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A map showing the routes of the explorers of Africa
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The British in sub-Saharan Africa left no long sagas other than Livingstone, Rorke's Drift and Mafeking. Africa had fewer stories to inspire British writers and film makers. Perhaps only the missionaries ever really understood the continent.

British slave traders had raided West Africa since the 1560s but at that stage, there was no attempt to go further south on a regular basis. In 1620 English mariners claimed the Cape in the name of James I, but he didn't want it. The East India Company could not afford the bureaucracy of governor and military garrison.

In 1648 the Dutch showed more interest and planted and reaped fresh food for their vessels to and from the East Indies. Here was the start of Cape Town's true value as a staging post. The British were too involved at that stage in other parts of their growing empire and so left it to the Dutch.

Britain's proper interest in the Cape came in the latter part of the 18th century and war with the French. They wanted to occupy the Cape to stop the French grabbing the harbour and using it as a base to intercept British shipping to and from India. The bigger expeditions were by then taking place further to the north and west.

At this point Mungo Park began to appear in the British gallery of famous explorers. Park persuaded the board of the Africa Association, to let him on their expedition in 1795 to "鈥ass on to the river Niger, either by way of the Bambouk, or by such other route as should be found most convenient". His job was to chart the Niger's course from rise to estuary and report on the towns of Timbuctoo and Houssa. Almost his whole life was then spent in Africa with a spell at home that at first offered him a quiet life as a married surgeon in Peebles. But he went back and in 1806 perished during another expedition.

Mungo Park 1771-1806
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Mungo Park 1771-1806

Mungo Park was born in Foulshiels and for two years studied medicine at Edinburgh. Thanks to a meeting then friendship with the botanist Sir Joseph Banks (1744-1820), then president of the Royal Society, he was appointed assistant surgeon for the ship Worcester sailing to Sumatra. In 1795 he began a journey into the West African hinterland that lasted more than a year and a half. He was rescued from illness on that trip by a slave trader. In 1799 he published Travels in the Interior of Africa, which brought him a good income, celebrity and the chance to settle in Scotland. He married and became a surgeon in 1799. By 1805 he wanted to return to Africa. In November 1805, Park and four others set off in canoes for the further reaches of the Niger. They were attacked at Bousa and all four were lost overboard and drowned.

One of the local tribes, the Feloops, had a custom whereby if a father was killed during a quarrel his eldest son wore his father's sandals once a year on the anniversary of the death until the son had avenged his father. Mungo Park believed Christianity could change such a custom.

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Mungo Park describes his instructions from the Africa Association

Excerpt from Travels in the Interior of Africa by Mungo Park

"My instructions were very plain and concise. I was directed on my arrival in Africa to pass on to the river Niger, either by way of the Bambouk, or by such other route as should be found most convenient. That I should ascertain the course and if possible the rise and termination of that river. That I should use my utmost exertions to visit the principal towns or cities in its neighbourhood, particularly Timbuctoo and Houssa; and that I should be afterwards at liberty to return to Europe, either by way of the Gambia or by such other route as under all the then existing circumstances of my situation and prospects should appear to me to be most advisable."