After a short stay at Sego (where he did not find it safe to remain), Park proceeded down the river to Silla, a large town distant about seventy or eighty miles, on the banks of the Niger. He was now reduced to the greatest distress, and being convinced by painful experience, that the obstacles to his further progress were insurmountable, he reluctantly abandoned his design of proceeding eastwards; and came to the resolution of going back to Sego, and endeavouring to effect his return to the Gambia by a different route from that by which he had advanced into Africa.
On the 3d of August, 1796, he left Silla, and pursuing the course of the Niger, arrived at Bammakoo, the frontier of Bambarra, about the 23d of the same month. Here he quitted the Niger, which ceases to be navigable at this place; and travelling for several weeks through a mountainous and difficult country, reached Kamalia, in the territory of Manding, on the 16th of September. He performed the latter part of this journey on foot, having been obliged to leave his horse, now worn out with fatigue and unable to proceed farther.
Having encountered all the horrors of the rainy season, and being worn down by fatigue, his health had, at different times, been seriously affected. But, soon after his arrival at Kamalia, he fell into a severe and dangerous fit of sickness, by which he was closely confined for upwards of a month. His life was preserved by the hospitality and benevolence of Karfa Taura, a Negro, who received him into his house, and whose family attended him with the kindest solicitude. The same excellent person, at the time of Park's last Mission into Africa, hearing that a white man was travelling through the country, whom he imagined to be Park, took a journey of six days to meet him; and joining the caravan at Bambakoo, was highly gratified by the sight of his friend. [Footnote: See Journal, p. 137.]
There being still a space of five hundred miles to be traversed (the greater part of it through a desert) before Park could reach any friendly country on the Gambia, he had no other resource but to wait with patience for the first caravan of slaves that might travel the same track. No such opportunity occurred till the latter end of April, 1797; when a coffle, or caravan, set out from Kamalia under the direction of Karfa Taura, in whose house he had continued during his long residence of more than seven months at that place.
The coffle began its progress westwards on the 17th of April, and on the 4th of June reached the banks of the Gambia, after a journey of great labour and difficulty, which afforded Park the most painful opportunities of witnessing the miseries endured by a caravan of slaves in their transportation from the interior to the coast. On the 10th of the same month Park arrived at Pisania, from whence he had set out eighteen months before; and was received by Dr. Laidley (to use his own expression) as one risen from the grave. On the 15th of June he embarked in a slave ship bound to America, which was driven by stress of weather to the West Indies; and got with great difficulty, and under circumstances of considerable danger, into the Island of Antigua. He sailed from thence on the 24th of November, and after a short, but tempestuous passage, arrived at Falmouth on the 22d of the following month, having been absent from England two years and seven months.
Immediately on his landing he hastened to London, anxious in the greatest degree about his family and friends, of whom he had heard nothing for two years. He arrived in London before day-light on the morning of Christmas day, 1797; and it being too early an hour to go to his brother-in-law, Mr. Dickson, he wandered for some time about the streets in that quarter of the town where his house was. Finding one of the entrances into the gardens of the British Museum accidentally open, he went in and walked about there for some time. It happened that Mr. Dickson, who had the care of those gardens, went there early that morning upon some trifling business. What must have been his emotions on beholding at that extraordinary time and place, the vision, as it must at first have appeared, of his long-lost friend, the object of so many anxious reflexions, and whom he had long numbered with the dead!
* * * * *
Park's arrival was hailed with a sort of triumph by his friends of the African Association, and in some degree, by the public at large. The nature and objects of his mission, his long absence, and his unexpected return, excited a very general interest; which was afterwards kept up by the reports which prevailed respecting the discoveries he had made. The Association, with that liberality which characterised every part of their proceedings, gave him full permission to publish his Travels for his own benefit; and it was speedily announced, that a complete narrative of the journey would be prepared by Park himself, and given to the public. But in the mean time, in order to gratify, in a certain degree, the curiosity which prevailed, an Abstract, of the Travels, prepared from Park's own minutes, was drawn up by Mr. Bryan Edwards, secretary of the African Association, and was printed and distributed for the private use of the subscribers. [Footnote: Proceedings of African Association. Vol. I. p. 327.] This Abstract, which was written with perspicuity and elegance, formed the principal ground-work of the Book of Travels which was subsequently published.
To the Abstract or Narrative, thus circulated, was annexed an important
Memoir by Major Rennell, consisting of geographical illustrations of
Park's Journey, which afterwards, by that gentleman's permission, formed
a valuable appendage to the quarto edition of the Travels.
After his return from Africa, Park remained for a considerable time stationary in London, and was diligently employed in arranging the materials for his intended publication. He had frequent occasion, also, to communicate on the subject of his discoveries with the members of the African Association, especially with Major Rennell and Mr. Edwards, whilst they were engaged in preparing the two Memoirs before alluded to. With Mr. Edwards, in particular, he seems to have lived on terms of great friendship, and to have occasionally paid him visits at his country residence near Southampton.