females; and, among a rude people, wit and witchery are always imagined to have a close connexion.

To the south of Ghana lay Wangara, a district that is said to have contained gold, the commodity for which African commerce was so much prized. This region is described as intersected and overflowed during the rainy season by the branches of the Nile, (of the Negroes, or Niger,) which impregnate the earth with the sand, it is said, whence this precious metal was extracted. As soon as the waters have retired, the inhabitants eagerly dig the ground, and every one finds more or less, "according to the gift of God." There seems to be some confusion of ideas about this country and its golden products. A district in the southern part of Soudan is called Oongoroo, or Ungura; but it no longer furnishes gold; nor is Ghana, at the present day, the market for that valuable staple of Central Africa. In the mountainous countries to the south-west this metal is still collected abundantly, in the very manner described by the Arabian writers.

The whole range of alpine territory to the southward of the regions now described was called Lamlam, and presented a continued scene of barbarous violence. It was branded as the land of the infidels,-of a people to whom none of the charities of life were due, and against whom the passions of cruelty and of avarice might be gratified without remorse. Expeditions or slave-hunts were therefore made into these unfortunate countries; when, after a bloody conflict, numerous victims were seized, carried off, and sold to the merchants of Northern Africa, who conveyed them to all parts of the eastern world. The same cruel and iniquitous

traffic is carried on in a similar manner, and with unabated activity, at the present day.

Respecting Western Africa, the Arabians do not seem to have been very accurately informed. They describe the Atlantic as only about five hundred miles beyond Tocrur, although two thousand would have been nearer the truth; perhaps they mistook the great lake Dibbie for the sea. They mention the island of Ulil, whence were brought great quantities of salt, an article which is in constant demand throughout Soudan. Ulil, though called an island, was probably Walet, the great interior market for that mineral; but all the features of the country around and beyond it seem to have been confusedly blended together by the Mohammedan authors.

At the time when the Arabian geographers flourished, the Christian religion was professed, not only in Abyssinia, but even in Nubia, to its northern frontier at Syene. The bigotry and dislike produced by hostile creeds not only deprived these writers of the means of information, but led them to view with contempt every thing relating to countries accounted infidel. Their notices, therefore, of the regions in the Upper Nile, and along the western shores of the Red Sea, are exceedingly meagre. It was otherwise, indeed, with the eastern coast of Africa on the Indian Ocean. The people of Southern Arabia, who were then actively employed in commerce and navigation, had not only explored, but formed establishments at Mombaza, Melinda, Mozambique, and at all the leading points on that coast; which were still found in their possession by the early Portuguese navigators.

For this general view of Central Africa in the

twelfth century we are indebted to Edrisi, Abulfeda, Ibn-al-Vardi, and other writers, who do not however pretend to have visited in person the regions which they describe. Arabic literature has, notwithstanding, been also enriched by the productions of some eminent travellers. Wahab and Abuzaid, in the ninth century, penetrated into China, and communicated to the western world the first distinct idea of that remarkable empire and people. Their career, however, was far surpassed in the fourteenth century by Ibn Batuta, a learned Mohammedan, who traversed the continents of Asia and Africa from the eastern ocean to the banks of the Niger. For a knowledge of his narrative the English public have just been indebted to the learned labours of Professor Lee of Cambridge, as a member of the Society for Oriental Translation. Unfortunately he could only procure the work in a very abridged form, which renders it more an object of curiosity than as fitted to convey full information of the state of the world at that early period.

It was from Fez that Ibn Batuta commenced his peregrination through Interior Africa. He went first to Segilmissa, which he describes as a handsome town, situated in a territory abounding with datetrees. Having joined a caravan, he came, after a journey of twenty-five days, to Thargari, which some manuscripts make Tagaza, and is therefore evidently the Tegazza of Leo, supposed by Major Rennel to be the modern Tishect, containing the mine whence Timbuctoo is chiefly supplied with salt. To our traveller the place appeared to contain no object desirable or agreeable: there was nothing but salt; the houses were built with slabs of that mineral,

and roofed with the hides of camels. It even appeared to him that nature had lodged this commodity in regular tables in the mine, fitted for being conveyed to a distance; but he probably overlooked an artificial process by which it is usually brought into this form. From Thargari he went in twenty days to Tashila, three days beyond which commenced a desert of the most dreary aspect, where there was neither water, beast, nor bird, "nothing but sand and hills of sand." In ten days he came to Abu Latin, a large commercial town, crowded with merchants from various quarters of the continent. The manners of the people, as is indeed too common in the scenes of inland traffic throughout Africa, appeared to him very licentious, and wholly destitute of that decorum which usually marks a Mussulman residence. The women maintained a greater share of respectability than the other sex; yet this did not prevent them from hiring themselves as temporary wives to those whom the pursuits of trade induced to visit Abu Latin. The editor has not hazarded a conjecture what place this is; but on finding it in one manuscript called Ayulatin, and in another Ewelatin, I think there is no doubt of its being Walet, which lay completely in the route of our traveller, and is the only great city in that quarter of Africa.

From Abu Latin the adventurer proceeded in twenty-four days to Mali, then the most flourishing country and city in that part of the continent. This Mali is evidently the Melli of Leo, who described it as situated on a river to the south of Timbuctoo; but it is not so easy to identify it with any modern position. Our traveller makes heavy complaints of the

cold reception and narrow bounty of an African potentate in this district. After waiting upon his majesty, he was informed that a present was on its way to him, and he feasted his imagination on the idea of some rich dress or golden ornament; instead of which, the whole consisted of a crust of bread, a dried fish, and sour milk. He had the boldness to remonstrate with the king on this donation, declaring, that, in course of travelling over the whole world, he had never received the like; and his majesty, instead of being incensed, began to extend to him some measure of bounty. Ibn Batuta, however, was disgusted by the abject homage paid to this monarch, as it still is to the native princes of Africa; the courtiers, as they approached, casting dust on their heads, throwing themselves prostrate and grovelling on the earth, -a degradation which he had never witnessed in the most despotic courts of the East. Yet justice is admitted to have been most strictly administered, and property to be perfectly secure; as a proof of which, merchants from the most distant country, who died at Mali, were as assured of leaving their inheritance to their posterity as if it had been deposited at home. The traveller was astonished by the immense bulk of the trees of this region, in the hollow trunk of one of which he observed a weaver plying his trade.

Ibn Batuta on this part of his journey saw the Niger; and the view necessarily led to a conclusion opposite to that hitherto entertained by his countrymen, who considered it as flowing westward to the ocean. Destitute of all opportunity of complete observation, he fell into the opposite error, since prevalent in Northern Africa, and identified it with the