242 REMARKS ON TRAVELS 
note addressed by Mungo Park to his wife. It is known 
that the bark which he contrived for descending the river 
was a sort of raft or flat boat, formed of two old canoes. 
It cannot easily be credited that the traveller advan- 
ced upon the river at the rate of six or seven miles an hour 
as his journal indicates : it has been seen that the direct 
progress of M. Caillie on the Dhioliba was scarcely 
more than two miles an hour ; in a different season 
it is true, and at low v/ater. Mungo Park, according to 
his guide, perished at Boussa, four months after his de- 
parture from Sansanding, which account, unless erroneous 
would infer a stay either at Timbuctoo, Houssa, or Yaour.* 
It is not possible here to institute any comparison between 
the two narratives, and I think it superfluous to seek other 
points of resemblance ; I confine myself therefore to the 
observation, that the map of Park's second journey ag- 
gravates the error committed in the first map, in placing the 
course of the Dhioliba too far eastward of the city of Tim- 
buctoo. f It is not consistent with my subject to enter 
into further particulars concerning that unfortunate expe- 
dition, with the commencement and issue of which every 
* It has already been remarked (if an author may be permitted to 
quote himself) in the Reflexions sur Vetat des connaissances relatives au 
cours du Dhioliba (page 23) that the catastrophe appears to have oc- 
curred about the 4th of January 1806. He set out from Sansanding 
about the 1 9th of November, his voyage therefore could only have 
lasted about forty seven days. 
•f Compare the map of Park's second journey, in the ''Journal of 
a Mission to the Interior of Africa," etc. London, 1815. 
