Born September 10, 1771,
Foulshiels, Scotland
Died March or April 1806,
Bussa, Africa

In 1788 the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, or the African Association, was founded in London by the famous scientist Joseph Banks (see entry). The immediate goal of the organization was to reach the Niger River and determine which way it flowed. The African Association sent out two explorers in its first year, Simon Lucas and John Ledyard, but they both died within a short time of their arrival in North Africa. In 1791 a third explorer, Daniel Houghton, was killed in the country that is now eastern Senegal. Following Banks’s recommendation, the association selected a Scottish doctor, Mungo Park, to make the next attempt.

Park was born in the village of Foulshiels near the town of Selkirk in Scotland on September 10, 1771. He was the seventh of 13 children of a...