'MR PARK'S FIRST JOURNEY. $71 
fine speeches, and that he should not enter his 
house. From Kea, he was transported in a canoe 
to Moorzan, a fishing town on the northern bank, 
whence he was conveyed across the Niger to Silla, 
a large town, situated in N. lat. 14° 48', and W. 
long. 1° 24/, about 1090 British miles east of Cape 
Verd, and in the same parallel. At Silla, Mr 
Park found himself exhausted with sickness, hun- 
ger, and fatigue, half-naked, and without any article 
of value to procure provisions, clothes, or lodging. 
The intolerant fanaticism of the Moors, whose in- 
fluence increased as he advanced, and the violence 
of the tropical rains, by which the swamps and rice- 
grounds were already inundated, presented insu- 
perable obstacles to his progress. Inevitable de- 
struction menaced him on the one hand, and the 
dangers of a journey on foot, for several hundred 
miles, through nations and regions entirely un- 
known, awaited him on the other. In this extre- 
mity, he resolved to accept the only alternative 
which circumstances presented, and to attempt the 
preservation of those discoveries which he had 
made, by returning to the Gambia. He had now ap- 
proached within 200 miles of Tombuctoo, which had 
long been the object of research of the Portuguese, 
the French, and the English; he had ascertained the 
direction of the Niger, and followed its course for 
seventy miles to the east ; and he now endeavour- 
ed, before his return, to collect from the Moorish 
