The Wound At
First Seemed Slight, And He Was Enabled To Reach Fernando Po; But All
Efforts To Extract The Ball Were Useless, And Mortification Of The
Muscles Having Ensued, He Expired On The Thirteenth Day After The Attack.
The Alburkah proceeded up the river no farther than Attah, where Mr.
Oldfield procured a considerable quantity of ivory.
The greater part of
the crew had been cut off by fever and dysentery, four only being fit for
duty. As soon, therefore, as Mr. Oldfield heard of Mr. Lander's death, he
resolved to return to the coast, which he reached in July 1834.
We have now completed the sketch of those discoveries in Central Africa,
which have taken place since the time of Park, and have endeavoured to
make it as interesting as our restricted limits permitted. The scenery
through which we have passed has been varied and sometimes beautiful; but
the beauty has been wild and uncultivated, and has been more than
counterbalanced by the oft-times stern aspect of nature, darkened by the
frowns of an ungenial and unhealthy sky, in too faithful keeping with the
actions of savage men, cruel and revengeful, sunk in vice and immorality.
The narrative has been one of suffering and untimely death; one
adventurer after another has gone forth, while scarcely one has returned
from his toilsome and perilous wanderings; and the melancholy list has
been closed by the fate of him who had the proud honour of tracing the
termination of the mysterious river. Though each has displayed high and
peculiar qualities of mind, not one has surpassed him whose energy and
force of character in a great measure paved the way for succeeding
travellers. Yet none will have fallen in vain, inasmuch as each has done
something to point out the way whereby the blessings of civilization may
be conveyed to the natives of Africa. The time may yet be distant, but it
will assuredly come, when commerce and enlightenment shall be conveyed by
the great channel of the Niger; when slavery shall be finally and for
ever destroyed; and when, above all, the same blessed influence shall
pervade Central, which had already done so much good in Southern Africa;
when the voice of the missionary, which has been already blessed in
raising up from the ground the degraded Hotentot, shall be heard in the
huts that border the great river; when the natives shall cast away their
idols, and with them, those vices which degrade and sully their
character.
THE END.
End of Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa, by Mungo Park
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