his bundle, jumped on to
his horse, and rode away as hard as he could. Looking back, he saw
three Moors in hot pursuit, whooping and brandishing their
double-barrelled guns. But he was beyond reach, and he breathed again.
Now starvation stared him in the face. To the pangs of hunger were
added the agony of thirst. The sun beat down pitilessly, and at last
Mungo fell on the sand. "Here," he thought--"here after a short but
ineffectual struggle I must end all my hopes of being useful in my
day and generation; here must the short span of my life come to an
end."

[Illustration: THE CAMP OF ALI, THE MOHAMMEDAN CHIEF, AT BENOWN. From
a sketch by Mungo Park.]

But happily a great storm came and Mungo spread out his clothes to
collect the drops of rain, and quenched his thirst by wringing them
out and sucking them. After this refreshment he led his tired horse,
directing his way by the compass, lit up at intervals by vivid flashes
of lightning. It was not till the third week of his flight that his
reward came. "I was told I should see the Niger early next day," he
wrote on 20th July 1796. "We were riding through some marshy ground,
when some one called out 'See the water!' and, looking forwards, I
saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission--the
long-sought-for majestic Niger glittering to the morning sun, as broad
as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly _to the eastward_.
I hastened to the brink and, having drunk of the water, lifted up my
fervent thanks in prayer to the Great Ruler of all things, for having
thus far crowned my endeavours with success. The circumstance of the
Niger's flowing towards the east did not excite my surprise, for
although I had left Europe in great hesitation on this subject, I had
received from the negroes clear assurances that its general course
was _towards the rising sun_."

He was now near Sego--the capital of Bambarra--on the Niger, a city
of some thirty thousand inhabitants. "The view of this extensive city,
the numerous canoes upon the river, the crowded population, and the
cultivated state of the surrounding country, formed altogether a
prospect of civilisation and magnificence which I little expected to
find in the bosom of Africa." The natives looked at the poor, thin,
white stranger with astonishment and fear, and refused to allow him
to cross the river. All day he sat without food under the shade of
a tree, and was proposing to climb the tree and rest among it