Travels in the interior of Africa by Mungo Park: book review

Travels in the interior of Africa is an exquisite travelogue written in 1799, four years after Scottish-born Mungo Park embarked on a solitary exploration of northwest Africa, along the River Niger to the great object of European research, Timbuktu.

He was described by his peers as tall but not impressive, ambitious but not arrogant, serious but not humourless and an extraordinarily unremarkable man. Nevertheless, this 23-year-old made an extraordinarily remarkable journey at the height of the slave trade and the dominance of the Victorian English Empire.

He writes without racial superiority, pompousness, exaggeration or embellishment. There is no bravado or heroics. It is a factual account and observance of customs, laws, food, nature, wars, heat, illness, wrong turns and strange sights during the two-year trek. It is a travelogue that has endured the test of time.

On his return to Scotland, he resumed his career as a surgeon. He rejected an offer from Joseph Banks, the eminent botanist, to undertake an exploration in Australia. Instead, seven years later, he was coerced into accompanying an exploration in the same area of northwest Africa with an expedition of 40 men. None, including Park, would be seen again.

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