Mungo Park (original) (raw)

At the bottom of the three stamps issued in 1971 by Gambia to commemorate the bi-centenary of the birth of Mungo Park is a map which shows �Park�s route to Kaarta and the Niger� marked with a black line along the Gambia river. In an article by Oliver Andrew in the May 2007 issue of Gibbons Stamp Monthly the author writes, �the route taken by Mungo Park on his way to the Niger, as shown on the stamps, follows the River Gambia to the point where it leave Senegal. Park�s journal, though, makes it clear that he left the river not far upstream from Pisania, his starting point. He then struck overland, on horseback, slightly north of east, towards the edge of the stamp; he did not travel, in the Gambia at least, in a dugout canoe as shown on SG 285 [SCN 271].�