At a place called Dumbila, Park had the pleasure of meeting his old friend and protector, Karfa Taura. Here Anderson became too ill to be moved, Scott had disappeared, and only one man was able to drive a donkey. At night rain descended in drenching torrents, and the men took refuge in the village, leaving their leader alone to watch that the donkeys did not stray into the neighbouring corn-fields, and to defend them and their loads alike from the attacks of wild beasts and from the bands of marauding natives. But no matter how heavy the burdens, not a grumble escaped the hero who had to bear them all--not a hint that he felt himself badly treated by his men and their officers. On the 19th of August, Park, with the helpless, shattered remnant of his caravan, ascended the mountain ridge which forms the watershed between the Senegal and the Niger. Pushing on eagerly to the summit of the hill, the toil and careworn traveller’s eyes were gladdened by the spectacle of the “Niger rolling its immense stream along the plain.” “After the fatiguing march which we had just experienced, the sight of this river was no doubt pleasant, as it promised an end to, or at least an alleviation of, our toils. But when I reflected that three-fourths of the soldiers had died on the march, and that in addition to our weakly state we had no carpenters to build the boats in which we proposed to prosecute our discoveries, the prospect appeared somewhat gloomy. It, however, afforded me peculiar pleasure when I reflected that in conducting a party of Europeans with immense baggage through an extent of more than five hundred miles, I had always been able to preserve the most friendly terms with the natives.” The latter sentence is well worthy of note as illustrative of Park’s methods of travel at a time when the sanctity of human life, whether black or white, was not quite so much thought of as at present. In speaking of the distance traversed as five hundred miles, it must be remembered that what is meant is the distance in a straight line expressed in geographical miles. The actual number of English miles travelled over would be in reality little short of a thousand. Notwithstanding his frightful experiences, Park considered that his “journey plainly demonstrates--first, that with common prudence any quantity of merchandise may be transported from the Gambia to the Niger without danger of being robbed by the natives; second, that if this journey be performed in the dry season, one may calculate on losing not more than three, or at most four men, out of fifty.” We would naturally have expected him to add as a third conclusion, that under no circumstance should Europeans be employed in such a caravan except as conductors, or it might be as guards. That conclusion, however, he apparently did not reach--indeed, we look in vain throughout his journal for any indication that he was at all aware of the frightful nature of his blunder in starting only with Europeans.