Mungo Park, a Scottish surgeon and explorer, was sent out by the 'Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior of Africa' to discover the course of the River Niger. Having achieved a degree of fame from his first trip,
carried out alone and on foot, he returned to Africa with a party of 40 Europeans, all of whom lost their lives in the adventure.
Mungo Park was born in 1771, near Selkirk in Scotland, the seventh child of a well-to-do farmer.
With a medical diploma and a desire for fame and fortune, Park set off for London, and through his brother-in-law, William Dickson, a Covent Garden seedsman, he got his opportunity
