive. If he never misses an opportunity to condemn them in long passages, it's because he has his reason: he made the bad experience of being their captive, and would have surely ended up being a slave had he not escaped!

Having said that, his amazing open mindedness and deep empathy for the people he encounter makes him closer from contemporary readers that whose of his time. This diary, in any case, remains an invaluable testimony about an Africa forever lost. Mungo Park died in 1806, heading an expedition following the steps of its first mission, but his legacy was taken upon by others, less sympathetic... and we all know where it led to! An original and incredible account. show less