An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa | Page 3

their establishments in Brazil, Mexico, &c.
I was established upwards of sixteen years in West and South Barbary; territories that maintain an uninterrupted intercourse with all those countries that Major Houghton, Hornemann, Park, Rontgen, Burckhardt, Ritchie, and others have attempted to explore. I was diplomatic agent to several maritime nations of Europe, which familiarised me with all ranks of society in those countries. I had a perfect knowledge of the commercial and travelling language of Africa, (the Arabic.) I corresponded myself with the Emperors, Princes, and Bashaws in this language; my commercial connections were very extensive, amongst all the most respectable merchants who traded with Timbuctoo and other countries of Sudan. My residence at Agadeer, or Santa Cruz, in Suse, afforded me eligible opportunities of procuring information respecting the trade with Sudan, and the interior of Africa. A long residence in the country, and extensive connections, enabled me to discriminate, and to ascertain who were competent and who were not competent to give me the information I required. I had opportunities at my leisure of investigating the motives that any might have to deceive me; I had time and leisure also to investigate their moral character, and to ascertain the principles that regulated their respective conduct. Possessed of all these sources of information, how could I fail of procuring correct and authentic intelligence of the interior of Africa; yet my account of the two Niles has been doubted by our fire-side critics, and the desultory intelligence of other travellers, who certainly did not possess those opportunities of procuring information that I did, has been substituted: but, notwithstanding this unaccountable scepticism, my uncredited account of the connection of the two Niles of Africa, continues daily to receive additional confirmation from all the African travellers themselves. And thus, TIME, (to use the words of a [j]learned and most intelligent writer), "which is more obscure in its course than the Nile, and in its termination than the Niger," is disclosing all these things: so that I now begin to think that the before-mentioned critics will not be able much longer to maintain their theoretical hypothesis.[k]
[Footnote j: Vide the Rev. C. C. Colton's Lacon, sect. 587. p. 260, 261.]
[Footnote k: See various letters on Africa, in this work, p. 443.]
The talents, the extraordinary prudence and forbearance, the knowledge of the Arabic language, and other essential qualifications in an African traveller, which the ever-to-be-lamented Burckhardt so eminently possessed, gave me the greatest hopes of his success in his arduous enterprise, until I discovered, when reading his Travels, that he was poor and despised, though a Muselman.
There is too much reason to apprehend that he was suspected, if not discovered by the Muselmen, or he would not have been secluded from their meals and society: the Muselmen never (sherik taam) eat or divide food with those they suspect of deception, nor do they ever refuse to partake of food with a Muselman, unless they do suspect him of treachery or deception; this principle prevails so universally among them, that artful and designing people have practised as many deceptions on the Bedouin under the cloak of hospitality, as are practised in Christian countries under the cloak of religion! I cannot but suspect, therefore, from the circumstance before recited, that the Muselmism of Burckhardt was seriously suspected, and that his companions only waited a convenient opportunity in the Sahara for executing their revenge on him for the deception.
The very favourable reception that my account of Marocco met with from the British public; the many things therein stated, which are daily gaining confirmation, although they were doubted at the period of their publication, have contributed in no small degree, to the production of the following sheets, in which I can conscientiously declare, that truth has been my guide; I have never sacrificed it to ambition, vanity, avarice, or any other passion.
The learned, I am flattered to see, are now beginning to adopt my orthography of African names; they have lately adopted Timbuctoo for the old and barbarous orthography of Timbuctoo; they have, however, been upwards of ten years about it. In ten years more, I anticipate that Fez will be changed into Fas, and Morocco into Marocco, for this plain and uncontrovertible reason,--because they are so spelled in the original language of the countries, of which they are the chief cities. Since the publication of my account of Marocco, I have seen Arabic words spelled various ways by the same author (I have committed the same error myself); but in the following work I have adopted a plan to correct this prevailing error in Oriental orthography, which, I think, ought to be followed by every Oriental scholar, as the only correct way of transcribing them in English; viz. by writing them exactly according to the original Arabic orthography, substituting gr