Mungo Park reaches Ségou

Background. Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer of West Africa born on 10 September 1771, offered his services to the African Association on 26 September 1794 as successor to Major Daniel Houghton, who had been sent in 1790 to discover the course of the Niger River and had died in the Sahara. Park left Portsmouth on 22 May 1795 aboard the brig Endeavour and reached the Gambia River on 21 June 1795, ascending it to the British trading station Pisania.

Arrival at Ségou. On 1 July 1796 Park escaped, alone and with nothing but his horse and a pocket compass, and on the 21st of that month he reached the long-sought Niger River at Ségou, becoming the first European to do so. Ségou is identified in the supplied material as a capital town; the passages describe it as the capital of the Ségou Cercle and the Ségou Region, and Park's later account recorded the prosperity he observed there.

Aftermath and Publication. Park eventually reached Pisania again on 10 June 1797. An account of his journey was drawn up for the African Association by Bryan Edwards, and his own detailed narrative appeared in 1799 as Travels in the Interior of Africa, a popular and influential book in which he theorised that the Niger and Congo merged to become the same river, a claim later proven false.