under circumstances of deeper interest than this
lamented traveller; whether we consider the loss, which geographical
science has suffered in his death, or whether we confine our views to
the blasted hopes of the individual, snatched away from his
hard-earned, but unfinished triumph, and leaving to others that
splendid consummation, which he so ardently sought to achieve. True
it is, that the future discoverer of the termination of the Niger,
must erect the structure of his fame on the wide foundation, with
which his great predecessor had already occupied the ground; but
although the edifice will owe its very existence to the labours of
Park, yet another name than his is now recorded on the finished pile;

Hos ego--feci, tulit alter honores.

The African Association, although enthusiastically attached to every
subject connected with the interior of Africa, soon found that,
unless the government would take up the subject as a national affair,
no great hope existed of arriving at the great objects of their
research; it was therefore proposed by Sir Joseph Banks, that a
memorial should be presented to his majesty George III, praying him
to institute those measures, by which the discoveries that Park had
made in the interior of Africa could be prosecuted, and which might
ultimately lead to the solution of those geographical problems, to
which the attention of the scientific men of the country were then
directed.

In the mean time Mr. Park had married the daughter of a Mr. Anderson,
with whom he had served his apprenticeship as a surgeon, and having
entered with some success in the practice of his profession, in the
town of Peebles, it was supposed, that content with the laurels so
dearly earned, he had renounced a life of peril and adventure. But
none of these ties could detain him, when the invitation was given to
renew and complete his splendid career. The invitation was formally
sent to him by government, in October 1801, to undertake an
expedition on a larger scale, into the interior of Africa. His mind
had been brooding on the subject with enthusiastic ardour. He had
held much intercourse with Mr. Maxwell, a gentleman who had long
commanded a vessel in the African trade, by whom he was persuaded
that the Congo, which since its discovery by the Portuguese, had been
almost lost sight of by the Europeans, would prove to be the channel
by which the Niger, after watering all the regions of interior
Africa, enters the At