ABSTRACT
Mungo Park was a model student: quiet, thoughtful and studious. He was apprenticed to a surgeon at fifteen and later went to Edinburgh University, becoming proficient in the new science of botany. Through Banks's influence, in 1791–2, Park was appointed assistant medical officer of the Worcester, an East Indiaman, in which he sailed for the East Indies, specifically Sumatra. In July 1794, Park met Banks in London's Thatched House Tavern, where Banks drafted a resolution stating ‘that Mr Mungo Park having offered his Services to the Association as Geographical Missionary to the interior countries of Africa; and appearing to the Committee to be well qualified for the Undertaking, his offer be accepted'. Park reached the Gambia in June 1795, going upriver to Pisania. Here he stayed at the house of Dr John Laidley for five months, waiting until the rains were over and learning the Mandingo language, the most common trade language in the western Sudan.
