xxiv ACCOUNT OF THE 
Park's Travels, his name was constantly mentioned in the 
list of persons conversant with Africa, who were not friendly 
to the Abolition ; and his authority was always appealed 
to with some triumph by the advocates of the Slave Trade: 
and this, apparently, with good reason. For, although 
the author avowedly abstained from giving an explicit 
opinion as to the effects of that traffic, yet the general tone 
of his work appeared to leave no doubt with regard to his 
real sentiments ; and indeed the silence of so intelligent a 
traveller relative to a subject which must necessarily have 
engaged so much of his attention, was in itself a sufficient 
proof, of a bias existing in the mind of the writer, unfa- 
vourable to the Abolition. For to what other cause could 
it be attributed, that the Slave Trade was never once men* 
tioned in Park's book as having the smallest share in 
promoting the barbarism and internal disorders of the 
African Continent ? Or, that in his pathetic description of 
the miseries endured by the caravan of slaves which the 
author accompanied from Kamalia to the Gambia (a jour- 
ney of five hundred miles), not the slightest allusion was 
made to the obvious and immediate cause of these suffer- 
ings, the demand for slaves on the coast? — It must further 
be recollected, that the Slave Trade, at the lime when 
Park wrote, had engaged universal attention, and was 
become the subject of much controversy and public discus- 
sion ; yet this topic, of so much interest and importance, 
occurs only once in the course of these Travels ; and is 
then hastily dismissed with a slight and unmeaning ob- 
servation.* 
* The passage here particularly alluded to, is so extraordinary, and affords 
