Mungo Park:

- although West Africa lay outside Saids Orient, Park was typical of genre of travel writing he referred to - travelled on behalf of [paid by] London Association for the Discovery of the Interior of Africa association of wealthy bankers, businessmen - aims: explore the Niger from source to ocean outlet; visit famed Timbuktu and Houssa [Hausaland didnt realize not a city] - information was meant to assist British commerce, investment - account was meant to engage the public - written in romantic style: Park the lone protagonist, struggling against Rousseaus natural man - Africa and Africans uncivilized in sense of acting on natural instincts, untutored in politics, rules of civilized society - Travels in the Interior analyzed as literature typical of Romantic style - except: when Park speaks of the Moors - when he enters the land of the Moors (Mohammedans), he encounters warring peoples, greedy kings and a ruler named Ali who is the archetypal despot (cruel and corrupt) - he is imprisoned; women torment him insisting on examining his naked body Excerpts: I fancied that I discovered in the features of most of them [Moors], a disposition toward cruelty, and low cunning; and I could never contemplate their physiognomy, without feeling a sensible uneasiness. From the staring wildness of their eyes, a stranger would immediately set them down as a nation of lunatics. The treachery and malevolence of their character are manifested in their plundering excursions against the Negro villages. Making much of Moors fanaticism, hatred of Christians and belief in their own superiority, Park wrote: It is impossible for me to describe the behaviour of a people who study mischief as a science and exult in the miseries and misfortunes of their fellow creatures. It is sufficient to observe that the rudeness, ferocity and fanaticism, which distinguish the Moors from the rest of mankind, found here a proper subject whereon to exercise their propensities. I was a stranger, I was unprotected, and I was a Christian; each of these circumstances is sufficient to drive every spark of humanity from the heart of a Moor. The Moors are rigid Mahomedans, and possess, with the bigotry and superstition, all the intolerance of their sect. Cut off from all intercourse with civilized nations, they are at once the vainest and proudest, and perhaps the most bigoted, ferocious, and intolerant of all the nations on the earth combining in their character, the blind superstition of the Negro with the savage cruelty and treachery of the Arab.

Mungo Park

Map shows travels, indicated region in which he was held prisoner Ludamar

Captioned Parks Last Stand at Bussia Rapids Imagined view of Parks death on the Niger River: the Civilized against the African in the Romantic style