On the night of the 20th July, Park took up his quarters at a small village. Here he was told that he would see the Niger--or, as the natives called it, the Joliba or Great Waters--on the morrow.
The thought was intoxication, and between it and the myriad mosquitoes that preyed upon his unprotected body, sleep was out of the question. Before daylight he was up and doing, and had saddled his horse long ere the gates of the village were opened.
At length he got away. With eager eyes he looked towards the south--towards what for many terrible months had been his Kiblah--his Mecca. At last he was about to be rewarded for all the tortures of body and mind he had so heroically endured, so resolutely faced.
The road was crowded with natives hurrying towards the capital. Four large villages were passed, and then in the distance loomed up the smoke of Sego--Sego on the banks of the Niger! A little further and the joyful cry, “See the water!” announced to Park that the Niger was in sight. Ay, truly, there it was, sweeping along in a majestic stream towards the east, and glittering in the bright rays of the morning sun.
One long and ardent look, one sigh of supreme relief, and the pilgrim of geography hastened to the brink, and after drinking of the water, lifted up a fervent prayer to the Great Ruler of all things for having thus crowned his endeavours with success.
Thus was the River Niger for the first time reached by an European, and its eastward course determined. Park had left England inclined if anything to believe that it flowed west; but during his journey that opinion had gradually been undermined, and now with his own eyes he saw that its course was indeed towards the rising sun. There was no further question as to where it took its rise: its termination was now the great mystery which remained to be cleared up.
Sego, the capital of Bambarra, at which the white traveller had arrived, consisted of four distinct towns, two on the north bank of the Niger, and two on the south. Each was independently surrounded by high mud walls. Unlike the ordinary negro village, the houses were square with flat roofs, and built of mud. Some of them were two stories in height, and a few were whitewashed.