he emperors of Morocco might be unable at the
immense distance, which separate them from Soudan, to resume an
authority, which had once escaped I hands, it is reasonable to
suppose that the nearer tribes of Arabs would not neglect the
opportunity thus afforded them, of returning to their old habits of
spoliation, and of exercising their arrogant superiority over their
negro neighbours; and that this frontier state would thus become the
theatre of continual contests, terminating alternately, in the
temporary occupation of Timbuctoo by the Arabs, and in their
re-expulsion by negroes. In order to elucidate the state of things,
which we have here supposed, we need not go further than to the
history of Europe in our own days. How often during the successful
ravages of Buonaparte, that great Arab chieftain of Christendom,
might we not have drawn from the experience of Madrid, or Berlin, or
Vienna, or Moscow, the aptest illustration of these conjectures
respecting Timbuctoo? And an African traveller, if so improbable a
personage may be imagined, who should have visited Europe in these
conjunctures, might very naturally have reported to his countrymen at
home, that Russia, Germany and Spain were but provinces of France,
and that the common sovereign of all these countries resided
sometimes in the Escurial, and sometimes in the Kremlin.

We have seen this state of things existing in Ludamar, to the west of
Timbuctoo, where a negro population is subjected to the tyranny of
the Arab chieftain Ali, between whom and his southern neighbours of
Bambarra and Kaarta we find a continual struggle of aggression and
self-defence; and the well-known character of the Arabs would lead us
to expect a similar state of things along the whole frontier of the
negro population. In the pauses of such a warfare, we should expect
to find no intermission of the animosity or precautions of the
antagonist parties. The Arab victorious would be ferocious and
intolerant, even beyond his usual violence, and the Koran or the
halter would probably be the alternatives, which he would offer to
his negro guest; whilst the milder nature of the negro would be
content with such measures of precaution and self-defence, as might
appear sufficient to secure him from the return of the enemy, whom he
had expelled, without excluding the peaceful trader; and, under the
re-established power of the latter, we might expect to find at
Timbuctoo precisely the same state of thin