PARK. EDWARDS AMASA, D.D., LL.D., b. Providence. R. I., 1808; graduated at Brown university, 1826; and at Andover theological seminary, 1831; ordained the same year pastor of the Congregational church in Braintree, Mass.; elected in 1835 professor of moral and intellectual philosophy in Amherst college; in 1836 became Bartlett pro fessor of sacred rhetoric in Andover theological seminary; and in 1847 Abbot professor of Christian theology in the same institution, which position he still 1ic1ds. He has con tributed largely to periodicals, and has been one of the editors of the Bibliotheca &trra from the beginning. With prof. B. B. Edwards he translated a volume of Germ,in ,Selections; edited the Writin,qs of Rev. Wiliam Bradford Berner, with a memoir; a volume on homiletics, the Preacher and Pastor, with an introductory essay; The Writings 't' Prof. B. B. Edwards, with a memoir, 2 vols.: and jointly with Drs. Austin Phelps and Lowell Mason, the Sabbath Hymn and Tune Book. In 1859 he assi• I 1 in the preparation of a volume of Discourses and Treatises on the Atonement, and w...te an introductory treatise on The Rise of the Edwartlean :t'heory of the Atonement. With Dr. Phelps and. the rev. 1). L. Furber he published in 18tH a volume entitled Hymns and Chfirs. lie has written memoirs of Drs. Hopkins and Emmons for the editions of their works. Ile has published several sermons, one of which, a "convention sermon," on The Theology of the Intellect and the Feelings, occasioned a theological controversy between him and prof. Hodge of Princeton. He has long been considered one of the leading pulpit orators of the country, as regards both the matter of his discourse and the combined vigor and finish of his delivery. His use of words is exceedingly accurate and felicitous, and his illustrations are singularly apt. For many years he has been the foremost expounder of what is known as the New England theology, a strongly evangelical scheme of Christian doctrine, which has doubtless had a modifying power on the intenser forms of Calvinism, long prevalent in the middle anti southern states. As editor of a leading theological quarterly, high in repute on both sides of the Atlantic, Dr. Park has had wide influence. But as a lecturer to consecutive classes of students for the ministry he has exerted an intellectual force keen, profound, vital, and formative, whose range and value can scarcely be overestimated. He has closely devoted himself to this work, visiting Europe for study and for indispensable rest, but seldom leaving his classes for any morepublic sphere of work. From his lecture-room, through his multitude of pupils, a stimiffus has gone forth through the land and to distant parts of the earth.
PARK, 'iNfuNGo, a celebrated African traveler, was the son of a Scottish farmer, and was b. Sept. 10, 1771, at Fowlshiels, near Selkirk. He studied medicine in Edinburgh, and afterward went to London, where lie obtained the situation of assistant-surgeon in a vessel bound for the East Indies. When he returned, in 1793, the African Association of
London had received intelligence of the death of maj. Houghton, who had undertaken a lourney to Africa at their expense. Park offered himself for a similar undertaking, was iccepted, and sailed from England May 22, 1795. He spent some months at the English factory of Pisania, on the Gambia, in making preparations for his further travels, and in learning the hEandingo language. Leaving Pisania on Dec. 2, he traveled eastward; but when he had nearly reached the place where Houghton lost his life, he fell into the hands of a Moorish king, who imprisoned him, and treated him so roughly that Park seized an opportunity of escaping (July 1, 1796). In the third week of his flight he reached the Niger, the great object of his search, at Sego (in the kingdom of Bambarra), and followed its course downward as far as Silla; but meeting with hindrances that compelled him to retrace his steps, he pursued his way westward along its banks to Bammakoe, and then crossed a mountainous country till he came to Kamalia, in the kingdom of Mandingo (Sept. 14), where he was taken ill, and lay for seven months. A slave-trader at last con veyed him again to the English factory on the Gambia, where he arrived June 10, 1797, after an absence of nineteen months. He published an account of his travels, after his • return to Britain, under the title of Travels in the Interior of Africa (Load. 1799), a work which at once acquired a high popularity. He now married and settled as a surgeon at Peebles, where, however, he did not acquire an extensive Practice; so that, in 1805, he undertook another journey to Africa at the expense of the government. When he started from Pisania, he had a comifany of 45, of whom 36 were European soldiers; but, when he reached- the Niger, in August, his attendants were reduced to 7, so fatal' is the rainy season in those regions to Europeans. From Sansanding, on the Niger, in the kingdom of Bambarra, he sent back his journals and letters in Nov., 1805, to Gambia; and built a boat, in which he embarked with four European companions, and reached the kingdom of Houssa, where he and they are believed to have been murdered by the natives, or drowned as they attempted to sail through a narrow channel of the river. The fragments of information and other evidence picked up among the natives by Clapperton and Lan der (q.v.), strongly confirm this view of the fate of Park and his companions. An account of Park's second journey was published at London in 1815. Park's narratives are of no inconsiderable value, particularly for the light which they throw upon the social and domestic life of the negroes, and on the botany and meteorology of the regions through which he passed; but he was unfortunately cut off before he had determined the grand object of his explorations—the discovery of the course of the Niger.