100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 yards.

1. House of the Sheikh Ahmed el Bakáy, with another house belonging to the same close by, and having in front of it a small square, where he has established a "msid," or place of prayer for his pupils, several of whom pass the night here.

2. House belonging likewise to the sheikh, where I myself was lodged, the ground-plan of which I have given above.

3. Great mosque, "Gingere (Jingeré, or Zángers) bér, Jám'a el kebira," begun by Mansa Músa, King of Melle, A. D. 1327, and forming, for many centuries, the centre of the Mohammedan quarter. 4. Mosque Sánkoré, in the quarter Sánkoré, which is generally regarded as the oldest quarter of the town. The mosque has five naves, and is 120 feet long by 80 feet wide.

5. Mosque Sidi Yahia, much smaller than the two other large mosques.

6. Great market-place, or Yúbu.

7. Butchers' market, where in former times the palace, or "M'a-duk," or M'a-dugu, is said to have been situated. 8. Gate leading to Kábara.

9. Well, surrounded by a small plantation of date-trees.

10. Another well, with a small garden belonging to Mohammed el 'Aish.

11. Spot in a shallow valley, up to which point small boats ascended from the Niger, in the winter 1853-4.

Greenwich. Situated only a few feet above the average level of the river, and at a distance of about six miles from the principal branch, it at present forms a sort of triangle, the base of which points toward the river, while the projecting angle is directed toward the north, having for its centre the mosque of Sánkoré. But, during the zenith of its power, the town extended a thousand yards farther north, and included the tomb of the Fáki Mahmúd, which, according to some of my informants, was then situated in the midst of the town.

The circumference of the city at the present time I reckon at a little more than two miles and a half; but it may approach closely

DESCRIPTION OF TIMBUʼKTU.

325 ito to three miles, taking into account some of the projecting angles. Although of only small size, Timbúktu may well be called a city— medína--in comparison with the frail dwelling-places all over Negroland. At present it is not walled. Its former wall, which seems never to have been of great magnitude, and was rather more of the nature of a rampart, was destroyed by the Fúlbe on their first entering the place in the beginning of the year 1826. The town is laid out partly in rectangular, partly in winding streets, or, as they are called here, " tijeráten," which are not paved, but for the greater part consist of hard sand and gravel, and some of them have a sort of gutter in the middle. Besides the large and the small market there are few open areas, except a small square in front of the mosque of Yáhia, called Túmbutu-bóttema.

Small as it is the city is tolerably well inhabited, and almost all the houses are in good repair. There are about 980 clay houses, and a couple of hundred conical huts of matting, the latter, with a few exceptions, constituting the outskirts of the town on the north and northeast sides, where a great deal of rubbish, which has been accumulating in the course of several centuries, is formed into conspicuous mounds. The clay houses are all of them built on the same principle as my own residence, which I have described, with the exception that the houses of the poorer people have only one court-yard, and have no upper room on the terrace.

The only remarkable public buildings in the town are the three large mosques: the Jíngeré-bér, built by Mansa Músa; the mosque of Sánkoré, built at an early period at the expense of a wealthy woman; and the mosque Sídi Yahia, built at the expense of a kádhi of the town. There were three other mosques: that of Sídi Háj Mohammed, Msíd Belál, and that of Sídi el Bámi. These mosques, and perhaps some little msíd, or place of prayer, Caillié must have included when he speaks of seven mosques. Besides these mosques there are at present no distinguished public buildings in the town; and of the royal palace, or M'a-dugu, wherein the kings of Songhay used to reside occasionally, as well as the Kasbah, which was built in later times, in the southeastern quarter, or the "Sane-gungu,"+ which already at that time was inhabited by the merchants from Ghadámes, not a trace is to be * Caillié, Travels to Timbuctoo, vol. ii., p. 56.

Sane-gungu means, properly, the island, or the quarter of the whites, "kirsh el bedhán."

See about the Kasbah, A ́hmed Bábá's account, Journal of the Leipsic Oriental Society, vol. ix., p. 550.

seen. Besides this quarter, which is the wealthiest, and contains the best houses, there are six other quarters, viz., Yúbu, the quarter comprising the great market-place (yúbu) and the mosque of Sídi Yahia, to the west of Sane-gungu; and west of the former, forming the southwestern angle of the town, and called, from the great mosque, Jíngeré-bér or Zángeré-bér. This latter quarter, from the most ancient times, seems to have been inhabited especially by Mohammedans, and not unlikely may have formed a distinct quarter, separated from the rest of the town by a wall of its own. Toward the north, the quarter Sane-gungu is bordered by the one called Sara-káina, meaning literally the "little town," and containing the residence of the sheikh, and the house where I myself was lodged. Attached to Sara-káina, toward the north, is Yúbu-káina, the quarter containing the "little market,” which is especially used as a butchers' market. Bordering both on Jíngeré-bér and Yúbu-káina is the quarter Bagíndi, occupying the lowest situation in the town, and stated by the inhabitants to have been flooded entirely in the great inundation which took place in 1640. From this depression in the ground, the quarter of Sánkoré, which forms the northernmost angle of the city, rises to a considerable elevation in such a manner that the mosque of Sánkoré, which seems to occupy its ancient site and level, is at present situated in a deep hollow-an appearance which seems to prove that this elevation of the ground is caused by the accumu lation of rubbish, in consequence of the repeated ruin which seems to have befallen this quarter pre-eminently, as being the chief stronghold of the native Songhay. The slope which this quarter forms toward the northeastern end in some spots exceeds eighty feet.

The whole number of the settled inhabitants of the town. amounts to about 13,000, while the floating population during the months of the greatest traffic and intercourse, especially from November to January, may amount on an average to 5000, and under favorable circumstances to as many as 10,000. Of the dif ferent elements composing this population, and of their distinguishing features, I shall say a few words in another place. I now revert to the diary of my own proceedings.

In the evening of the next day I again went with the sheikh out of the town to the tents, where we were to stay two days, but where we in fact spent six; my friend finding himself very happy in the company of his wife, to whom he was sincerely attached.

INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS.

327

Not only my companions but even I myself began to find it rather tedious in the dull encampment, as I had scarcely any books with me to pass away my time, and my situation not allowing me to enter too closely into the discussions of my companions, as in that case they would have redoubled their endeavors to convert me to their creed, and would scarcely have allowed me to depart at all. Almost the whole of the time which I spent here the sheikh left me quite to myself, sometimes not quitting his tent for a whole day; but at other times we had some pleasant and instructive conversation. Among other subjects a rather animated discussion arose one day. An Arab, of the name of 'Abd e' Rahmán, a near relation of my host, and of a rather presumptuous character, who had come on a visit from A'zawád, was extremely anxious to know the motives which induced me to visit this country, and scarcely doubted that it could be any thing else than the desire of conquest. In order to show them of what little value the possession of the country would be to the Europeans, I jestingly told them that our government, being informed that the natives of these tracts fed on sand and clay, had sent me out to discover how this was done, in order to provide in a similar way for the poor in our own country. The Arab was naturally greatly surprised at my statement. But the sheikh himself laughed. very heartily, and inquired, with an expression of doubt, whether there were poor people among the Christians.

Another evening, when the sheikh was cheerfully sitting with us round the fire, we had an interesting conversation concerning the worship of idols. In order to overcome the prejudice of his pupils with regard to the greater nobility and superiority of the Arab race, and to show them that their forefathers had not been much better than many of the idolatrous nations at the present day, he gave them an account of the superstitions of the ancient Arabs, and in the course of his conversation exhibited unmistak able proofs of an enlightened and elevated mind, of which the letter which I shall communicate in another place will give farther proof.

Occasionally we received here also some interesting visits from Arabs or other people; the most conspicuous person among them being a man of the name of Fífi, the inspector of the harbor of Yówaru, a man of cheerful temperament and a great friend of the sheikh's. He had a perfect knowledge of the course of the river between Timbúktu and Jafarábe, the groups of islands forming

the boundary between the Mohammedan kingdom of Másina and the Pagan kingdom of Bámbara, and very important for the trade along the river, as the boats coming from Timbúktu must here discharge their merchandise, which has to be conveyed hence to Sansándi on the backs of asses; but unfortunately my informant spoke nothing but Songhay. The state of retirement in which I was obliged to live deprived me of the opportunity of cultivating the language of the natives; which was moreover extremely repulsive to me on account of its deficiency in forms and words, so that I found it next to impossible to express in it any general idea without having recourse to some other foreign language. The Songhay of this region, having been deprived of all their former independent character more than two centuries and a half ago, and having become degraded and subject to foreigners, have lost also the national spirit of their idiom, which, instead of developing itself, has become gradually poorer and more limited; but I have no doubt that the dialect spoken by those still independent people in Dargol and Kulman is far richer, and any body who wishes to study the Songhay language must study it there. The Arab visitors to the town at this period were especially numerous, this being the most favorable season for the salt trade. A few months later scarcely a single Arab from abroad frequents the town.

The private life of the people in these encampments runs on very tranquilly when there is no predatory incursion, which however is often enough the case. Most of these mixed Arabs have only one wife at a time, and they seem to lead a quiet domestic life, very like that of the sheikh himself. I scarcely imagine that there is in Europe a person more sincerely attached to his wife and children than my host was. In fact, it might be said that he was a little too dependent on the will of his wife. The difference which I found between the position of the wife among these Moorish tribes and that which she enjoys among the Tawárek is extraordinary, although even the Tawárek have generally but one wife; but while the latter is allowed to move about at her pleas ure quite unveiled, the wife even of the poorest Arab or Moor is never seen unveiled, being generally clad in a black under and upper gown, and the wives of the richer and nobler people never

I must here testify to the accuracy with which Mr. Raffenel, in the plates illustrating his two journeys in Negroland, has represented the character of these Western Arabs or Moors.