Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 26, 2010

Mungo Park (11 September 1771 – 1806) was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the Niger River. He was born in Selkirkshire, Scotland at Foulshiels on the Yarrow Water, near Selkirk, on a tenant farm which his father rented from the Duke of Buccleuch. He was the seventh in a family of thirteen. Although tenant farmers, the Parks were relatively well-off –- they were able to pay for Park to have a good education, and Park's father died leaving property valued at £3,000. The Parks were Dissenters, and Park was brought up in the Calvinist tradition.

On 21 June 1795, he reached the Gambia River and ascended it 200 miles to a British trading station named Pisania. On 2 December, accompanied by two local guides, he started for the unknown interior. He chose the route crossing the upper Senegal basin and through the semi-desert region of Kaarta. The journey was full of difficulties, and at Ludamar he was imprisoned by a Moorish chief for four months. On 1 July 1796, he escaped, alone and with nothing but his horse and a pocket compass, and on the 21st reached the long-sought Niger River at Ségou, being the first European to do so.