To continue our narrative of exploration we must now leave the sweltering suns and miasmatic atmosphere of Western Africa for the temperate climate and bracing breezy hillsides of southern Scotland--turning from the river dear to the geographer to the stream loved of the poet--from the Niger to the Yarrow. The man whose mission it was to break through the isolating barriers reared by savagery and a deadly climate between the land of the negro and all outside humanising influences, must needs have an heroic cradle, and come of an heroic race. His must be the nurture of the Spartan, physically equipping him to battle with hardship and privation--his the education and upbringing which tend to all forms of noble discontent and deeds of high emprise. Such a cradle and such a race were Ettrickdale and its peasantry. Theirs was the life of honest toil and constant self-restraint, and theirs the direct and indirect education which in the right man develops romantic instincts, and weds to a perfervid imagination stern religious convictions, intense practicality, and prosaic tenacity of purpose. Theirs were the surroundings fitted alike to mould the poet or the hero--him who should sing of the chivalry of the past, or him who should be of the chivalry of the present, in whatever field is scope for praiseworthy ambition and highest aspiration--clear-sighted vision and undaunted courage, dogged persistence and untiring perseverance, fortitude under reverses, and physical powers to endure privation. This, then, was the heritage which Ettrickdale had to offer to her sons; and this, as one of them, the heritage of Mungo Park, the first of the knight errantry of Africa. [Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF MUNGO PARK.] Of the early life of him who was destined to partially unveil the face of Africa we know but little, though that little is sufficiently significant and satisfactory. Mungo Park was born on the 10th September 1771 in the cottage of Foulshiels, some four and a half miles from Selkirk. Foulshiels stands in the very centre of the loveliest scenery of the glen of Yarrow, facing on the opposite side of the valley the stately tower of Newark. Eastward it commands a view over the woods and groves and “birchen bowers” of the widening dale to where it merges in the valley of the Ettrick near Selkirk. Westward it fronts a magnificent panorama of hill and dale, through which curves the Yarrow in broken gleaming reaches, from the wild romantic scenery of its loch and mountain sources. To front and rear rise stately hills, their bases separated and washed by the rushing streams, their lower slopes clad with oak and fir, their upper with grass and heather, over which the winds sweep unopposed.