Part 9 (2/2)

[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 wors.h.i.+p G.o.d 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 circ.u.mcise 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 Wa.s.sanah, 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 Wa.s.sanah.”

”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 princ.i.p.al 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, Wa.s.sanah must contain nearly half a million of inhabitants. The circ.u.mstance 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 lat.i.tude 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 antic.i.p.ations 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 circ.u.mstance 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 sh.o.r.es 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 surpa.s.sed 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 flouris.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sage 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 mutatae.'_”]

But whatever may be the degree of Adams' coincidence with other authorities, in his descriptions of the population and local circ.u.mstances of Timbuctoo, there is at least one a.s.serted 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 lat.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstances, 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.

CHAPTER XIV.

Previously to entering into any further detail of the different expeditions for exploring the interior of Africa, it may be greatly conducive to the better understanding of the subsequent narratives, when treating of the distinct races of people by which the countries are inhabited, to give a concise statement of the population of that part of Africa, which is known by the appellation of West Barbary, and which may be said to be divided into three great cla.s.ses, exclusive of the Jews, viz. Berrebbers, Arabs, and Moors. The two former of these are, in every respect, distinct races of people, and are each again subdivided into various tribes or communities; the third are chiefly composed of the other two cla.s.ses, or of their descendants, occasionally mixed with the European or negro races. The indiscriminate use of the names Arab and Moor, in speaking apparently of the same people, frequently leads the reader into an error as to the real cla.s.s to which the individual belongs, and thus the national character of the two cla.s.ses becomes unjustly confounded, whilst at the same time an erroneous opinion is formed of the relative virtues and vices of the different people, with whom the traveller is brought into collision.

In the cla.s.s of the Berrebbers, we include all those, who appear to be descendants of the original inhabitants of the country before the Arabian conquest, and who speak several languages, or dialects of the same language, totally different from the Arabic. The sub-divisions of this cla.s.s are:--1st, the _Errifi,_ who inhabit the extensive mountainous province of that name on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean; 2nd, _the Berrebbers of the interior,_ who commence on the southern confines of the Errifi, and extend to the vicinity of Fez and Mequinez, occupying all the mountains and high lands in the neighbourhood of those cities; 3rd, _the Berrebbers of middle Atlas;_ and, 4th, _the s.h.i.+lluh of Suse and Haha,_ who extend from Mogadore southward to the extreme boundaries of the dominions of the Cid h.e.s.h.em, and from the sea coast to the eastern limits of the mountains of Asia.

The Errifi are a strong and athletic race of people, hardy and enterprising, their features are generally good, and might in many cases be considered handsome, were it not for the malignant and ferocious expression, which marks them, in common with the Berrebber tribes in general, but which is particularly striking in the eye of an Errifi. They also possess that marked feature of the Berrebber tribes, a scantiness of beard; many of the race, particularly in the south, having only a few straggling hairs on the upper lip, and a small tuft on the chin. They are incessantly bent on robbery and plundering, in which they employ either open violence or cunning and treachery, as the occasion requires, and they are restrained by no checks either of religion, morals, or humanity. However, to impute to them in particular, as distinct from other inhabitants of Barbary, the crimes of theft, treachery, and murder, would certainly be doing them great injustice, but we believe we may truly describe them as more ferocious and faithless than any other tribe of Berrebbers.

The Berrebbers of the districts of Fez, Mequinez, and the mountains of middle Atlas, strongly resemble the Errifi in person, but are said to be not quite so savage in disposition. They are a warlike people, extremely tenacious of the independence, which their mountainous country gives them opportunities of a.s.serting, omit no occasion of shaking off the control of government, and are frequently engaged in open hostilities with their neighbours the Arabs, or the emperor's black troops. They are, as we are informed, the only tribes in Barbary, who use the bayonet. The districts which they inhabit are peculiarly interesting and romantic, being a succession of hills and valleys, well watered and wooded, and producing abundance of grain and pasturage.

The s.h.i.+lluh or Berrebbers of the south of Barbary, differ in several respects from their brethren in the north. They are rather diminutive in person, and besides the want of beard already noticed, have in general an effeminate tone of voice. They are, however, active and enterprising. They possess rather more of the social qualities than the other tribes; appear to be susceptible of strong attachments and friends.h.i.+ps, and are given to hospitality. They are remarkable for their attachment to their petty chieftains; and the engagements and friends.h.i.+ps of the latter are held so sacred, that no instance is on record of any depredation being committed on travellers furnished with their protection, which it is usual to purchase with a present, or on any of the valuable caravans, which are continually pa.s.sing to and fro through their territory, between Barbary and Soudan: the predominant feature of their character is, however, self interest, and although in their dealings amongst strangers, or in the towns, they a.s.sume a great appearance of fairness or sincerity, yet they are not scrupulous when they have the power in their own hands, and like the other Berrebbers, they are occasionally guilty of the most atrocious acts of treachery and murder, not merely against Christians, for that is almost a matter of course with all the people of their nation, but even against Mahommedan travellers, who have the imprudence to pa.s.s through their country, without having previously secured the protection of one of their chiefs.

As the s.h.i.+lluh have been said to be sincere and faithful in their friends.h.i.+ps, so they are on the other hand, perfectly implacable in their enmities, and insatiable in their revenge. The following anecdote will exemplify in some degree these traits of their character. A s.h.i.+lluh having murdered one of his countrymen in a quarrel, fled to the Arabs from the vengeance of the relations of his antagonist, but not thinking himself secure even there, he joined a party of pilgrims and went to Mecca. From this expiatory journey he returned at the end of eight or nine years to Barbary, and proceeded to his native district, he there sought, under the sanctified name of El Haje, the pilgrim, a t.i.tle of reverence amongst the Mahommedans, to effect a reconciliation with the friends of the deceased. They, however, upon hearing of his return, attempted to seize him, but owing to the fleetness of his horse, he escaped and fled to Mogadore, having been severely wounded by a musket ball in his flight. His pursuers followed him thither, but the governor of Mogadore hearing the circ.u.mstances of the case, strongly interested himself in behalf of the fugitive, and endeavoured, but in vain, to effect a reconciliation. The man was imprisoned, and his persecutors then hastened to Morocco to seek justice of the emperor. That prince, it is said, endeavoured to save the prisoner; and to add weight to his recommendation, offered a pecuniary compensation in lieu of the offender's life, which the parties, although persons of mean condition, rejected. They returned triumphant to Mogadore, with the emperor's order for the delivery of the prisoner into their hands; and having taken him out of prison, they immediately conveyed him before the walls of the town, where one of the party, loading his musket before the face of their victim, placed the muzzle to his breast, and shot him through the body; but as the man did not immediately fall, he drew his dagger, and, by repeated stabbing, put an end to his existence. The calm intrepidity with which this unfortunate s.h.i.+lluh stood to meet his fate, could not be witnessed without the highest admiration; and however much we must detest the blood-thirstiness of his executioners, we must still acknowledge, that there is something closely allied to n.o.bleness of sentiment in the inflexible perseverance, with which they pursued the murderer of their friend to punishment.

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