Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/227

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

sible for the attempt to detain Park, after having some dispute with him with regard to his payment (Journal of Geogr. Soc. vol. xvi. 157). Isaaco failed to secure any journal or papers belonging to Park, and Clapperton and Lander were equally unsuccessful; but the latter were shown certain small articles, of no value, which had belonged to various members of the party. Probably such papers as were recovered from the river were torn up, and served the purpose of charms for the natives.

Although Park was not spared to solve the problem which he had set himself, his discoveries and his observations enabled others to finish what he had begun; he was the first European in modern times to strike the Niger river, and he drew a correct inference when he convinced himself that the Niger ‘could flow nowhere but into the sea.’ In his travels he proved himself an explorer of untiring perseverance and inflexible resolution. His heroic efforts served to stimulate the enthusiasm of travellers who during the next twenty years followed in his footsteps, and they aroused a keen public interest in African discovery and development. After James Bruce, who, like himself, was a Scotsman, he was the second great African traveller of British origin.

The unaffected style and simple narration made use of by Park in the ‘Travels’ increased the popularity of what would have been in any case a much-read book. The accuracy of the general narrative has never been impugned; but, owing to an unfortunate mistake in reckoning thirty-one days in April, the observations of longitude and latitude are not to be depended upon (Bowditch, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, 1819, 4to, appendix). The work was translated into both French and German the year after publication, and subsequently into most European languages; it has passed through a great number of editions, the quarto edition of 1799 being the best. The ‘Travels’ will also be found in Pinkerton's ‘General Collection of Voyages,’ vol. xvi.; Duponchel's ‘Nouvelle Bibliothèque de Voyages,’ vol. ix.; Amorelli and Soave's ‘Opusculi scelti Scienze,’ vol. xxi.; E. Schauenburg's ‘Reisen in Central-Afrika,’ and in R. Huish's book on African travels. Park's journal, together with Isaaco's journal and the story told by Amadi Fatouma, was published in 1815, for the benefit of the widow and family, by the African Institution, into whose charge the papers had been delivered by the government (Eighth Report of the Directors of the African Institution, 1814, p. 20). A well-written memoir of Park's life, composed by E. Wishaw, a director of the institution, was prefixed to the volume; on this memoir subsequent biographies have been based, a few new facts being added in a life of Park by ‘H. B.,’ published in Edinburgh, 1835.

Park was a finely built man, six feet in height, with a generally prepossessing appearance; his manner is said to have been somewhat reserved and cold. A portrait engraved by Dickinson, after the picture by Edridge, is prefixed to the quarto edition of the ‘Travels,’ published in 1799, and a portrait engraved by R. Bell, after the same picture, is to be found in the ‘Life of M. Park by H. B.,’ published in Edinburgh, 1835. In an open space in the centre of Selkirk a colossal monument was erected to the memory of the explorer in 1839. Park is represented standing, a sextant in his right hand, in his left a scroll, on which is inscribed one of the remarkable sentences from his last communication to Lord Camden already quoted.

Park's wife and four children, three sons and a daughter, survived him; they received the sum of 4,000l. from the government. The second son, Thomas, a midshipman in H.M. ship Sybille, hoping to discover something further with regard to his father's fate, obtained leave from the authorities to make the attempt to reach Boussa from the coast; but after accomplishing two hundred miles of his journey, he died of fever on 31 Oct. 1827 (Quarterly Review, xxxviii. 112).

[The Account of the Life of M. Park by Wishaw, prefixed to the Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa, published 1815; Scots Magazine, lxxvii. 343; Life of Mungo Park by ‘H. B.,’ Edinburgh, 1835; Biographie Universelle; Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, by T. E. D. Bowditch, 1819, 4to, p. 20; Journal of a recent Expedition into the Interior of Africa, by H. Clapperton and R. Lander, pp. 85, 100, 134, 133; Examen et rectification des positions déterminées astronomiquement en Afrique par Mungo Park, par d'Avezac; Edinb. Rev. February 1815, pp. 471–490; Quarterly Rev. xxii. 293, xxxix. 153, xxxviii. 112; Reports of the African Association; Reports of the African Institution.]

W. C.-r.

PARK, PATRIC (1811–1855), sculptor, son of Matthew Park, came of ancestors who had long been farmers or ‘portioners’ near Carmunnock, Lanarkshire, whence his grandfather removed to the neighbouring city of Glasgow, settling there as a mason and builder. The sculptor's father, Matthew, followed the same occupation, and married, in 1806, Ca-