faced the terrors of the Sahara Desert, and in the
tenth century reached the land of the negroes, found the Niger, and
established schools and mosques westward of Timbuktu.

Portugal had then begun to play her part, and the fifteenth century
is full of the wonderful voyages inspired by Prince Henry of Portugal,
which culminated in the triumph of Vasco da Gama's great voyage to
India by the Cape of Good Hope.

Then the slave trade drew the Elizabethan Englishmen to the shores
of West Africa, and the coast was studded with forts and stations in
connection with it. Yet in the eighteenth century the Niger and
Timbuktu were still a mystery.

In 1778 the African Association was founded, with our old friend Sir
Joseph Banks as an active member inquiring for a suitable man to follow
up the work of the explorer Houghton, who had just perished in the
desert on his way to Timbuktu.

The opportunity produced the man. Mungo Park, a young Scotsman, bitten
with the fever of unrest, had just returned from a voyage to the East
on board an East India Company's ship. He heard of this new venture,
and applied for it. The African Association instantly accepted his
services, and on 22nd May 1795, Mungo Park left England on board the
_Endeavour_, and after a pleasant voyage of thirty days landed at the
mouth of the river Gambia. The river is navigable for four hundred
miles from its mouth, and Park sailed up to a native town, where the
_Endeavour_ was anchored, while he set out on horseback for a little
village, Pisania, where a few British subjects traded in slaves, ivory,
and gold. Here he stayed a while, to learn the language of the country.
Fever delayed him till the end of November, when the rains were over,
the native crops had been reaped, and food was cheap and plentiful.
On 3rd December he made a start, his sole attendants being a negro
servant, Johnson, and a slave boy. Mungo Park was mounted on a strong,
spirited little horse, his attendants on donkeys. He had provisions
for two days, beads, amber, and tobacco for buying fresh food, an
umbrella, a compass, a thermometer and pocket sextant, some pistols
and firearms, and "thus attended, thus provided, thus armed, Mungo
Park started for the heart of Africa."

[Illustration: MUNGO PARK. From the engraving in Park's _Travels into
the Interior of Africa_, 1799.]

Three days' travelling brought him to Medina, where he found the old
king sitting on a bullock's hide, warming himself