Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa by Mungo Park
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page 20 of 456 (04%)
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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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