LIFE OF MUNGO PARK. 
Ixxvii 
the Europeans who had accompanied him from the Gambia, 
Lieutenant Martyn and three soldiers (one of them in a 
state of mental derangement) were all who now survived. 
He was about to embark on avast and unknown river, which 
might possibly terminate in some great lake or inland sea, 
at an immense distance from the coast ; but which he 
hoped and believed would conduct him to the shores of the 
Atlantic, after a course of considerably more than three 
thousand miles, through the midst of savage nations, and 
probably also after a long succession of rapids, lakes, 
and cataracts. This voyage, one of the most formidable 
ever attempted, was to be undertaken in a crazy and ill 
appointed vessel, manned by a few Negroes and four 
Europeans ! 
On the 16th of November the schooner being completed, 
and every preparation made for the voyage, Park put the 
finishing hand to his Journal ; and in the course of the 
succeeding days previous to the embarkation, which ap- 
pears to have taken place on the 19th, he wrote letters to 
his father-in-law, Mr. Anderson, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord 
Camden, and Mrs. Park. Those addressed to the three 
latter, being the most interesting, are here inserted at 
length, and cannot be read without considerable interest. 
They all of them bear strong traces of that deliberate cou- 
rage without effort or ostentation, which distinguished his 
whole conduct ; and his letter to Lord Camden breathes 
a generous spirit of self-devotion, highly expressive of 
the character and feelings of the writer. 
