290 
EARLY EXPLORERS OF AFRICA 
When he was prohibited by the King of Bambarra from crossing the 
Niger, and ordered to pass the night in a distant village, none of the 
inhabitants would receive him into their houses, and he was pre¬ 
paring to lodge in the branches of a tree. Exhausted with hunger 
and fatigue, and unprotected from a storm, he was relieved by a 
woman returning from the labors of the field. He was kindly invited 
to her hut, and was most carefully tended. The other women light¬ 
ened their labor by songs, one of which, at least, must have been 
extempore, for Park himself was the subject of it. It was sung by one 
of the young women, the others joining in the chorus. The air was 
sweet and plaintive; and the words, literally translated, were: “The 
winds roared, and the rains fell. The poor white man, faint and 
weary, came and sat under our tree. He has no mother to bring him 
milk; no wife to grind his corn. Chorus .—Let us pity the white man; 
no mother has he, etc., etc.” 
John Louis Burckhardt, born in Switzerland in 1794, prepared 
himself for African travel by studying the language and manners of 
the Arabs, and in 1812 journeyed up the Nile almost to Dongola, and 
afterwards, taking the part of a poor Turkish trader of Syria, trav¬ 
ersed the deserts of Nubia as far as Suakim on the Red Sea. So thor¬ 
ough had been his studies, that when his Islamism was questioned he 
passed an examination in the Mohammedan faith before two learned 
jurists, who pronounced him to be a very faithful and very learned 
Musselman. Unfortunately, when he was about to set out to join a 
caravan for Fezzan with the purpose of exploring the source of the 
Niger, he died at Cairo, April 15, 1817. He was the first modern 
traveler to penetrate to Shendy in the Soudan, the Meroe of ancient 
times, where he gained exact information about the slave trade in that 
quarter. The Mohammedans performed his obsequies with great 
splendor, as a distinguished follower of their faith. 
Among other notable travelers was Colonel Dixon Denham, born 
in London in 1786, who took part in 1823 with Captain Clapperton 
and Doctor Oudney in an expedition to Central Africa. He was a 
man well adapted in every way for such labors, and it was mainly due 
to him that permission was obtained from the Sultan of Fezzan for 
the expedition to cross the desert to Lake Tsad. He explored the 
region around this lake, and afterwards joined an Arab military expe- 
