MUNGO
PARK
Mungo Park was born in 1771 and was the seventh child of a Scottish tenant farmer.
He studied at the University of Edinburgh and later worked as a ship’s surgeon on a vessel of the East India Company. In 1795 he was employed by the African Association to explore the interior of Africa.
Mungo Park was one of many Europeans who had attempted the same journey, but none had returned alive before him.
He began his major expedition from Pisania, a trading post at the mouth of the Gambia River, in December 1795, setting out on his long journey through the regions of Africa south of the Sahara. The result of this expedition was his book Travels in the Interior of Africa, published in London in 1799. In 1805 he undertook a second expedition to explore Senegambia.
He faced numerous attacks from local inhabitants using stones and arrows, and during one of these encounters he fell into a river and drowned at the age of 35. He was the first European to travel along the Niger River and to visit Timbuktu.
