Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/322

 tree and flogged in the presence of his local wife, set upon by the very white men he was serving, stung all over by a swarm of bees, and mauled in both thighs by a crocodile; but each time he turned up smiling and ready to go on. Nothing could stop him, for did he not keep the solemn ritual of the guides, sacrificing a black ram at the threshold of every country they entered, drawing the magic triangles and hieroglyphs on the sand of every desert they had to cross, and keeping fast in his scrip that lock of a white man's hair, which added all the knowledge of a European to the African natives who possessed it?

The agreement of Isaaco was to guide the expedition to the Niger, whence it was to proceed under the direction of Amady Fatouma, another guide. Accordingly, when Sansanding was reached, Isaaco's work was accomplished. Some days he lingered to load the great canoe (large enough to carry a hundred men). In the evenings he taught Mungo Park the names of the necessaries of life in the tongues of the countries ahead. Then he took a last farewell of his master and carried back to the coast that famous letter to Lord Camden, the concluding lines of which are engraved below the writer's statue in the city of Edinburgh: "My dear friends Mr. Anderson and likewise Mr. Scott are both dead; but, though all Europeans who were with me should die, and though I were myself half dead, I would still persevere; and if I could not succeed in the object of my journey I would at least die on the Niger."

One by one the months wore on and no news came from the Niger. But in the next year (1806) there began to be rumors of a great disaster. Still nothing definite was heard, and Mungo Park's wife and his many friends hoped on. They knew his marvellous hardihood and resource, and that of the stalwart Scotsmen who were with him. In