[CHAPTER XXV.]
NEW ENTERPRISES AND NEW THEORIES.
As we have seen, Park’s second expedition was fruitful in nothing but disaster, and the legacy of experience that helps others to success.
The journal Isaaco brought back from the Niger did not add anything to our knowledge of the river, and so little did Amadi Fatuma’s narrative supplement it as to the results of the voyage down the stream to Bussa, that in the map attached to the published journal and biographical notice in 1816, Park’s furthest point is placed only some eighty miles to the E.S.E. of Timbuktu, instead of nearly 700 miles in a straight line S.E.
There was one geographer, however, more far-seeing than the others, who, though at the time unheeded, struck upon the real solution of the problem of the Niger’s termination. This was M. Richard, a German, who published his views on the subject in the “Ephemerides Geographique” as far back as 1808. These, briefly stated, were as follows. The Niger, after reaching Wangara, takes a direction towards the south, and being joined by other rivers from that part of Africa, makes a great turn thence towards the south-west, pursuing its course till it approaches the north-eastern extremity of the Gulf of Guinea, where it divides and discharges itself by different channels into the Atlantic, after having formed an immense delta, of which the Rio del Rey constitutes the eastern, and the Rio Formosa or Benin the western branch.
Never was a better instance of a mental discovery of a geographical fact. Richard’s hypothesis is a graphic description of the actual geography of the middle and lower Niger. This of course was not to be recognised by the world, before whose eyes the Kong Mountains ever loomed up as an impassable barrier running across the suggested line of drainage. Till these could be removed, turned aside, or broken up, no geographer was prepared to allow that the Niger could possibly discharge itself into the Gulf of Guinea.
Mungo Park had left one legacy of theory behind him, viz., that the Niger and the Congo were one. What was known of his last voyage in nowise helped to disabuse men of that idea—on the contrary, it obtained more widely than ever.
To set at rest once for all this important question, the Government, undeterred by the disastrous termination of the last expedition, determined to fit out another on an even larger scale, and in spite of the dire fate which had befallen Park and his companions, there were not wanting plenty of ardent spirits to risk all the dangers of a similar enterprise.
To ensure success the expedition was divided into two parts—one to follow Park’s route more or less closely and descend the Niger; the other to ascend the Congo, haply to meet half way, if the fates were propitious.
Captain Tuckey was the leader of the Congo section; and along with him went a botanist, a geologist, a naturalist, a comparative anatomist, a gentleman volunteer, and fifty of a crew.