Once landed at Falmouth, Park lost no time in proceeding to London. In those days there was no telegraph to apprise the world of his arrival, nor newspaper reporters to interview him, and give their readers a description of his appearance and a foretaste of his adventures.

He reached London before daybreak on the 25th December, and directed his steps to the house of his brother-in-law, Mr. Dickson. Not caring to disturb his relative at that early hour, he wandered about the streets for some time, till finding one of the gates to the British Museum Gardens open, he entered.

As it happened, Dickson had charge of these gardens, and on this particular morning had business which took him there unusually early. Conceive his amazement on coming face to face with what for a moment he almost took to be a vision or ghost of his young relative, long since believed to be dead. It did not take long to convince him, however, that here was no ghost, but the actual traveller himself, safe and well, his great mission carried through to a successful conclusion.

The interest, delight, and surprise of the Association, as well as of the public generally, were no less keen. For some time it had been looked on as a certainty that he had been murdered, and now the utmost curiosity prevailed to hear his adventures, and at last learn something authentic about the mysterious river of the negroes.

It looked indeed as if Park’s own prediction to his brother before leaving for Africa, that he would “acquire a greater name than any ever did,” was to be verified. In the absence of more definite news, the hand to hand reports which circulated only tended to exaggerate his feats and discoveries.

So eager became the demand for information that it was determined to issue a preliminary report of the principal geographical results of the expedition. This was written by Bryan Edwards, the Secretary of the Association, a gentleman of no inconsiderable literary attainments, and author of a “History of the British Colonies in the West Indies.”

To the collaboration of Edwards was added that of Major Rennell, who worked out with very great care the traveller’s routes, and the geography of the region generally. In addition, Rennell added a memoir on the upper course of the Niger beyond Park’s furthest point, collating with his information that of the Arabian geographers.

But the public demanded something more than the dry bones of geography to satisfy their hungry appetite. They wanted also the flesh and blood of his narrative—how he lived and moved, what he felt and suffered, what dangers he faced, what hardships endured, the wonders he saw. Books of travel had not then deluged the market and saturated men’s minds with details about the remotest corners of Inner Africa. It was practically virgin soil to the reader, who could in nowise guess beforehand what startling revelations were in store for him. Compared with the modern devourer of books of travel, his sensations would be as those of the first explorer of the Gambia to the subdued expectancy of our latest traveller.

To gratify this very natural curiosity Park now devoted himself. His materials, apart from his memory, were but scanty. They consisted, in fact, of short notes or memoranda, written on odds and ends of paper, which must often have been far from legible, considering how they were carried for months in the crown of a battered hat, exposed to damp and all manner of accidents.

In the task of authorship Park was no doubt materially aided by Mr. Edwards, with whom he lived on terms of great friendship. In one or two places the pen of Edwards is clearly traceable, but these are few and far between. Where he lent the most valuable assistance was in the pruning, rearrangement, and revision which the work of a novice in composition would almost necessarily require. In this respect, however, Park is not alone among travellers. Few indeed among them have had such a complete mastery of the pen and of the English language as to trust absolutely in their own literary powers and judgment, although, as in Park’s case, the assistance required has seldom gone beyond guidance and revision.

Apart from his literary influence, it can hardly be doubted that Edwards very materially moulded Park’s views on at least one important subject—the slave trade. At that time the question of abolition had become a burning one in the country, and Edwards was one of the warmest advocates of the old order of things. He would give Africa Light, but no Liberty. While actively employed in trying to open up the Dark Continent to European influence, he strenuously strove to ensure that that influence should remain of the most criminal and degrading nature.

Let the reader imagine what would have been the consequence to Africa if the advocates of slavery had had their way, and the exploration of the Continent had only been the forerunner of more widespread ramifications of the slave trade. However incredible it may appear, such might easily have been the case. People once accustomed to an evil soon forget that it is such, and begin to look upon it as one of the necessary and unavoidable ills of life. Take, for example, the survival of the African gin trade to this very day, increasing and flourishing long after its dissociation from its well-matched sister traffic in slaves, and everywhere dogging the explorer’s footsteps. It is doubtful if even the slave trade has done more to brutalise and degrade the negro; and yet even in our time there is only a partial awakening to the frightful evils of the iniquitous traffic.

This culpable blindness or carelessness on our part is doubtless largely fostered by the comforting and comfortable belief that our missionaries are doing a great and noble work in Africa, and that mere contact with the European and European commerce must of necessity have an elevating effect upon the lower races. The truth is that for every negro nominally or genuinely brought under the influence of Christianity, ten thousand have been driven by drink to depths of moral and physical depravity unheard of among uncontaminated native tribes, and that so far contact with the European and his commerce has resulted not in elevation to the African, but in degradation of the most loathsome kind.

To what extent Park was really influenced in his opinions on the slave question by Edwards it would be difficult to say. It matters little, however, for whether he really believed in the righteousness of slavery or was merely reasoned into neutrality, his position was equally indefensible. Nay, more, if, as his friends say, he really believed that the trade was an unjust one, the position he assumed was nothing more nor less than criminal. These urge, as if it were an extenuating circumstance, that in private conversation he even expressed the greatest abhorrence of the traffic. This, it must be confessed, seems improbable. Such an attitude is utterly unlike what we should expect from a man of Park’s marked individuality and strong earnest truthfulness. Moreover, it seems sufficiently clear that the public opinion of his day ascribed to him a belief in the righteousness of the principle of slavery, and if it was wrong, it seems strange that he took no means to correct it. But that it was not wrong seems evident from a speech delivered on the Abolition of the Slave Trade by George Hibbert in Parliament in 1803.

The following is an extract—valuable, too, as throwing light upon the share of Edwards in the writing of Park’s book:—

“I have read and heard that we are to look to Park’s facts and not to his opinions; and it has been insinuated that his editor, Mr. Edwards, had foisted those opinions (relating to the slave trade) into his book. It happened to me once to converse with Mr. Park at a meeting of the Linnean Society, when this very topic was started, and he assured me that, not being in the habit of literary composition, he was obliged to employ some one to put his manuscript into a form fit for the public eye, but that every sheet of the publication had undergone his strict revision, and that not only every fact but every sentiment was his own.”

We must, therefore, till more convincing proof than hearsay evidence is forthcoming, believe that Mungo Park was a believer in the slave trade. Such a position we can understand and make all due allowance for as the result of the ideas of the time, and of those by whom he was immediately surrounded—to believe else were to place Park on a distinctly lower pedestal than that to which he is entitled by his many meritorious characteristics.

Shortly after the publication of the abstract of Park’s narrative, he left London on a visit to his family at Foulshiels, where his mother still lived, though his father had been dead for some years. Here he remained the whole of the summer and autumn of 1798, working assiduously at the narrative of his travels. This was probably anything but an agreeable task to him after the eventful life he had led for three years, and unaccustomed as he was to literary work. But Park was not the man to shirk any work, however irksome, if it in any way appeared to him in the light of a duty. His mornings he devoted to writing, his evenings to strolls along the bank of his much-loved Yarrow, where, rarely troubled by native or by passing stranger, he could undisturbed recall the various events which marked his African wanderings, and on the dreamy rush of the mountain stream let his thoughts glide back to the majestic sweep of the Joliba moving eastward towards its unknown bourne. What hours he must have spent thus, seeking in his mind’s eye to pierce the dark veil which so mysteriously shrouded the great African river beyond Timbuktu, and follow it to its union with the ocean, or its gradual disappearance in the Central Deserts.

At times restlessness and a feeling of revolt took possession of him, and then the only charm that could exorcise the demon of unrest within him or soothe his wild vague longings, was a long swift walk among the wild romantic scenery around. Up Yarrow’s winding dale, on the bold front of Newark Hill, or the heathery summit of the Broomy Law, his was the keen pleasure of a soul that knows “a rapture on the lonely shore.” The distant bleat of sheep, the plaintive call of the curlew, and the whirr of grouse, harmonised well with the mood possessing him, and touched his heart with the wild pathos of Nature. Happiest when alone, he found companions in all the sounds around him. The breeze, the rushing stream, the wild calls of bird and beast, all alike spoke to him, and adapted themselves to his every mood.

All this may be vaguely discerned by virtue of the gleams of light which have momentarily shot across the darkness of the past, and preserved a blurred though speaking print of the great traveller at home among his native hills.

But although thus isolated from the world at large, Park was not entirely cut off from communication with his fellow-men. His chief resort when in a mood for society was the house of his friend and master in medicine, Dr. Anderson, who still practised in Selkirk, within easy reach of Foulshiels. As one result of these frequent visits, the friendship of former days for Miss Anderson speedily developed into a warmer feeling, and summer saw them engaged.

Towards the latter part of 1798, Park returned to London to make the final arrangements for the publication of his narrative. Even then, however, much had to be done with the assistance of Edwards before the manuscript was finally ready for the press, and spring had come before the book saw the light.

It would be difficult to overestimate the enthusiasm with which it was received, or the interest in Park and Africa which it aroused. Two editions were sold off in rapid succession, and were followed by several others in the course of the following ten years.

Apart from its being almost the first of African books of travel, and from the absolute novelty of all it contained, the narrative was told with a charm and naÏvetÉ in themselves sufficient to captivate the most fastidious reader. Modesty and truthfulness peeped from every sentence. Its author claimed no praise, no admiration, beyond that due to him for having done his duty. He took to himself no credit for all the virtues he had shown. So afraid was he indeed that he might be charged with being the author of what are called “travellers’ tales,” that he deliberately suppressed several remarkable adventures. On this point he said to Sir Walter Scott, “that in all cases where he had information to communicate which he thought of importance to the public, he had stated the facts boldly, leaving it to his readers to give such credit to his statements as they might appear justly to deserve, but that he would not shock their credulity or render his travels more marvellous by introducing circumstances which, however true, were of little or no moment.”

Happily his narrative required no aid from such suppressed adventures, however strange they might be, or however much we should have liked to know them. He had incident enough to make half-a-dozen of the spun out books of modern travel. Neither then nor since has any African explorer had such a romantic tale to tell, nor has any out of all the long list of adventurers who have followed told his tale so well. Some there have been who have flourished more theatrically across the African stage, and by virtue of striking dramatic effects, and a certain spice of bloodshed, have struck the imagination of those who are content with the superficial show of things, and are not too critical as to their significance. But for actual hardships undergone, for dangers faced, and difficulties overcome, together with an exhibition of the virtues which make a man great in the rude battle of life, Mungo Park stands without a rival. In one respect only—that of motive—does another surpass him. Here Livingstone stands head and shoulders above his predecessor, whose aspirations after personal name and fame, and apathetic attitude towards the anti-slavery movement, will ill bear comparison with the noble longings which inspired the great missionary to travel, that the negro heathen might be brought within the pale of Christian brotherhood, and stirred him to the consecration of his life in healing “the great open sore of the Universe.”

Not that Park was altogether awanting in all that tends towards the spirit of self-sacrifice. On the contrary, throughout his whole narrative we fail to find the faintest trace of vulgar ambition or ignoble self-seeking. He deliberately suppressed incidents which would have added greatly to his fame, especially among those whose imagination is only appealed to by the marvellous. His whole nature shrank from notoriety. He was retired and reserved in manner, and instead of seeking to play the rÔle of the “lion” in society, we find that he always looked forward to a time when, his labours ended, he should be able to seek the seclusion and retirement of the country—scarcely the goal this of a merely selfish ambition.

As little was he actuated by the desire of gain, as Ruskin would have us believe. Except perhaps in one conspicuous instance, African travel has never been known to lead to the attainment of riches, and certainly to Park money was never held out as an inducement. The spark that quickened his manhood to heroism, and fired him “to scorn delights and live laborious days,” was the worthy ambition of a noble mind to work for the good of his country and the advancement of knowledge, rewarded solely by the approbation of his own conscience and the esteem of good men.

It is to be remembered that a hundred years ago Christian philanthropy had not become so cosmopolitan—so world-embracing—as to take within its sphere all who bear the name of man, without respect of race, religion, or degree of civilisation. From what we know of his intense religious convictions and kindly nature, Park, had he lived at the present day, would probably have been a missionary aflame for the cause of Christ and ready to lay down his life for it, or a traveller preaching a crusade, not only against the slave trade, which is so often ignorantly ascribed to the influence of Islam, but against the gin trade likewise, which with quite as much plausibility might be associated with Christianity.

At the period of the publication of Park’s narrative the question of Abolition was in every man’s mind. The horrors of the middle passage—the iniquities perpetrated in the plantations by men calling themselves Englishmen—were being painted in colours by no means too dark. Park’s book came opportunely to add to the literature of the subject, and undoubtedly, in spite of the anti-abolition opinions he was believed to hold, the facts he disclosed regarding the horrors of the slave route added materially to the arguments of the Abolitionists. Coming, indeed, as was believed, from one of the opposite party, they were of all the more value, the natural assumption being that the worst aspects had been softened down and as good a case made out for slavery as was possible without direct violation of the truth. It was abundantly clear to all unprejudiced minds that the conditions under which the trade was carried on, and the evil results flowing from it as described by Park, were iniquitous and shameful in the extreme. To such Park’s opinions were of small account compared with his facts, and we may safely conclude that these latter very materially contributed to the sweeping away of the vile traffic.