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They come also from the heart of the Sahara, where savage and warlike nomad tribes still to this day maintain their freedom against foreign interference. In Timbuktu meet Arabs and negroes, Mohammedans and heathens from the deserts and fruitful lands of the Sahara and Sudan. Timbuktu stands on the threshold of the great wastes, and at the same time on the third in rank of the rivers of Africa.
Let us set out on a journey from Timbuktu, and let us go first eastwards to the singular Lake Chad, which is half filled with islands, is shallow and swampy, choked with reeds, rises and falls with the discharge of the great rivers which flow into it, and has a certain similarity to Lop-nor in Central Asia.
If we travelled, as we have lately imagined, on swift-footed dromedaries in a huge circuit from Timbuktu through the Sudan, the Libyan desert, and the land of the Tuaregs, we should at last come to Morocco, "The Uttermost West," as this last independent Sultanate in Africa is called.
Out of them in days without date flowed the beginnings of Egypt; among them rose, later, centers of culture at Ghana, Melle, and Timbuktu. Kingdoms and empires flourished in Songhay and Zymbabwe, and art and industry in Yoruba and Benin.
The Moors tried to put down disorder with a high hand, drove out and murdered the distinguished men of Timbuktu, and as a result let loose a riot of robbery and decadence throughout the Sudan. Pasha now succeeded pasha with revolt and misrule until in 1612 the soldiers elected their own pasha and deliberately shut themselves up in the Sudan by cutting off approach from the north.
Palms and mimosa grow sparsely round Timbuktu, but after the dangers of the desert the monotonous, dilapidated town with its dusty, dreary streets seems really like an entrance to Paradise.
The life-giving water washes the choking sand, and just where the strife is fiercest lies Timbuktu. From the north goods come on dromedaries to be transported farther in canoes or long, narrow boats with arched awnings of matting, or, where the river is not navigable, on oxen and asses or the backs of men.
The engineer had no notion of allowing the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute to be ignorant that they had the honor of contemplating the Queen of the Sudan, now in the power of the Tuaregs of Taganet. "Gentlemen, Timbuktu!" he said, in the same tone as twelve days before he had said, "Gentlemen, India!"
In the morning of the 11th the "Albatross" crossed the mountains of northern Guinea, between the Sudan and the gulf which bears their name. On the horizon was the confused outline of the Kong mountains in the kingdom of Dahomey. Since the departure from Timbuktu Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans noticed that the course had been due south.
And yet Timbuktu is an object of desire. Millions long to go there, and when they have been, long to get away again. Caravan men who have wandered for months through the desert long for the tones of the flute and the cithern, and the light swayings of the troops of dancers.
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