INTRODUCTION. ix 
that if this should turn out to be the fact, ‘* considered in 
a commercial point of view, it is second only to the dis- 
covery of the Cape of Good Hope; and in a geographical 
point of view, it is certainly the greatest discovery that 
remains to be made in this world.” 
Park’s opinion, it may be said, is entitled to no greater 
weight, on this point, than that of any other person who 
had given his attention to the subject ; and so, it appears, 
Major Rennell thought, who gave him no encouragement 
to hope for the confirmation of this new hypothesis. But 
the impression which the facts stated by Mr. Maxwell, and 
his reasoning on those facts, had made on Park’s mind 
previous to his leaving England, so far from being weak- 
ened, appear to have gathered strength on his second 
progress down the river; and it can hardly be doubted, 
that the unknown termination of the stream, and of his 
own journey, was the unceasing object of his anxious 
inquiries ; the result of which was, as we are told by his 
able and accurate biographer, that “* he adopted Mr. 
Maxwell’s sentiments relative to the termination of the 
Niger in their utmost extent, and persevered in that opinion 
to the end of his life;’—perhaps he ought rather to have 
said, “to the day of his departure from Sansanding.” 
That no alteration of opinion in this respect had taken 
place, is quite clear from several expressions in his letters 
from the Niger, addressed to Lord Camden, to Sir Joseph 
Banks, and to his wife, in all of which he talks confidently 
of his reaching England by the way of the West Indies ; 
not by a painful journey back by land to the Senegal or 
the Gambia, but by arriving at some other and more dis- 
tant part of the western coast. This is rendered still more 
c 
