We are now entering upon the narrative of a series of the most
extraordinary adventures which ever befel the African travellers, in
the person of an illiterate and obscure seaman, of the name of Robert
Adams, who was wrecked on the western coast of Africa, in the
American ship Charles, bound to the isle of Mayo, and who may be said
to have been the first traveller who ever reached the far-famed city
of Timbuctoo.
The place where the Charles was wrecked was called Elgazie, and the
captain and the whole of the crew were immediately taken prisoners by
the Moors. On their landing, the Moors stripped the whole of them
naked, and concealed their clothes under ground; being thus exposed
to a scorching sun, their skins became dreadfully blistered, and at
night they were obliged to dig holes in the sand to sleep in, for the
sake of coolness.
About a week after landing, the captain of the ship was put to death
by the Moors, for which the extraordinary reason was given, that he
was extremely dirty, and would not go down to the sea to wash
himself, when the Moors made signs for him to do so.
After they had remained about ten or twelve days, until the ship and
its materials had quite disappeared, the Moors made preparations to
depart, and divided the prisoners amongst them. Robert Adams and two
others of the crew were left in the possession of about twenty Moors,
who quitted the sea coast, having four camels, three of which they
loaded with water, and the other with fish and baggage. At the end of
about thirty days, during which they did not see a human being, they
arrived at a place, the name of which Adams did not hear, where they
found about thirty or forty tents, and a pool of water surrounded by
a few shrubs, which was the only water they had met with since
quitting the coast.
In the first week of their arrival, Adams and his companions being
greatly fatigued, were not required to do any work, but at the end of
that time, they were put to tend some goats and sheep, which were the
first they had seen. About this time, John Stevens arrived, under
charge of a Moor, and was sent to work in company with Adams. Stevens
was a Portuguese, about eighteen years of age. At this place they
remained about a month.
It was now proposed by the Moors to Adams and Stevens, to accompany
them on an expedition to Soudenny to procure slaves. It was with
great difficulty they could be made to understand this proposal, but
the Moors made themselves intelligible by pointing to some negro
boys, who were employed in taking care of sheep and goats. Being in
the power of the Moors, they had no option, and having therefore
signified their consent, the party consisting of about eighteen
Moors, and the two whites, set out for Soudenny.
Soudenny is a small negro village, having grass and shrubs growing
about it, and a small brook of water. For a week or thereabouts,
after arriving in the neighbourhood of this place, the party
concealed themselves amongst the hills and bushes, lying in wait for
the inhabitants, when they seized upon a woman with a child in her
arms, and two children (boys), whom they found walking in the evening
near the town.
During the next four or five days, the party remained concealed, when
one evening, as they were all lying on the ground, a large party of
negroes, consisting of forty or fifty made their appearance, armed
with daggers, and bows and arrows, who surrounded and took them all
prisoners, without the least resistance being attempted, and carried
them into the town; tying the hands of some, and driving the whole
party before them. During the night above one hundred negroes kept
watch over them. The next day they were taken before the governor or
chief person, named Muhamoud, a remarkably ugly negro, who ordered
that they should all be imprisoned. The place of confinement was a
mere mud wall, about six feet high, from whence they might readily
have escaped, though strongly guarded, if the Moors had been
enterprising, but they were a cowardly set. Here they were kept three
or four days, for the purpose, as it afterwards appeared, of being
sent forward to Timbuctoo, which Adams concluded to be the residence
of the king of the country. At Soudenny, the houses have only a
ground floor, and are without furniture or utensils, except wooden
bowls, and mats made of grass. They never make fires in their houses.
After remaining about four days at Soudenny, the prisoners were sent
to Timbuctoo, under an escort of about sixty armed men, having about
eighteen camels and dromedaries.
During the first ten days they proceeded eastward, at the rate of
about fifteen to twenty miles a day, the prisoners and most of the
negroes walking, the officers riding, two upon each camel or
dromedary. As the prisoners were all impressed with the belief that
they were going to execution, several of the Moors attempted to
escape, and in consequence, after a short consultation, fourteen were
put to death by being beheaded, at a small village at which they then
arrived, and as a terror to the rest, the head of one of them was
hung round the neck of a camel for three days, until it became so
putrid, that they were obliged to remove it. At this village, the
natives wore gold rings in their ears, sometimes two rings in each
ear. They had a hole through the cartilage of the nose, wide enough
to admit a thick quill, in which Adams saw some of the natives wear a
large ring of an oval shape, that hung down to the mouth.
They waited, only one day at this place, and then proceeded towards
Timbuctoo. Shaping their course to the northward of east, and
quickening their pace to the rate of twenty miles a day, they
completed their journey in fifteen days.
Upon their arrival at Timbuctoo, the whole party were immediately
taken before the king, who ordered the Moors into prison, but
treated Adams and the Portuguese boy as curiosities; taking them to
his house, they remained there during their residence at Timbuctoo.
For some time after their arrival, the queen and her female
attendants used to sit and look at Adams and his companions for hours
together. She treated them with great kindness, and at the first
interview offered them some bread baked under ashes.
The king and queen, the former of whom was named Woollo, the latter
Fatima, were very old grey-headed people. Fatima was like the
majority of African beauties, extremely fat. Her dress was of blue
nankeen, edged with gold lace round the bosom and on the shoulder,
and having a belt or stripe of the same material, half-way down the
dress, which came only a few inches down the knees. The dress of the
other females of Timbuctoo, though less ornamented than that of the
queen, was in the same sort of fashion, so that as they wore no close
under garments, they might, when sitting on the ground, as far as
decency was concerned, as well have had no covering at all. The
queen's head dress consisted of a blue nankeen turban, but this was
worn only upon occasions of ceremony, or when she walked out. Besides
the turban, she had her hair stuck full of bone ornaments of a square
shape, about the size of dice, extremely white; she had large gold
hoop ear-rings, and many necklaces, some of them of gold, the others
made of beads of various colours. She wore no shoes, and in
consequence, her feet appeared to be as hard and dry "as the hoofs of
an ass."
The king's house or palace, which is built of clay and grass, not
whitewashed, consists of eight or ten small rooms on the ground
floor, and is surrounded by a wall of the same materials, against
part of which the house is built. The space within the wall is about
half an acre. Whenever a trader arrives, he is required to bring his
merchandize into this space, for the inspection of the king, for the
purpose of duties being charged upon it. The king's attendants, who
are with him during the whole of the day, generally consist of about
thirty persons, several of whom are armed with daggers, and bows and
arrows. Adams did not know if the king had any family.
For a considerable time after the arrival of Adams and his companion,
the people used to come in crowds to stare at them, and he afterwards
understood that many persons came several days journey on purpose.
The Moors remained closely confined in prison, but Adams and the
Portuguese boy had permission to visit them. At the end of about six
months, a company of trading Moors arrived with tobacco, who after
some weeks ransomed the whole party.
Timbuctoo is situated on a level plain [*], having a river about two
hundred yards from the town, on the south-east side, named La Mar
Zarah. The town appeared to Adams to cover as much ground as Lisbon.
He was unable to give any account of number of its inhabitants,
estimated by Caillié to amount to 10,000 or 12,000. The houses are
not built in streets, nor with any regularity, its population
therefore, compared with that of European towns, is by no means in
proportion to its size. It has no wall nor any thing resembling
fortification. The houses are square, built of sticks, clay, and
grass, with flat roofs of the same materials. The rooms are all on
the ground-floor, and are without any of furniture, except earthen
jars, wooden bowls, and mats made grass, upon which the people sleep.
He did not observe a houses, or any other buildings, constructed of
stone. The palace of the king he described as having walls of clay,
or clay and sand, rammed into a wooden case or frame, and placed in
layers, one above another, until they attained the height required,
the roof being composed of poles or rafters laid horizontally, and
covered with a cement or plaster, made of clay or sand.
[Footnote: This account of Timbuctoo, as given by Adams, by no means
corresponds with that which was subsequently given by Caillié. The
latter makes it situated on a very elevated site, in the vicinity of
mountains; in fact the whole account of that celebrated city, as
given by Caillié, is very defective.]
The river La Mar Zarah is about three quarters of a mile wide at
Timbuctoo, and appeared in this place to have but little current,
flowing to the south-west. About two miles from the town to the
southward, it runs between two high mountains, apparently as high as
the mountains which Adams saw in Barbary; here the river is about
half a mile wide. The water of La Mar Zarah is rather brackish, but
is commonly drunk by the natives, there not being, according to the
report of Adams, any wells at Timbuctoo.
It must be remarked in this place, that at the time when Adams
related the narrative of his residence in Africa, and particularly in
the city of Timbuctoo, a very considerable degree of distrust was
attached to it; and in order to put the veracity of Adams to a
decisive test, the publication of his adventures was delayed until
the arrival of Mr. Dupuis, then the British vice-consul at Mogadore,
to whose interference Adams acknowledged himself indebted for his
ransom, and who, on account of his long residence in Africa, and his
intimate acquaintance with the manners and customs of the natives,
was fully competent to the detection of any imposition which it might
be the intention of Adams to practise upon those, who undertook the
publication of his adventures. From this severe ordeal Adams came out
fully clear of any intention to impose, and the principal points of
his narrative were corroborated by the knowledge and experience of
Mr. Dupuis. Thus that gentleman, in allusion to the description which
Adams gave of La Mar Zarah, mentions that the Spanish geographer
Marmol, who describes himself to have spent twenty years of warfare
and slavery in Africa, about the middle of the sixteenth century,
mentions the river La-ha-mar as a branch of the Niger, having muddy
and unpalatable waters. By the same authority, the Niger itself is
called Yea, or Issa, at Timbuctoo, a name which D'Anville has adopted
in his map of Africa.
The vessels used by the natives are small canoes for fishing, the
largest of which are about ten feet long, capable of carrying three
men; they are built of fig-trees hollowed out, and caulked with
grass, and are worked with paddles about six feet long.
The natives of Timbuctoo are a stout healthy race, and are seldom
sick, although they expose themselves by lying out in the sun at
mid-day, when the heat is almost insupportable to a white man. It is
the universal practice of both sexes to grease themselves all over
with butter produced from goat's milk, which makes the skin smooth,
and gives it a shining appearance. This is usually renewed every day:
when neglected, the skin becomes rough, greyish, and extremely ugly.
They usually sleep under cover at night, but sometimes, in the
hottest weather, they will lie exposed to the night air, with little
or no covering, notwithstanding that the fog, which rises from the
river, descends like dew, and, in fact, at that season supplies the
want of rain.
All the males of Timbuctoo have an incision on their faces from the
top of the forehead down to the nose, from which proceed other
lateral incisions over the eyebrows, into all of which is inserted a
blue dye, produced from a kind of ore, which is found in the
neighbouring mountains. The women have also incisions on their faces,
but in a different fashion; the lines being from two to five in
number, cut on each cheek bone, from the temple straight down; they
are also stained with blue. These incisions being made on the faces
of both sexes when they are about twelve months old, the dyeing
material, which is inserted in them, becomes scarcely visible as they
grow up.
With the exception of the king and queen, and their immediate
companions, who had a change of dress about once a week, the people
are in general very dirty, sometimes not washing themselves for
twelve or fourteen days together. Besides the queen, who, as has been
already stated, wore a profusion of ivory and bone ornaments in her
hair, some of a square shape, and others about as thick as a
shilling, but rather smaller, strings of which she also wore about
her wrists and ankles; many of the women were decorated in a similar
manner, and they seemed to consider hardly any favour too great to be
conferred on the person who would make them a present of these
precious ornaments. Gold ear-rings were much worn, some of the women
had also rings on their fingers, but these appeared to Adams to be of
brass; and as many of the latter had letters upon them, he concluded,
both from this circumstance and from their workmanship, that they
were not made by the negroes, but obtained from the moorish traders.
The ceremony of marriage amongst the upper ranks at Timbuctoo is, for
the bride to go in the day-time to the king's house, and to remain
there until after sunset, when the man who is to be her husband goes
to fetch her away. This is usually followed by a feast the same
night, and a dance. Adams did not observe what ceremonies were used
in the marriages of the lower classes.
As it is common to have several concubines besides a wife, the women
are continually quarrelling and fighting; there is, however, a marked
difference in the degree of respect with which they are treated by
the husband, the wife always having a decided pre-eminence. The
negroes, however, appeared to Adams to be jealous and severe with all
their women, frequently beating them apparently for very little
cause.
The women appear to suffer very little from child-birth, and they
will be seen walking about as usual the day after such an event. It
is their practice to grease a child all over soon after its birth,
and to expose it for about an hour to the sun. The infants at first
are of a reddish colour, but become black in three or four days.
Illicit intercourse appeared to be but little regarded amongst the
lower orders, and chastity among the women in general seemed to be
preserved only so far as their situations or circumstances rendered
it necessary for their personal safety or convenience. In the higher
ranks, if a woman prove with child, the man is punished with slavery,
unless he will take the woman for his wife, and maintain her. Adams
knew an instance of a young man, who, having refused to marry a woman
by whom he had a child, was on that account condemned to slavery. He
afterwards repented, but was not then permitted to retract his
refusal, and was sent away to be sold.
It does not appear that they have any public religion, as they have
not any house of worship; no priest, and, as far as Adams could
discover, never meet together to pray. He had seen some of the
negroes, who were circumcised; but he concluded that they had been in
possession of the Moors, or had been resident at Sudenny. On this
subject Mr. Dupuis says, "I cannot speak with any confidence of the
religion of the negroes of Timbuctoo; I have, however, certainly
heard, and entertain little doubt, that many of the inhabitants are
Mahommedans; it is also generally believed in Barbary, that there are
mosques at Timbuctoo; but, on the other hand, I am confident that the
king is neither an Arab nor a Moor, especially as the traders, from
whom I have collected these accounts, have been either the one or the
other; and I might consequently presume, that, if they did give me
erroneous information on any points, it would at least not be to the
prejudice, both of their national self-conceit, and of the credit and
honour of their religion."
The only ceremony which Adams saw, that appeared like the act of
prayer, was on the occasion of the death of any of the inhabitants,
when the relatives assembled and sat round the corpse. The burial is
not attended with any ceremony whatever; the deceased are buried in
the clothes in which they die, at a small distance to the south-west
of the town.
Their only physicians are old women, who cure diseases and wounds by
the application of simples. Adams had a wen on the back of his right
hand, the size of a large egg, which one of the women cured in about
a month, by rubbing it and applying a plaster of herbs. They cure the
tooth-ache by the application of a liquid prepared from roots, which
frequently causes not only the defective tooth to fall out, but one
or two of the others.
On referring to the notes of Mr. Dupuis on the subject of the cures
performed by the negro women, we read, "I may take this opportunity
of observing that he (Adams) recounted, at Mogadore, several stories
of the supernatural powers or charms possessed by some of the
negroes, and which practised both, defensively to protect their own
persons from harm, and offensively against their enemies. Of these
details I do not remember more than the following circumstance,
which, I think, he told me happened in his presence:--
"A negro slave, the property of a desert Arab, having been threatened
by his master with severe punishment, for some offence, defied his
power to hurt him, in consequence of a charm by which he was
protected. Upon this the Arab seized a gun, which he loaded with a
ball, and fired at only a few paces distant from the negro's breast;
but the negro, instead of being injured by the shot, stooped to the
ground and picked up the ball, which had fallen inoffensive at his
feet."
It seems strange that Adams should have omitted their extraordinary
stories in his narrative; for he frequently expressed to Mr. Dupuis a
firm belief, that the negroes were capable of injuring their enemies
by witchcraft; and he once pointed out to him a slave at Mogadore, of
whom on that account he stood particularly in awe. He doubtless
imbibed this belief, and learned the other absurd stories, which he
related, from the Arabs, some of whom profess to be acquainted with
the art themselves, and all of whom are, it is believed, firmly
persuaded of its existence, and of the peculiar proficiency of the
negroes in it.
It is perhaps not unreasonable to suppose, that having found his
miraculous stories, and his belief in witchcraft discredited and
laughed at, both at Mogadore and Cadiz, Adams should have at length
grown ashamed of repeating them, and even outlived his superstitious
credulity. This solitary instance of suppression may rather be
considered as a proof of his good sense, and as the exercise of a
very allowable discretion, than as evidence of an artfulness, of
which not a trace had been detected in any other part of his conduct.
Dancing is the principal and favourite amusement of the natives of
Timbuctoo; it takes place about once a week in the town, when a
hundred dancers or more assemble, men, women, and children, but the
greater number are men. Whilst they are engaged in the dance, they
sing extremely loud to the music of the tambourine, fife, and
bandera, [*] so that the noise they make, may be heard all over the
town; they dance in a circle, and when this amusement continues till
the night, generally round a fire. Their usual time of beginning is
about two hours before sunset, and the dance not unfrequently lasts
all night. The men have the most of the exercise in these sports
while daylight lasts, the women continuing nearly in one spot, and
the men dancing to and from them. During this time, the dance is
conducted with some decency, but when night approaches, and the women
take a more active part in the amusement, their thin and short
dresses, and the agility of their actions are little calculated to
admit of the preservation of any decorum. The following was the
nature of the dance; six or seven men joining hands, surrounded one
in the centre of the ring, who was dressed in a ludicrous manner,
wearing a large black wig stuck full of kowries. This man at
intervals repeated verses, which, from the astonishment and
admiration expressed at them by those in the ring, appeared to be
extempore. Two performers played on the outside of the ring, one on a
large drum, the other on the bandera. The singer in the ring was not
interrupted during his recitations, but at the end of every verse,
the instruments struck up, and the whole party joined in loud chorus,
dancing round the man in the circle, stooping to the ground, and
throwing up their legs alternately. Towards the end of the dance, the
man in the middle of the ring was released from his enclosure, and
danced alone, occasionally reciting verses, whilst the other dancers
begged money from the by-standers.
[Footnote: The bandera is made of several cocoa-nut shells, tied
together with thongs of goat-skin, and covered with the same
material; a hole at the top of the instrument is covered with strings
of leather, or tendons, drawn tightly across it, on which the
performer plays with the fingers, in the manner of a guitar.]
It has been already stated, that Adams could not form any idea of the
population of Timbuctoo, but on one occasion he saw as many as
two-thousand assembled at one place. This happened when a party of
five hundred men were going out to make war on Bambarra [*]. The day
after their departure, they were followed by a great number of
slaves, dromedaries, and heiries laden with previsions. Such of these
people as afterwards returned, came back in parties of forty or
fifty; many of them did not return at all whilst Adams remained at
Timbuctoo; but he never heard that any of them had been killed.
[Footnote: This statement, which is in opposition to the usual
opinion, that Timbuctoo is a dependency of Bambarra, receives some
corroboration from a passage in Isaaco's journal (p. 205.), where a
prince of Timbuctoo is accused by the king of Sego, of having, either
personally, or by his people, plundered two Bambarra caravans, and
taken both merchandise and slaves.]
About once a month, a party of a hundred or more armed men marched
out in a similar manner, to procure slaves. These armed parties were
all on foot, except the officers; they were usually absent from one
week to a month, and at times brought in considerable numbers. The
slaves were generally a different race of people from those of
Timbuctoo, and differently clothed, their dress being for the most
part of coarse white linen or cotton. He once saw amongst them a
woman, who had her teeth filed round, it was supposed, by way of
ornament, and as they were very long, they resembled crow quills. The
greatest number of slaves that Adams recollects to have seen brought
in at one time, were about twenty, and these, he was informed, were
from a place called Bambarra, lying to the southward and westward of
Timbuctoo, which he understood to be the country, whither the
aforesaid parties generally went out in quest of them.
The negro slaves brought to Barbary from Timbuctoo appear to be of
various nations, many of them distinguished by the make of their
persons and features, as well as by their language. Mr. Dupuis
recollects an unusually tall stout negress at Mogadore, whose master
assured him that she belonged to a populous nation of cannibals. He
does not know whether the fact was sufficiently authenticated, but it
is certain that the woman herself declared it, adding some revolting
accounts of her own feasts on human flesh.
Adams never saw any individual put to death at Timbuctoo, the
punishment for heavy offences being generally slavery; for slighter
misdemeanours, the offenders are punished with beating with a stick;
but in no case is this punishment very severe, seldom exceeding two
dozen blows, with a stick of the thickness of a small walking-cane.
The infrequency of the punishment of death in a community, which
counts human life amongst its most valuable objects of trade, is not,
however, very surprising; and considerable influence must be conceded
to the operation of self-interest, as well as to the feelings of
humanity, in accounting for this merciful feature, if it be indeed
merciful, in the criminal code of the negroes of Soudan.
During the whole of the residence of Adams at Timbuctoo, he never saw
any other Moors than those whom he accompanied thither, and the ten
by whom they were ransomed; and he understood from the Moors
themselves, that they were not allowed to go in large bodies to
Timbuctoo. This statement bears on the face of it a certain degree of
improbability; but it loses that character when it is considered that
Timbuctoo, although it is become, in consequence of its frontier
situation, the port, as it were, of the caravans from the north,
which could not return across the desert the same season, if they
were to penetrate deeper into Soudan, is yet, with respect to the
trade itself, probably only the point whence it diverges to Houssa,
Tuarick, &c. on the east, and to Walet, Jinnie, and Sego, on the west
and south, and not the mart where the merchandise of the caravans is
sold in detail. Such Moors, therefore, as did not return to Barbary
with the returning caravan, but remained in Soudan until the
following season, might be expected to follow their trade to the
larger marts of the interior, and to return to Timbuctoo only to meet
the next winter's caravans. Adams arriving at Timbuctoo in February,
and departing in June, might therefore miss both the caravans
themselves and the traders, who remained behind in Soudan; and, on
the same principle, Park might find Moors carrying on an active trade
in the summer at Sansanding, and yet there might not be one at
Timbuctoo.
Adams never proceeded to the southward of Timbuctoo, further than
about two miles from the town, to the mountains before spoken of; he
never saw the river Joliba or Niger, though he had heard mention made
of it. He was told at Tudenny, that the river lay between that place
and Bambarra.
This apparently unimportant passage, affords on examination a strong
presumption in favour of the truth and simplicity of this part of
Adams' narrative.
In the course of his examinations, almost every new inquirer
questioned him respecting the Joliba or Niger, and he could not fail
to observe, that because he had been at Timbuctoo, he was expected,
as a matter of course, either to have seen, or at least frequently to
have heard of that celebrated river. Adams, however, fairly admitted
that he knew nothing about it, and notwithstanding the surprise of
many of his examiners, he could not be brought to acknowledge that he
had heard the name even once mentioned at Timbuctoo. All that he
recollected was, that a river Joliba had been spoken of at Tudenny,
where it was described as lying in the direction of Bambarra.
They who recollect Major Rennell's remarks respecting the Niger, in
his Geographical Illustrations, will not be much surprised that Adams
should not hear of the Joliba, from the natives of Timbuctoo. At that
point of its course, the river is doubtless known by another name,
and if the Joliba were spoken of at all, it would probably be
accompanied, as Adams states, with some mention of Bambarra, which
may be presumed to be the last country eastward, in which the Niger
retains its Mandingo name.