Disappointment met him at the very outset.
He had left Scotland in the belief that almost every arrangement had been made, and that a very short time would suffice to complete the necessary preparations.
He arrived in London only to hear that the departure of the expedition had been postponed till the end of February 1804. With what patience he possessed he waited. The allotted time went by. Once more everything was ready. Part of the troops destined for the service were actually on board ship, when orders came countermanding the expedition, pending the decision of Lord Camden, the new Colonial Secretary, as to whether it should go at all or not.
Park was naturally bitterly disappointed at thus being thrown again on the seas of uncertainty. The expedition might now never set out, and the task of solving the great African problem would be reserved for another.
Meanwhile the date of departure was provisionally put off till September, and till then he was recommended to return to Scotland and occupy the interval in perfecting himself in taking astronomical observations and in learning Arabic—acquirements which would be of the utmost importance to him afterwards.
A suitable teacher of Arabic was found in one Sidi Ambak Bubi, a native of Mogador, and then residing in London. Accompanied by the Moor, Park returned to Peebles in March. Here he remained till May, when he finally quitted that town and took up his residence at Foulshiels while awaiting the decision of the Colonial Office.
It was at this time that the great traveller came in contact with his still greater countryman and neighbour, Sir Walter Scott, then living at Ashesteil, and separated from Foulshiels only by the sharp ridge of hills which divides the Yarrow from the Tweed.
Between two such men—the one absorbed in a career of prospective action in a new continent, the other revelling in a romantic world of retrospective thought—it might be supposed there was little in common.
In reality there was much. Scott, though he delighted to sing of the past and conjure up its knightly deeds, had a soul capable of appreciating all forms of glorious and adventurous enterprise, whether seen in the prosaic lights of the passing moment, or invested with the romantic vagueness and fascinating glamour which the shades of time gather around bygone days. To such an one Park was a man after his own heart. Had but his deeds been surrounded with the pomp and circumstance which glorified those of the knights of old, Scott might have sung them in a similar heroic strain. Mayhap the day will come when another Scott will arise to do for Park and his successors what Sir Walter and others have done for the heroic figures of our nation’s history.