At each river he had his story of
difficulty and danger in constructing rafts or building bridges. He
counted the minutes he lost in awaiting the diminution of floods.
Anon, he would catalogue the various fish with which a famous river
teemed; and, when he got fairly into the woods, there was no end of
adventures and hairbreadth escapes from alligators, elephants,
anacondas, vipers, and the fatal tape snake, whose bite is certain
death. In the mountains he encountered wolves, wild asses, hyaenas,
zebras, and eagles.

In fact, the whole morning glided away with a geographical,
zoological, and statistical overture to his tour; so that, when the
hour of prayer and ablution arrived, Mami-de-Yong had not yet reached
Timbuctoo! The double rite of cleanliness and faith required him to
pause in his narrative; and, apologizing for the interruption, he left
a slave to guard the map while he retired to perform his religious
services.

When the noble Fullah got back, I had a nice lunch prepared on a
napkin in the neighborhood of his diagram, so that he could munch his
biscuits and sugar without halting on his path. Before he began,
however, I took the liberty to offer a hint about the precious value
of time in this brief life of ours, whilst I asked a question or two
about the "capital of capitals," to indicate my eagerness to enter
the walls of Timbuctoo. Mami-de-Yong, who was a man of tact as well as
humor, smiled at my insinuation, and apologizing like a Christian for
the natural tediousness of all old travellers, skipped a degree or two
of the wilderness, and at once stuck his buffalo-horn snuff-box into
the eastern margin of the sand, to indicate that he was at his
journey's end.

Mami had visited many of the European colonies and Moorish kingdoms on
the north coast of Africa, so that he enjoyed the advantage of
comparison, and, of course, was not stupefied by the untravelled
ignorance of Africans who consider Timbuctoo a combination of Paris
and paradise. Indeed, he did not presume, like most of the Mandingo
chiefs, to prefer it to Senegal or Sierra Leone. He confessed that the
royal palace was nothing but a vast inclosure of mud walls, built
without taste or symmetry, within whose labyrinthine mesh there were
numerous buildings for the wives, children, and kindred of the
sovereign. If the royal palace of Timbuctoo was of _such_ a
character,--"What," said he, "were the dwellings of nobles and
townsfolk?" The streets wer