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Mungo Park 1771–1806, British explorer in Africa, b. Selkirk, Scotland. After serving as a surgeon with the East India Company, he was employed by the African Association to explore the course of the Niger River. Traveling NE from the Gambia River, he reached the Niger at Segu and proceeded 300 mi (483 km) upstream to Bamako. On his return to England he published Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799). He was sent (1805) by the government to trace the Niger to its mouth, but at Bussa he and his party were attacked in their canoes and Park was drowned.
See J. Thomson, Mungo Park and the River Niger (1890, repr. 1970).
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