His Feet Are Covered With Red Morocco Shoes.

He has no other weapon about him than a large white staff or sceptre, with a golden lion on the head of it, which he carries in his hand.

His countenance is mild, and he seems to govern his subjects more like a father than a king. All but the king go bareheaded. The poor have only a single piece of blue or other cloth about them. The inhabitants are very numerous; I think six times as many as in Swearah, besides Arabs and other Mahommedans in their millah or separate town, which must contain nearly as many people as there are altogether in Swearah. [*] The women are clothed in a light shirt, or under-dress, and over it a green, red or blue covering, from the bosom to below the knees, the whole of them girt about their waists with a red girdle. They stain their cheeks and foreheads red or yellow on some occasions; and the married women wear a kind of hood on their heads, made of blue cloth or silk, and cotton handkerchiefs of different kinds and colours, and go barefooted."

[Footnote: Swearah or Mogadore is stated to contain above 36,000 souls, that is 30,000 Moors and 6,000 Jews. This calculation would make Timbuctoo to contain 216,000 inhabitants. A statement which deserves little credit.]

"The king and people of Timbuctoo do not fear and worship God like the Moslem, but like the people of Soudan, they only pray once in twenty-four hours, when they see the moon, and when she is not seen, they do not pray at all. They cannot read nor write, but are honest. They circumcise their children, like the Arabs. They have not any mosques, but dance every night, as the Moors and Arabs pray."

"If however European expectation had been raised to an extraordinary height respecting the size, riches, and importance of Timbuctoo, it was likely to be still more luxuriantly feasted with the description of another town of central Africa, in comparison of which Timbuctoo must appear as a city of a second rate, and which Sidi Hamet describes as being of the magnitude, that it took him a day to walk round it."

"According to the statement of Sidi Hamet, he travelled with about two hundred Moslem, to a large city called Wassanah, a place he had never before heard of, nor which is to be found in any of the modern maps of Africa. For the first six days, they travelled over a plain within sight of the Joliba, in a direction a little to the south of east, till they came to a small town called Bimbinah, where the river turned more to the south-east, by a high mountain to the east. They now left the river, and pursued a direction more to the southward, through a hilly and woody country for fifteen days, and then came to the river again. The route wound with the river for three days in a south-easterly direction, and then they had to climb over a very high ridge of mountains, thickly covered with very lofty trees, which took up six days; from the summit, a large chain of high mountains was seen to the westward. On descending from this ridge, they came immediately to the river's bank, where it was very narrow and full of rocks. For the next twelve days, they kept on in a direction generally south-east, but winding, with the river almost every day in sight, and crossed many small streams flowing into it. High mountains were plainly seen on the western side. They then came to a ferry, and beyond that travelled for fifteen days more, mostly in sight of the river, till at length after fifty-seven days travelling, not reckoning the halts, they reached Wassanah."

"This city stands near the bank of the Joliba, which runs past it nearly south, between high mountains on both sides, and is so wide that they could hardly distinguish a man on the other side. The walls are very large, built of great stones much thicker and stronger than those of Timbuctoo, with four gates. It took a day to walk round them. The city has twice as many inhabitants as Timbuctoo; [*] the principal people are well dressed, but all are negroes and kafirs. They have boats made of great trees hollowed out, which will hold from fifteen to twenty negroes, and in these they descend the river for three moons to the great water, and traffic with pale people who live in great boats, and have guns as big as their bodies." This great water is supposed to be the Atlantic, and as the distance of three moons must not be less than two thousand five hundred miles, it has been supposed that the Niger must communicate with the Congo. If so it must be, doubtless, by intermediate rivers; the whole account, however, is pregnant with suspicion, nor has any part of it been verified by any subsequent traveller.

[Footnote: According to Sidi Hamet, Wassanah must contain nearly half a million of inhabitants. The circumstance also of the Joliba or Niger being there so bra that a man could scarcely be seen on the other side, throws great discredit over the whole statement of the moorish merchant.]

It is singular, that a great variety of opinion has existed, respecting the exact state of government to which the city of Timbuctoo was subject. It is well known, that the vernacular histories, both traditionary and written, of the wars of the Moorish empire, agree in stating, that from the middle of the seventeenth century, Timbuctoo was occupied by the troops of the emperors of Morocco, in whose name a considerable annual tribute was levied upon the inhabitants; but that the negroes, in the early part of the last century, taking advantage of one of those periods of civil dissension bloodshed, which generally follow the demise of any of the rulers of Barbary, did at length shake off the yoke of their northern masters, to which the latter were never afterwards able again to reduce them. Nevertheless, although the emperors of Morocco might be unable at the immense distance, which separate them from Soudan, to resume an authority, which had once escaped I hands, it is reasonable to suppose that the nearer tribes of Arabs would not neglect the opportunity thus afforded them, of returning to their old habits of spoliation, and of exercising their arrogant superiority over their negro neighbours; and that this frontier state would thus become the theatre of continual contests, terminating alternately, in the temporary occupation of Timbuctoo by the Arabs, and in their re-expulsion by negroes.

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