A bullock entering Mopti laden with bars of trade salt FACING PAGE A building of the newly organized university or médersa at Ground plan of compound or kraal of Mossi Chief (Naba) at Habé village (Kankomele) under the Cliff of Bandiagara With Fula Chieftains at Bango, Haute Volta 161 170 176 177 184 184 185 185 192 192 A bit of mural decoration in the Haute Volta Colony Bobo women in the market place at Banforo, Haute Volta A "Campement" or rest station for travellers A graveyard of the Mossis at Lay, Haute Volta A band of performers at the Fête of Segou A village chief with his well-equipped horse Sketch map of Morocco MAPS Sketch map of West Africa Sketch map showing routes across the Sahara Desert T CHAPTER I THE SPELL HE spell of the unknown interior of a continent is a lure fatal to man's ease and safety. That spell once cast can not be resisted. The desire to go where the way is forbidden, to penetrate regions where rumor and tradition have created undiscovered wonders to be the first to bring back knowledge of a remote and mysterious kingdom, has incited men of our race to prodigious adventures. The last continental mystery was Africa. European knowledge began with the coast line, and at this point exploration was long arrested. The Portuguese began the exploration of the African coast half a century before the first voyage of Columbus. Eventually they rounded Africa and reached India and Malaysia. The line of their fortresses and trading settlements, which surrounds the continent from Mazagan to Mozambique, was completely drawn more than four hundred years ago. But in spite of their activity, and that of their European rivals who followed them, the interior of the continent remained unpenetrated and almost unknown. In 1795 a young Scotchman, Mungo Park, landed on the river Gambia, and broke the way into the interior. He was at this time twenty-four years old. His 3 physical and moral powers may be judged from what he accomplished, and from the manner of his death. He was entering Africa with the support of a British society, the Association for Promoting the Discovery of Africa. Alone and single-handed, the constant victim of hunger, fever, and native brutality, Park traversed the interior of Senegal, the desertic south-Saharan region of Kaarta, where he was robbed and imprisoned by the Moors, and, after many months of persistence, he discovered what he had been bidden to find. It was known to Europe that a great river traversed the interior of this part of Africa, a river known as the "Joliba" or the "Niger," but no European had ever seen its waters and both its sources and its mouth were unknown. On the 20th of July, having escaped from the bondage of the Moors, destitute and weak from his sufferings, Park reached the valley of this river at Ségou, the capital of the Bambara Kingdom. "I saw with infinite pleasure", he wrote, "the great object of my mission-the long sought for majestic Niger, glittering to the morning sun. . . . and flowing slowly to the eastward." He descended the Niger about eighty miles, and then, completely exhausted and without resources, turned reluctantly westward, and struggled through the Fouta Djallon mountains to the coast. He had long been given up for dead. He returned to this quest for the true course of the Niger in 1805, and again entered the interior with a party of forty-four Europeans, including his brotherin-law, Alexander Anderson, and a guard of British |