LIFE OF MUNGO PARK. 
XV 
passage, arrived at Falmouth on the 22d of the following 
month, having been absent from England two years and 
seven months. 
Immediately on his landing he hastened to London, 
anxious in the greatest degree about his family and friends, 
of whom he had heard nothing for two years. He arrived 
in London before day-light on the morning of Christmas 
day, 17.97 ; and it being too early an hour to go to 
his brother-in-law, Mr. Dickson, he wandered for some 
time about the streets in that quarter of the town where 
his house was. Finding one of the entrances into the gar- 
dens of the British Museum accidentally open, he went in 
and walked about there for some time. It happened that 
Mr. Dickson, who had the care of those gardens, went 
there early that morning upon some trifling business. What 
must have been his emotions on beholding at that extra- 
ordinary time and place, the vision, as it must at first 
have appeared, of his long-lost friend, the object of so 
many anxious reflexions, and whom he had long numbered 
with the dead ! 
Park's arrival was hailed with a sort of triumph by his 
friends of the African Association, and in some degree, by 
the public at large. The nature and objects of his mission, 
his long absence, and his unexpected return, excited a very 
general interest ; which was aftewards kept up by the 
reports which prevailed respecting the discoveries he had 
made. The Association, with that liberality which charac- 
terised every part of their proceedings, gave him full per- 
