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

is probable that the magnificent enterprises of the Portuguese and
Spaniards, would, ere this, have colonised and converted to Christianity,
all the eligible spots of idolatrous Africa, if their attention to this grand

object had not been diverted by the discovery of America, and 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