[CHAPTER VI.]
AT THE THRESHOLD.
On the 22nd of May 1795, Mungo Park left England on board the Endeavour, an African trader. On the 21st of the following month he landed at the mouth of the river Gambia.
Bathurst, the present seat of government for the Gambia basin, was not then in existence, with its present busy European community and thriving native population, its imposing public buildings and well laid out streets. The native town of Jillifri on the north bank, and a little way up the river, was the first place of call in the early trading days of the Gambia merchants.
From Jillifri the Endeavour ascended the river to Jonkakonda.
The view which opened up before Park as he proceeded was neither attractive nor promising. The river flowed seaward deep and muddy, its banks covered with impenetrable forests of mangrove, forming when the tide was out a horrible expanse of swamp. The air was thick with a sickening haze, charged with the poisonous exhalations from the fœtid mud engendered by heat and moisture. Here and there only, a group of cocoa-nuts, or an isolated bombyx (silk-cotton tree) relieved the dreary monotony, and gave a momentary pleasure to the eye.
Behind the mangrove swamps the country spread out in a level plain, “very generally covered with woods, and presenting a tiresome and gloomy uniformity to the eye; but although nature has denied to the inhabitants the beauties of romantic landscapes, she has bestowed on them with a liberal hand the more important blessings of fertility and abundance.”
At Jonkakonda, which seems to have been one of the chief trading stations on the river, Park left the Endeavour, and proceeded to the factory of Pisania, a few miles further on.