The agreement of Isaaco was to guide the expedition to the Niger,
whence it was to proceed under the direction of Amady Fatouma, another
guide. Accordingly, when Sansanding was reached, Isaaco's work was
accomplished. Some days he lingered to load the great canoe (large
enough to carry a hundred men). In the evenings he taught Mungo Park
the names of the necessaries of life in the tongues of the countries
ahead. Then he took a last farewell of his master and carried back to
the coast that famous letter to Lord Camden, the concluding lines of
which are engraved below the writer's statue in the city of Edinburgh:
"My dear friends Mr. Anderson and likewise Mr. Scott are both dead;
but, though all Europeans who were with me should die, and though I
were myself half dead, I would still persevere; and if I could not
succeed in the object of my journey I would at least die on the
Niger."
One by one the months wore on and no news came from the Niger. But in
the next year (1806) there began to be rumors of a great disaster.
Still nothing definite was heard, and Mungo Park's wife and his many
friends hoped on. They knew his marvellous hardihood and resource, and
that of the stalwart Scotsmen who were with him. In 1810, however,
the Government, who were responsible for the second expedition,
thought it time to inquire what had befallen it; so they told the
Governor of Senegal to find Isaaco and offer him £1,000 to explore
after the explorer and put all doubts at rest. Now the manuscript
which I possess, and of which a _précis_ follows, is Isaaco's account
of his travels in search of Mungo Park, by which he earned his
thousand pounds and did the last sad offices to his master's memory.
In my judgment it contains as much of the spirit of adventure as Mungo
Park's own journals, and, being written by a native, gets nearer to
the life and mind of the African Negro than any white man, writing
from outside, could hope to do. For that reason I often wonder why the
successive editors of Park's _Travels_ have passed it over, printing
only the last page or two, wherein Amady Fatouma relates the
explorer's end. One thing I know has been against its adoption, to
wit, an insufferably dull style. Seeing that it is difficult to be
dull in the Arabic tongue, and that it was impossible for Isaaco to be
so in any of the tongues he used, I suspect the English translator (no
doubt a mere clerk in Governor Maxwell's Office) of pruning away the
flowers of speech, and making all as prim and exact as an affidavit.
Or possibly Isaaco simulated dullness. He meant to have that thousand
pounds, and could afford to take no risks. A tropical, luxuriant style
would certainly have put his credibility in question. As it was, many
of the learned societies doubted his word, and one of them roundly
asserted that he had sat outside Senegal and fabricated at ease the
history of his travels. It was only after Bowditch, Denham,
Clapperton, and Landor had explored after the explorer that Isaaco's
credit was established and the learned societies put to shame.
In the abridgment that follows I have tried to preserve not only the
spirit, but wherever possible the very words, of Isaaco's manuscript
_Journal_. Whatever has been discarded is of little consequence and of
less grammar.