As there was no ship in the river when Park arrived, he expected to have to wait for some months. In this, however, he was happily disappointed, for an American slave ship, the _Charlestown_, arrived on the 15th. Slaves were plentiful, and in a couple of days the cargo of human flesh and blood for the plantations of South Carolina was made up in exchange for rum and tobacco.
Though the route by America was excessively circuitous, it was such a chance as Park could not afford to neglect. Accordingly, on the 17th of June he bade farewell to all his English friends, and took passage in the American vessel.
He had now reason to suppose that all his cares, anxieties, and dangers were over, and nothing but rest and good treatment before him. Once more, however, he was dogged by his usual ill-luck. The passage down the river was tedious and fatiguing, the weather being exceedingly hot, moist, and unhealthy. The result was that before Goree was reached, four of the seamen, the surgeon, and three of the slaves had died of fever. At Goree, owing to the difficulty of obtaining provisions, the vessel was detained four weary months, so that it was the end of October before she eventually set sail for America.
The _Charlestown’s_ cargo consisted of 130 slaves, of whom twenty-five had been free Mohammedans, able to read and write a little Arabic. Some of the others had seen Park _en route_, and many had heard of him in their distant villages. But though he had not a word to say against the slave trade, Park had a feeling heart for the miseries of those whom, with his Calvinistic ideas, he believed predestined to a life of shame and suffering. Being able to speak to them in their native language, he did his best as a man and a doctor to comfort them. And in truth they had need of all the consolation he could bestow. The manner in which they were crowded, confined, and chained in the hold of the ship produced terrible sufferings, while the foul air, the wretched sanitary conditions, and the want of exercise brought on general sickness. “Besides the three who died on the Gambia, and six or eight at Goree, eleven perished at sea, and many of the survivors were reduced to a very weak and emaciated condition.”