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The wind continued two days; when it was discovered, on crawling out of the sand, that three hundred men were missing, and two hundred camels dead. The rest were reloaded in two days; and the caravan took up its course again through the dry, deep and hot sand. They went as fast as they could for twenty days, in order to rest and refresh themselves twenty more, at a famous watering place, called Haherah. Our readers must imagine their despair and insubordination when they found not a drop of water there. The Sheick lost his authority; and it was not till after running two days up and down the valley, each to save his own life and property, that they saw the necessity of obedience, and joined together in digging out the wells. They worked five days, without finding the smallest sign of water. Their impatience and desperation were utterly uncontrollable; and when the Sheick ordered, as a last resort, that all but three of the camels should be killed for food and drink, a most ferocious quarrel ensued; each fought for his own property; and, before the affray was over, the blood of the Sheick and of two or three hundred of his men, literally served to allay, in part, the thirst of the remainder. At night, Sidi Hamet and his brother killed four out of their own six camels; saved a few goods-some barley, and some meal; persuaded thirty more to follow their example; and set out south-westwardly for Tishlah-another watering place. Here and there they found a little oases of thorn-bushes; but in twelve days, nine men and fourteen camels perished; and the rest must soon have followed, if a timely thunder shower had not enabled them to satiate their thirst. Thirty skins were also replenished; and the company then took a south direction for the borders of the Desert. Soon after going down into the cultivated country, they stopped at Wabilt, a small town on the bank of a river about one hundred and fifty feet broad-called Gozen-zair, by the natives-and el Wod Tinij, the river Tinij, by the Arabs. After a rest of ten days, they started again for Tombuctoo; travelled four days eastward, through a rich, but hilly country; watered their camels once more; and after going to the north as far as the borders of the Desert, they went eastward again twelve

of the Desert. The air became thick and cloudy, as if a storm of snow or sleet were coming on, and we felt our eyes, ears and mouths filled with fine particles of sand, which were raised and suspended in the atmosphere. We suffered also in our food, for the pilau, which formed the great article of our sustenance, was rendered so gritty as to be scarcely eatable; and on opening our trunks which had been closed and locked, we found considerable quantities of sand deposited between the folds of our linen.'

* Sidi Hamet uniformly uses expressions of ascent and descent, in going on and coming off the Zahahrah.

days. Here they struck the great caravan path; and came, in two days more, under the walls of Tombuctoo.

We had seen a great many negroes near the river: they live in small towns, fenced in with large reeds, to keep off enemies and wild beasts in the night: they dwell in small round huts made with cane standing upright, are covered with the same materials, and daubed with mud, to fill up the openings between them. The negroes were afraid of us when we came near their little towns, and those who were outside ran in and blocked up the passage in a minute; but finding we did not come to rob them, as the large companies of Arabs often do, but that we were poor and hungry, they were willing to exchange barley-corn and meat for some of our goods.'-Pp. 327, 8.

We suspect the Gozen-zair is the same with what Adams calls La Mar Zarah. Sidi Hamet tells us, as Adams did also, that this country is cultivated with the hoe-that the king of Tombuctoo is an 'old gray-headed black man,'—and that the city itself contains from two hundred to two hundred and fifty inhabitants.* Adams says he saw no shops there; which must certainly be a mistake. That all the goods of so large a place should, as we learn from him, be lodged in the king's palace till they were sold, is almost incredible:-it contradicts all former testimonies; and, as it contradicts Sidi Hamet's also, we must consider it as an oversight. We take this opportunity to observe, however, that Captain Riley confirms Adams' account of the heirie, as well as of the Arabian pudding. And in Sidi Hamet's very interesting description of Tombuctoo, there are also a great many coincidences with that of the American sailor. In general, the trading caravans are stopped without the city; and only fifty of the traders unarmed are admitted at a time. As Sidi Hamet's company was small, however, they were all let in without suspicion; and he had an opportunity, therefore, not often enjoyed by his countrymen, of investigating the city at his leisure.

'Tombuctoo is a very large city, five times as great as Swearah: it is built on a level plain, surrounded on all sides by hills, except on the south, where the plain continues to the bank of the same river we had been to before, which is wide and deep, and runs to the east, for we were obliged to go to it to water our camels; and here we saw many boats made of great trees, some

* According to the former, it is seven times as great as Mogadore; which, says Captain Riley, contains about thirty-six thousand inhabitants. Adams says it covers as much ground as Lisbon, which has three hundred and fifty thousand souls;—but the houses of Tombuctoo are scattered irregularly; so that, in estimating the number of inhabitants, the extent of surface cannot be a correct standard.

with negroes in them, paddling across the river. The city is strongly walled in with stone laid in clay, like the towns and houses in Suse, only a great deal thicker: the house of the king is very large and high, like the largest house in Mogadore, but built of the same materials as the walls. There are a great many more houses in that city built of stone, with shops on one side, where they sell salt, and knives, and blue cloth, and haicks, and an abundance of other things, with many gold ornaments. The inhabitants are blacks, and the chief is a very large and grayheaded old black man, who is called Shegar, which means sultan or king. The principal part of the houses are made with large reeds, as thick as a man's arm, and stand upon their ends, and are covered with small reeds first, and then with the leaves of the date trees: they are round, and the tops come to a point like a heap of stones. Neither the shegar nor his people are Moslemins, but there is a town divided off from the principal one, in one corner, by a strong partition wall, and one gate to it, which leads from the main town, like the Jews' town, or Millah, in Mogadore. All the Moors or Arabs who have liberty to come into Tombuctoo, are obliged to sleep in that part of it every night, or go out of the city entirely; and no stranger is allowed to enter that Millah without leaving his knife with the gate-keeper; but when he comes out in the morning it is restored to him. The people who live in that part are all Moslemin. The negroes, bad Arabs, and Moors, are all mixed together, and marry with each other, as if they were all of one colour. They have no property of consequence, except a few asses. Their gate is shut and fastened every night at dark, and very strongly guarded both in the night and in the day-time. The shegar or king is always guarded by one hundred men on mules, armed with good guns, and one hundred men on foot, with guns and long knives. He would not

go into the Millah, and we only saw him four or five times in the two moons we stayed at Tombuctoo, waiting for the caravan: but it had perished on the desert: neither did the yearly caravan from Tunis and Tripoli arrive, for it had also been destroyed. The city of Tombuctoo is very rich as well as very large; it has four gates to it; all of them are opened in the day-time, but very strongly guarded and shut at night. The negro women are very fat and handsome, and wear large round gold rings in their noses, and Hat ones in their ears, and gold chains and amber beads about their necks, with images and white fish-bones, bent round, and the ends fastened together, hanging down between their breasts: they have bracelets on their wrists and on their ankles, and go barefoot. I had bought a small snuff-box, filled with snuff, in Morocco, and showed it to the women in the principal street of Tombuctoo, which is very wide: there were a great many about me in a few minutes, and they insisted on buying my snuff and box;-one made me one offer, and another made me another,

until one, who wore richer ornaments than the rest, told me, in broken Arabic, that she would take off all she had about her, and give them to me for the box and its contents. I agreed to accept them, and she pulled off her nose-rings and ear-rings, all her neck-chains, with their ornaments, and the bracelets from her wrists and ankles, and gave them to me in exchange for it: these ornaments would weigh more than a pound, and were made of solid gold at Tombuctoo, and I kept them through my whole journey afterwards, and carried them to my wife, who now wears a part of them. Tombuctoo carries on a great trade with all the caravans that come from Morocco and the shores of the Mediterranean sea. From Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, &c. are brought all kinds of cloths, iron, salt, muskets, powder, and lead, swords or scimitars, tobacco, opium, spices, and perfumes, amber, beads, and other trinkets, with a few other articles; they carry back in return elephants' teeth, gold dust, and wrought gold, gum senegal, ostrich feathers, very curiously worked turbans, and slaves; a great many of the latter, and many other articles of less importance. The slaves are brought in from the south-west, all strongly ironed, and are sold very cheap; so that a good stout man may be bought for a haick, which costs in the empire of Morocco about two dollars. The caravans stop and encamp about two miles from the city, in a deep valley, and the negroes do not molest them: they bring their merchandise near the walls of the city, where the inhabitants purchase all their goods, in exchange for the abovementioned articles; not more than fifty men from any one caravan being allowed to enter the city at a time; and they must go out before others are permitted to enter. This city also carries on a great trade with Wassanah (a city far to the southeast), in all the articles that are brought to it by caravans, and get returns in slaves, elephants' teeth, gold, &c. The principal male inhabitants are clothed with blue cloth shirts, that reach from their shoulders down to their knees, and are very wide, and girt about their loins with a red and brown cotton sash or girdle: they also hang about their bodies pieces of different coloured cloth and silk handkerchiefs: the king is dressed in a white robe of a similar fashion, but covered with white and yellow gold and silver plates, that glitter in the sun;-he also has many other shining ornaments of shells and stones hanging about him, and wears a pair of breeches like the Moors and Barbary Jews, and has a kind of white turban on his head, pointing up, and strung with different kinds of ornaments; 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 whole countenance is mild, and he seems to govern his subjects more like a father than a king. The whole of his officers and guards wear breeches that are generally dyed red, but sometimes they are white or blue: all but the king go

bareheaded. The poor people have only a single piece of blue or other cloth about them, and the slaves a breech cloth The inha bitants in Tombuctoo are very numerous; I think six times as many as in Swearah, besides the Arabs and other Moslemin or Mohammedans, 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 their breasts to below their knees-the whole 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. The king and people of Tombuctoo do not fear and worship God, like the Moslemins, but like the people of Soudan, they only pray one time in twenty-four hours, when they see the moon, and when she is not seen, they do not pray at all: they cannot read or write, but are honest, and they circumcise their children like the Arabs: they have no mosques, but dance every night, as the Moors and Arabs pray.' pp. 328-333.

We have already given a sketch of Sidi Hamet's journey to Wassanah, or Wass'nah;-and have only to add that he frequently came across walled towns, and saw many trees dug out hollow, which were pushed along with flat pieces of wood, and were used to carry negroes over the river.' This article is already extended beyond our usual limits; but we believe our readers will hardly blame us for extracting the description of Wassanah-long as it is.

The city of Wassanah is built near the bank of the river, which runs past it nearly south, between high mountains on both sides, though not very close to the river, which is so wide there that we could hardly see a man across it on the other side: the people of Tombuctoo call it Zolibib, and those of Wassanah call it Zadi. The walls of the city are very large, and made of great stones, laid up like the stone fences in the province of Hah Hah, in Morocco, but without any clay or mud amongst them: they are very thick and strong, and much higher than the walls of Tombuctoo. I was permitted to walk round them in company with six negroes, and it took me one whole day. The walls are built square, and have one large gate on each side. The country all around the city is dug up, and has barley, corn, and other vegetables planted on it; and close by the side of the river, all the land is covered with rice, and there are a great many oxen, and cows, and asses belonging to the city, but no camels, nor horses, mules, sheep, nor goats, but all about and in the city, speckled fowls abound, and there are plenty of eggs. The people of the caravan were allowed to enter the city, but only twenty at a time, and they were all obliged to go out again before night.

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