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Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa by Mungo Park
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intelligence. It appeared that at Jarra he had engaged some Moorish
merchants to accompany him. They persuaded him to go to Tisheet, a place
frequented for its salt mines, without informing him that it was much out
of the direct road to Timbuctoo, intending to rob him by the way. In a
few days he suspected their treachery, and resolved to return to Jarra,
but, upon refusing to advance, he was stripped of every article, and then
deserted. He wandered about the desert, alone, and famishing, till,
utterly exhausted, he lay down under a tree and expired.

The next person who offered his services to the Association was Mungo
Park, who has acquired such celebrity by the important acquisitions which
he made to African Geography. As introductory to the narrative of his
first expedition, we present our readers with a brief sketch of his early
life.


PARK'S EARLY LIFE.

Mungo Park, the celebrated African traveller, was born at Fowlshiels,
near the town of Selkirk, on the 10th September 1771. His father was a
respectable farmer on the Duke of Buccleuch's estate; and his mother, the
daughter of a neighbouring farmer of the name of Hislop, a woman of great
good sense and prudence, who anxiously and faithfully discharged the
duties which she owed to a large family of thirteen children, of whom
Mungo, the subject of this memoir, was the seventh. Park's father died
before his son had won that renown which so honourably distinguishes his
name, though not without the satisfaction of witnessing a fair promise of
his future distinction; but his mother, after hearing with much pride of
her offspring's early achievements, had to lament his untimely fate;
consoled, however, by the recollection of his unblemished character, and
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