Ixxvi 
ACCOUNT OF THE 
and the great extent of commercial transactions. These 
facts imply that industry is protected, and property in a 
certain degree secure ; and fully confirm Park's former 
statements with regard to the comparative civilization and 
improvement of the interior of Africa. 
One of Park's principal objects at Sansanding vt^as to 
provide a proper vessel for his farther navigation down the 
Niger ; and it was with great difficulty that he procured 
two indifferent and decayed canoes ; from which by the 
labour of his own hands, with some assistance from one of 
the surviving soldiers, he constructed a flat-bottomed ves- 
sel, to which he gave the magnificent title of His Majesty's 
schooner the Joliba. 
Previously to this time, Park had received intelligence 
of the death of Mr. Scott, whom he had been obliged to 
leave at Koornikoomi, on his march towards the Niger ; 
and now whilst he was employed in building his vessel, he 
had to lament the loss of his friend Mr. Anderson, who 
died on the 28th of October, after a lingering illness of four 
months. He speaks of this severe blow in his Journal very 
shortly, but in a strain of natural eloquence, flowing evi- 
denly from tlie heart, " No event," he says, " during the 
journey, ever threw the smallest gloom over his mind 
till he laid Mr. Anderson in the grave ; he then felt 
*' himself as if left a second time lonely and friendless 
amidst the wilds of Africa."* 
Fancy can hardly picture a situation more perilous than 
that of Park at this time, nor an enterprise more utterly 
hopeless than that which he was now to undertake. Of 
* Journal, p. 163. 
