The traveller returned to England upon the 22nd of September. So great was the impatience with which an account of his discoveries, certainly the most important in this part of Africa, was awaited, that the African Society allowed him to publish for his own profit an abridged account of his adventures.
He had collected more facts as to the geography, manners, and customs of the country than all preceding travellers; he had determined the position of the sources of the Senegal and Gambia, and surveyed the course of the Niger or Djoliba—which he proved to run eastwards, whilst the Gambia flowed to the west.
Thus a point, which up to this time had been disputed by geographers, was definitely settled. It was no longer possible to confound the three rivers, as the French geographer Delisle had done, in 1707, when he represented the Niger as running eastward from Bornu, and flowing into the river Senegal on the west. He himself, however, had admitted and corrected this error, in his later maps of 1722 and 1727, no doubt on account of the facts ascertained by André Brue, governor of Senegal.
Houghton, indeed, had learned much from the natives of the course of the Niger through the Mandingo country, and of the relative positions of Sego, Djennéh, and Timbuctoo; but it was reserved for Mungo Park to fix positively, from personal knowledge, the position of the two first-named towns, and to furnish circumstantial details of the country, and the tribes who inhabit it.
Public opinion was unanimous as to the importance of the great traveller's exploration, and keenly appreciative of the courage, skill, and honesty exhibited by him.
A short time later, the English government offered Mungo Park the conduct of an expedition to the interior of Australia; but he refused it.
In 1804, however, the African Society determined to complete the survey of the Niger, and proposed to Mungo Park the command of a new expedition for its exploration. This time the great traveller did not refuse, and upon the 30th of January, 1805, he left England. Two months later he landed at Goree.
He was accompanied by his brother-in-law, Anderson, a surgeon, by George Scott, a draughtsman, and by thirty-five artillery-men. He was authorized to enrol as many soldiers as he liked in his service, and was provided with a credit of five hundred pounds.
"These resources," says Walcknaer, "so vast in comparison with those furnished by the African Society, were, to our thinking, partly the cause of his loss. The rapacious demands of the African kings grew in proportion to the riches they supposed our traveller to possess; and the effort to meet the enormous drain made upon him, was in great part the cause of the catastrophe which brought the expedition to an end."
Four carpenters, one officer and thirty-five artillery-men, and a Mandingo merchant named Isaac, who was to act as guide, with the leaders of the expedition already mentioned, composed an imposing caravan. Mungo Park left Cayee upon the 27th of April, 1805, and reached Pisania the next day. From this place, ten years earlier, he had started upon his first exploration. Taking an easterly direction, he followed his former route as far as Bambaku, upon the shores of the Niger. When he arrived at this place, the number of Europeans was already reduced to six soldiers and a carpenter; the remainder had succumbed to fatigue, or the fevers incidental to the inundations. The exactions of the various petty chiefs through whose domains the expedition passed had considerably diminished the stock of merchandise.