Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/323

 1810, however, the Government, who were responsible for the second expedition, thought it time to inquire what had befallen it; so they told the Governor of Senegal to find Isaaco and offer him £1,000 to explore after the explorer and put all doubts at rest. Now the manuscript which I possess, and of which a précis follows, is Isaaco's account of his travels in search of Mungo Park, by which he earned his thousand pounds and did the last sad offices to his master's memory. In my judgment it contains as much of the spirit of adventure as Mungo Park's own journals, and, being written by a native, gets nearer to the life and mind of the African Negro than any white man, writing from outside, could hope to do. For that reason I often wonder why the successive editors of Park's Travels have passed it over, printing only the last page or two, wherein Amady Fatouma relates the explorer's end. One thing I know has been against its adoption, to wit, an insufferably dull style. Seeing that it is difficult to be dull in the Arabic tongue, and that it was impossible for Isaaco to be so in any of the tongues he used, I suspect the English translator (no doubt a mere clerk in Governor Maxwell's Office) of pruning away the flowers of speech, and making all as prim and exact as an affidavit. Or possibly Isaaco simulated dullness. He meant to have that thousand pounds, and could afford to take no risks. A tropical, luxuriant style would certainly have put his credibility in question. As it was, many of the learned societies doubted his word, and one of them roundly asserted that he had sat outside Senegal and fabricated at ease the history of his travels. It was only after Bowditch, Denham, Clapperton, and Landor had explored after the explorer that Isaaco's credit was established and the learned societies put to shame.

In the abridgment that follows I have tried to preserve not only the spirit, but wherever possible the very words, of Isaaco's manuscript Journal. Whatever has been discarded is of little consequence and of less grammar.