It is perhaps not the least of the many extraordinary circumstances
attending the city of Timbuctoo, that no two travellers agree in
their account of it; and for this reason it is most difficult to
decide, to whom the greatest credibility should be awarded, or, on
the other hand, whether some of them, who pretend to have resided
within its walls, ever visited it at all. The contradictions of the
respective travellers are in many instances so gross, that it is
scarcely possible to believe that the description, which they are
then giving can apply to one and the same place, and therefore we are
entitled to draw the inference, that some of them are practising on
our credulity, and are making us the dupes of their imagination,
rather than the subjects of their experience. The expectations of
moorish magnificence were raised to a very high pitch, by some of the
inflated accounts of the wealth and splendour of the great city of
central Africa; but these expectations were considerably abated by
the description given of Timbuctoo by Adams and Sidi Hamet, a moorish
merchant, who describes that city in the following terms:--
"Timbuctoo is a very large city, five times as great as Swearah
(Suera or Mogadore). It is built in a level plain surrounded on all
sides with hills, except on the south, where the plain continues to
the bank of the same river, which is wide and deep, and runs to the
east. We were obliged to go to it to water our camels, and there we
saw many boats, made of great trees, some with negroes paddling in
them 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 latter account is at total variance with both Adams and Caillie,
who describe Timbuctoo as a city having no walls, nor any thing
resembling fortifications. "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 the
city, built of stone, _with shops on one side_, where they sell salt,
the staple article, knives, blue cloth, haicks, and an abundance of
other things, with many gold ornaments. The inhabitants are blacks,
and the chief is a very large, grey-headed, 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, which
stand upon their ends, and are covered with small reeds first, and
then with the leaves of the date tree; they are round, and the tops
come to a point, like a heap of stones. Neither the shegar nor his
people are Moslem; but there is a town divided off from the principal
one, in one corner by a strong partition wall, with 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
Timbuctoo, are obliged to sleep in that part of it every night, or to
go out of the city entirely. 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 Moslem. The negroes, bad Arabs, and Moors are
all mixed together, and intermarry, 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 by night and by day. 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 saw him only four or five times in the two
moons we staid at Timbuctoo, waiting for the caravan; but it had
perished in the desert, neither did the yearly caravan arrive from
Tunis and Tripoli, for it also had been destroyed."
"The city of Timbuctoo 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 flat
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 barefooted. I
had bought a small snuff-box, filled with snuff, at Morocco, and
showed it to the women in the principal street of Timbuctoo, which is
very wide. There were a great number about me in a few minutes, and
they insisted on buying my snuff and box; one made me an 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 Timbuctoo. I kept them through the whole of the
journey afterwards, and carried them to my wife, who now wears a part
of them."
"Timbuctoo 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 cloth, iron, salt,
muskets, powder and lead swords or scimitars, tobacco, opium, spices
and perfumes, amber beads, and other trinkets, with a few more
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
merchandize near the walls of the city, where the inhabitants
purchase all their goods on exchange for the before-mentioned
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 carries on a great trade with Wassanah,
a city far to the south-east, in all the articles that are brought to
it by caravans, and gets 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 has also
many other shining ornaments of shells and stones hanging about him,
he 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 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. In order to elucidate the state of things,
which we have here supposed, we need not go further than to the
history of Europe in our own days. How often during the successful
ravages of Buonaparte, that great Arab chieftain of Christendom,
might we not have drawn from the experience of Madrid, or Berlin, or
Vienna, or Moscow, the aptest illustration of these conjectures
respecting Timbuctoo? And an African traveller, if so improbable a
personage may be imagined, who should have visited Europe in these
conjunctures, might very naturally have reported to his countrymen at
home, that Russia, Germany and Spain were but provinces of France,
and that the common sovereign of all these countries resided
sometimes in the Escurial, and sometimes in the Kremlin.
We have seen this state of things existing in Ludamar, to the west of
Timbuctoo, where a negro population is subjected to the tyranny of
the Arab chieftain Ali, between whom and his southern neighbours of
Bambarra and Kaarta we find a continual struggle of aggression and
self-defence; and the well-known character of the Arabs would lead us
to expect a similar state of things along the whole frontier of the
negro population. In the pauses of such a warfare, we should expect
to find no intermission of the animosity or precautions of the
antagonist parties. The Arab victorious would be ferocious and
intolerant, even beyond his usual violence, and the Koran or the
halter would probably be the alternatives, which he would offer to
his negro guest; whilst the milder nature of the negro would be
content with such measures of precaution and self-defence, as might
appear sufficient to secure him from the return of the enemy, whom he
had expelled, without excluding the peaceful trader; and, under the
re-established power of the latter, we might expect to find at
Timbuctoo precisely the same state of things as Adams describes to
have existed in 1811.
The reserve, with which we have seen grounds for receiving the
testimony of the natives of Africa, may reasonably accompany us in
our further comparative examination of their accounts and those of
Adams, respecting the population and external appearance of the city
of Timbuctoo. We cannot give such latitude to our credulity as to
confide in the statements of Sidi Hamet; nor do we place much
reliance on the account of Caillie, who was the last European who may
be said to have entered its walls. Notwithstanding, therefore, the
alleged splendour of its court, the polish of its inhabitants, its
civilized institutions, and other symptoms of refinement, which some
modern accounts or speculations, founded on native reports, have
taught us to look for, we are disposed to receive the humbler
descriptions of Adams, as approaching with much greater probability
to the truth. Let us, however, not be understood as rating too highly
the value of a sailor's reports. They must of necessity be defective
in a variety of ways. Many of the subjects upon which Adams was
questioned, were evidently beyond the competency of such an
individual fully to comprehend or satisfactorily to describe; and we
must be content to reserve our final estimates of the morals,
religion, civil polity, and learning, if the term may be allowed us,
of the negroes of Timbuctoo, until we obtain more conclusive
information than could possibly have been derived from so illiterate
a man as Adams. A sufficiency, however, may be gathered from his
story, to prepare us for a disappointment of the extravagant
expectations, which have been indulged respecting this boasted city.
And here we may remark, that the relative rank of Timbuctoo amongst
the cities of central Africa, and its present importance with
reference to European objects, appear to us to be considerably
overrated. The description of Leo, in the sixteenth century, may
indeed lend a colour to the brilliant anticipations in which some
sanguine minds have indulged on the same subjects in the nineteenth;
but with reference to the commercial pursuits of Europeans, it seems
to have been forgotten, that the very circumstance which has been the
foundation of the importance of Timbuctoo to the traders of Barbary,
and consequently of a great portion of its fame amongst us, its
frontier situation on the verge of the desert, at the extreme
northern limits of the negro population, will of necessity have a
contrary operation now, since a shorter and securer channel for
European enterprise into the central regions of Africa has been
opened by the intrepidity and perseverance of Park, from the
south-western shores of the Atlantic.
Independently of this consideration, there is great reason to believe
that Timbuctoo has in reality declined of late from the wealth and
consequence which it appears formerly to have enjoyed. The existence
of such a state of things, as we have described, in the preceding
pages, the oppositions of the Moors, the resistance of the negroes,
the frequent change of masters, and the insecurity of property
consequent upon these intestine struggles, would all lead directly
and inevitably to this result. That they have led to it, may be
collected from other sources than Adams. Even Park, to whom so
brilliant a description of the city was given by some of his
informants, was told by others that it was surpassed in opulence and
size by Houssa, Walet, and probably by Jinnie. Several instances also
occur in both his missions, which prove that a considerable trade
from Barbary is carried on direct from the desert to Sego and the
neighbouring countries, without ever touching at Timbuctoo; and this
most powerful of the states of Africa, in the sixteenth century,
according to Leo, is now, in the nineteenth, to all appearance, a
mere tributary dependency of a kingdom, which does not appear to have
been known to Leo even by name.
Such a decline of the power and commercial importance of Timbuctoo
would naturally be accompanied by a corresponding decay of the city
itself; and we cannot suppose that Adams' description of its external
appearance will be rejected, on account of its improbability, by
those, who recollect that Leo describes the habitations of the
natives, _in his time,_ almost in the very words of the narrative
_now_ [*], and that the flourishing cities of Sego and Sansanding
appear, from Park's account, to be built of mud, precisely in the
same manner as Adams describes the houses of Timbuctoo.
[Footnote: One of the numerous discordances between the different
translations of Leo, occurs in the passage here alluded to. The
meaning of the Italian version is simply this, that "the dwellings of
the people of Timbuctoo are cabins or huts, constructed with stakes,
covered with chalk or clay, and thatched with straw, _'le cui case
sono capanne fatte di pali coperte di creta co i cortivi di paglia.'_
But the expression in the Latin translation, which is closely
followed by the old English translator, Pery, implies a state of
previous splendour and decay, 'cojus domus omnes in tuguriola,
stramineis tectis, _sunt mutatæ.'_"]
But whatever may be the degree of Adams' coincidence with other
authorities, in his descriptions of the population and local
circumstances of Timbuctoo, there is at least one asserted fact in
this part of his narrative, which appears to be exclusively his own;
the existence, we mean, of a considerable navigable river close to
the city. To the truth of which, the credit of Adams is completely
pledged. On many other subjects it is _possible_ that his narrative
might be considerably at variance with the truth, by a mere defect of
memory or observation, and without justifying any imputation on his
veracity, but it is evident that no such latitude can be allowed him
in respect to the La Mar Zarah, which, if not in substance true, must
be knowingly and wilfully false.
We shall conclude our remarks on Adams' narrative, by noticing only
two important circumstances, respectively propitious and adverse to
the progress of discovery and civilization, which is decidedly
confirmed by the account of Adams, viz. the mild and tractable
natures of the pagan negroes of Soudan, and their friendly deportment
towards strangers, on the one hand; and, on the other, the extended
and baneful range of that original feature of African society
--slavery.