_PREPARING FOR A NEW EXPEDITION._
In this as in his earlier expedition, Park was dogged by his usual
ill-luck.
Disappointment met him at the very outset.
He had left Scotland in the belief that almost every arrangement had
been made, and that a very short time would suffice to complete the
necessary preparations.
He arrived in London only to hear that the departure of the expedition
had been postponed till the end of February 1804. With what patience he
possessed he waited. The allotted time went by. Once more everything
was ready. Part of the troops destined for the service were actually on
board ship, when orders came countermanding the expedition, pending the
decision of Lord Camden, the new Colonial Secretary, as to whether it
should go at all or not.
Park was naturally bitterly disappointed at thus being thrown again on
the seas of uncertainty. The expedition might now never set out, and
the task of solving the great African problem would be reserved for
another.
Meanwhile the date of departure was provisionally put off till
September, and till then he was recommended to return to Scotland
and occupy the interval in perfecting himself in taking astronomical
observations and in learning Arabic--acquirements which would be of
the utmost importance to him afterwards.
A suitable teacher of Arabic was found in one Sidi Ambak Bubi, a native
of Mogador, and then residing in London. Accompanied by the Moor,
Park returned to Peebles in March. Here he remained till May, when he
finally quitted that town and took up his residence at Foulshiels while
awaiting the decision of the Colonial Office.
It was at this time that the great traveller came in contact with his
still greater countryman and neighbour, Sir Walter Scott, then living
at Ashesteil, and separated from Foulshiels only by the sharp ridge of
hills which divides the Yarrow from the Tweed.
Between two such men--the one absorbed in a career of prospective
action in a new continent, the other revelling in a romantic world of
retrospective thought--it might be supposed there was little in common.
In reality there was much. Scott, though he delighted to sing of
the past and conjure up its knightly deeds, had a soul capable of
appreciating all forms of glorious and adventurous enterprise, whether
seen in the prosaic lights of the passing moment, or invested with the
romantic vagueness and fascinating glamour which the shades of time
gather around bygone days. To such an one Park was a man after his own
heart. Had but his deeds been surrounded with the pomp and circumstance
which glorified those of the knights of old, Scott might have sung them
in a similar heroic strain. Mayhap the day will come when another Scott
will arise to do for Park and his successors what Sir Walter and others
have done for the heroic figures of our nation’s history.
On the other hand, Park, imbued as he likewise was with the romantic
instinct, could not fail to be attracted by Scott’s peculiar genius.
Moreover, both were Scotchmen, both Borderers, and both alike were
passionate lovers of the minstrelsy, tales, traditions, and ballads of
their native country. The ballads especially were dear to Park, and
he tells how, in his last expedition, one of his followers used “to
beguile the watches of the night with the songs of our dear native
land.”
But whatever were the links which drew these two famous men together,
they were sufficient speedily to develop a very warm and cordial
friendship, and visits were frequently interchanged across the heathery
hills which separated them. On one of these occasions Scott discovered
Park sitting alone beside the noisy Yarrow, employed in the apparently
idle and boyish amusement of throwing stones into the river and
anxiously watching the bubbles as they rose to the surface. On being
asked what interest he found in such a pastime, Park replied that he
was thus in the habit of ascertaining the depth of rivers in Africa
before venturing to cross them--the time taken by the bubbles to rise
being an indication of the depth.
Early in September came the long expected summons to repair to London,
and Park lost no time in settling his affairs preparatory to leaving
home. Among others, he paid a farewell visit to Sir Walter Scott at
Ashesteil, where he spent the night. Next morning his host accompanied
him on his way to Foulshiels. The path lay up the Glenkinnen to
Williamhope, whence it continued over the ridge and passed between the
Brown Knowe and the humpy elevation of the Broomy Law. As they passed
from the birchen slopes of Glenkinnen into the heather and grass-clad
zones above, Park talked much of his plans of exploration, and the
results that would accrue to science and commerce should he prove
successful.
Under other conditions the panorama which slowly unfolds itself with
the ascent of the hill would have been sufficient to draw even Park’s
thoughts from Africa and the Niger. The various glens and valleys of
the Tweed, the Gala, the Yarrow, and the Ettrick divide the land into a
picturesque succession of winding ridges, isolated hills, and rounded
mountain tops, where wood, heather, and grass give variety of colour to
the higher levels, while below waving crops and busy harvest-fields,
ruined castle and noble mansion, humble cottage and straggling village,
with glancing bits of stream and river, flocks of sheep and scattered
herds of cattle, combine to produce the softer effects of “cultivated
nature.”
But on this day of leave-taking a leaden-coloured mist hung over hill
and valley, hiding their every feature. Only now and again did the
breeze lift a corner of the enshrouding veil and give a momentary
glimpse, vague and fleeting, of glen and hill-top. As they talked of
the coming journey Scott seemed to see in the vaguely defined landscape
an emblem of his friend’s prospects, where all was problematic,
uncertain--the path beset with unknown dangers and pitfalls, nothing
sure save the presence of surrounding perils which might neither be
foreseen nor prepared for. In this ignorance as regards the exact
nature of the dangers to be faced lies one of the chief difficulties
and terrors of travel in unexplored savage lands. All the traveller
does know is that dangers in various forms will most assuredly confront
him, and he must depend upon his presence of mind and readiness of
resource at the moment to avoid or repel them.
But Park was not to be debarred from his enterprise by any thought of
the difficulties in the way. To all that Scott could urge he had his
answer. The idea of solving the question of the Niger’s termination was
one which possessed him to the exclusion of all thoughts of self. As
well have asked him to renounce his belief in the existence of God as
expect him to give up his cherished scheme.
At last the glen of the Yarrow lay before them. At the bottom could be
hazily defined the “birchen bower,” from which the stately tower of
Newark and the humble cottage of Foulshiels alike looked forth on the
beautiful murmurous stream.
Here they must say good-bye. A ditch divided the road from the moor,
and in crossing it Park’s horse stumbled and nearly fell. “I am afraid,
Mungo,” said Scott, “that is a bad omen.” “Freits” (_i.e._, omens)
“follow those who look to them,” was the prompt reply; and without
another word Park rode away and disappeared in the mist.
It now only remained to Park to take farewell of his wife. Brave as
he was, the ordeal was more than he dared face. Not that she had
raised any objections to his going, or put any barriers in the way.
Seeing how much her husband’s heart was in it, and not perhaps without
some natural womanly pride in being the wife of a hero rather than
of a nobody, she seems to have accepted as a matter of course his
determination to avail himself of the chance of further distinction
presented by the proposed expedition. Still, the moment of actual
parting, with the prospect of at best a long period of separation,
would be agony. Even better than his wife Park knew how many chances
there were that the separation might be final--that wife and children,
of whom there were now three, might never see him again. Sanguine as he
was of success, there were moments when he could not but admit that the
coming enterprise looked very like a forlorn hope--moments, too, when
it became difficult for him to discern whether his duty to humanity or
to his family had the stronger claim upon him.
It was under the influence of some such feeling of despondency that
he finally resolved to spare both himself and his wife the anguish
of a parting scene, and betaking himself to Edinburgh on the plea of
business, thence wrote to her his last farewell.
On his arrival in London in September 1804, Park presented a written
statement to the Colonial Office embodying his views as to the
commercial and geographical results likely to accrue from the intended
expedition, at the same time pointing out the best means to accomplish
the work as regards men and goods. In this memorandum he pointed out
the course he proposed to pursue. Passing through Bondu, Kajaaga,
Fuladu, and Bambarra to Sego, he would construct a boat and proceed by
way of Jenné and Kabara (the port of Timbuktu) through the kingdoms of
Haussa, Nyffé (now called Nupé), and Kashna, &c., to the kingdom of
Wangara. If the river ended here, he pointed out, his chief difficulty
would begin. To return by the Niger, to cross the desert to Tripoli or
Egypt, or to pass eastward to the Nile and Abyssinia, he considered
equally difficult. The most feasible course seemed that towards
the Bight of Benin. If, however, the Niger was, as he confidently
believed, in reality the Congo, he would follow it to its termination.
After pointing out the grounds for his belief, Park concluded with the
opinion that when “your Lordship shall have duly weighed the above
reasons, you will be induced to conclude that my hopes of returning by
the Congo are not altogether fanciful, and that the expedition, though
attended with extreme danger, promises to be productive of the utmost
advantage to Great Britain. Considered in a commercial point of view,
it is second only to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and in a
geographical point of view is certainly the greatest discovery that
remains to be made in the world”--a very strong statement of the case,
it must be admitted, though undoubtedly if the Niger and the Congo had
proved to be one, it could scarcely have been said to be too strong.
Park had been converted to this view of the identity of the two great
rivers by one George Maxwell, a West African trader, who had seen much
of the Congo near its mouth, and had published a chart embodying the
results of his observations. When closely examined, the arguments in
its favour were of small value, and practically arose out of the fact
that there was a large river with a southerly trend whose termination
was unknown, while further south there was a second, the Congo, whose
origin was equally a mystery. Prolong these in the necessary direction
and the result is identity, and the mystery of both is settled.
Meanwhile Major Rennell stuck to his view with all the pertinacity of
the arm-chair geographer, and the man of one idea. For him the Niger
ended in the desert wastes of Wangara and Ghana. Unfortunately for his
theory the Major was unconsciously confounding two Wangaras separated
from each other by fifteen hundred miles and more, and likewise the
old Empire of Ghana on the middle course of the Niger with Kano at
the eastern extremity of the Haussa States. A similar confusion also
appears in Park’s memorandum, where he speaks of the continuation of
the river after Nupé to Kashna (Katsina) and the kingdom of Wangara.
Strange indeed it seems to us now that no geographer even at this time
ever suggested that the outlet of the Niger might be in the Bight
of Benin, among the numerous creeks that penetrate the low swampy
mangrove ground which here subtends the Bight. Looking at the map,
the suggestion seems to us to come naturally, yet Park had to carry
the course of the river away south to the Congo; Rennell turned it
west, and ended it where our maps are now occupied by Lake Chad, while
there were not wanting others, like Jackson, who persisted in joining
it to the Nile, “en abusant, pour ainsi dire, du vaste carrière que
l’intérieur de l’Afrique y laissait prendre,” as D’Anville had said of
earlier geographers.
Whatever we may now think of Park’s theories as to the termination of
the Niger, they did not appear in any way absurd in his own time. The
wildest conjecture was permissible as regards a vast river flowing
by an uncertain course through a continent still blank on our maps.
Accordingly his memorandum was received favourably by Lord Camden, and
the despatch of the expedition to carry out the traveller’s ideas was
determined on.
A liberal compensation was to be given to Park on his return, and it
was also stipulated that in the event of his death, or of his not
being heard of within a given period, a certain sum should be paid by
Government as a provision for his wife and family.
Meanwhile Rennell, in the most friendly fashion, not only argued
against Park’s views as to the Niger termination, but earnestly advised
him to relinquish his dangerous project. With as little effect in
the one case as in the other, however. The explorer’s determination,
like his opinions, was not to be shaken. Sir Joseph Banks took up a
more philosophic position. He admitted the hazardous nature of the
enterprise; but since the work was not to be accomplished without risk
of life, he could not attempt to dissuade Park from it, he being the
man most likely to carry it through with least danger of a fatal issue.
Gradually the affairs of the expedition began to take shape. Dr.
Alexander Anderson, Park’s young brother-in-law, was selected as
his second in command, and Mr. George Scott, a fellow-dalesman, was
added to the party as draughtsman. A few boat-builders and artificers
were also to accompany the party from England, for the purpose of
constructing the boat intended for the navigation of the Niger when it
was reached. Soldiers to assist and protect the expedition were to be
selected at Goree, where a garrison of the African corps was stationed.
It was now a matter of paramount importance that the expedition should
leave England at once if it was to take advantage of the dry season.
But official red-tape was as difficult to galvanise into activity and
life as African apathy, and in spite of his utmost endeavours to push
matters on, delay succeeded upon delay, and Park saw the good season
gradually dwindling away, leaving him to the maddening contemplation
of all the additional difficulties and dangers engendered by the rains.
Two whole months were thus lost; and when he at last received his
official instructions, he knew that the Government, by its continued
procrastination, had done much if not everything to ensure a disastrous
termination to the expedition.
In the instructions supplied to him Park’s mission was defined as being
to discover whether and to what extent commercial intercourse could be
established in the interior of Africa for the mutual benefit of the
natives and of His Majesty’s subjects. He was directed to proceed up
the Gambia, and thence to the banks of the Niger by way of the Senegal.
The special object of his journey was to determine the course of the
Niger, and to establish communication with all the different nations
on its banks. He was at liberty to pursue any return route which he
might find most suitable, either by turning west to the Atlantic, or by
marching upon Cairo.
To carry out this great mission effectively, a captain’s commission
was bestowed on him, and that of a lieutenant on Anderson. European
soldiers to the number of forty-five, and as many natives as he might
deem necessary, were to be selected at Goree, and a sufficient number
of donkeys at St. Jago. He was further empowered to draw for any sum he
might want not exceeding £5000.