Mungo Park

Mungo Park (11 September 1771 – 1806) was a Scottish explorer of West Africa. After an exploration of the upper Niger River around 1796, he wrote a popular and influential travel book titled Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in which he theorized the Niger and Congo merged to become the same river, though it was later proven that they are different rivers. He was killed during a second expedition, having successfully travelled about two-thirds of the way down the Niger. If the African Association was the "beginning of the age of African exploration" then Mungo Park was its first successful explorer; he set a standard for all who followed. Park was the first Westerner to have recorded travels in the central portion of the Niger, and through his popular book introduced the public to a vast unexplored continent which influenced future European explorers and colonial ambitions in Africa. Early life Mungo Park was born in Selkirkshire, Scotland, at Foulshiels on the Yarrow Water, near Selkirk, on a tenant farm which his father rented from the Duke of Buccleuch. He was the seventh in a family of thirteen. Although tenant farmers, the Parks were relatively well-off. They were able to pay for Park to receive a good education, and Park's father died leaving property valued at £3,000. His parents had originally intended him for a ministry in the Church of Scotland. He was educated at home before attending Selkirk grammar school. At the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to Thomas Anderson, a surgeon in Selkirk. During his apprenticeship, Park became friends with Anderson's son Alexander and was introduced to Anderson's daughter Allison, who would later become his wife.