ested the eye. But
the buildings had nothing in common with Arabic architecture. The style
was not Byzantine, Roman, or Greek; still less was it Gothic or Western.
It was in the ruins of the lifeless towns of ancient Egypt, in the
valley of the Nile, that I had witnessed this art before. Arrived at
Jenne, the traveller finds himself face to face with an entirely new
ethnographical entity--_viz._, the Songhois.

They themselves invariably told me that they came originally from the
Yemen to Egypt on the invitation of a Pharaoh, and settled at Kokia, in
the valley of the Nile, whence they spread westward to the Niger in the
middle of the seventh century. They built Jenne in 765, made it the
market of their country, and founded the Songhois Empire, which, under
three distinct dynasties, lasted for a thousand years.

In the sixteenth century a marvellous civilisation appeared in the very
heart of the Black Continent. The prosperity of the Sudan, and its
wealth and commerce, were known far and wide. Caravans returning to the
coast proclaimed its splendours in their camel-loads of gold, ivory,
hides, musk, and the spoils of the ostrich. So many attractions did not
fail to rouse the cupidity of neighbouring territories, chief among them
being Morocco. El Mansour, sultan of Morocco, invaded the Sudan in 1590,
and in a few years the fall of the Songhois Empire was complete. Two
elements of confusion established themselves, and augmented the general
anarchy--_viz._, the Touaregs and the Foulbes, the former coming from
the great desert of Sahara, and the latter from the west. Both were
pastoral nomads. A petty Foulbe chief, of the country of Noukouna, named
Ahmadou, spread a report that he was of the family of the Prophet, and
for the next eighty years the Sudan was given over to fire and sword by
a succession of rulers who massacred and pillaged in the name of God.
Jenne happily escaped serious ruin, because of its situation on an
island at the junction of two tributaries of the Niger.

The houses of Jenne are built on the simple lines of Egyptian
architecture, with splendid bricks made from clay procured near the
town. The grand mosque was long famous in the valley of the Niger, and
was considered more beautiful than the Kaabah of Mecca itself. It lasted
eighteen centuries, and would have lasted many centuries longer if
Ahmadou, the Foulbe conquerer, had not commanded its destruction in
1830. Jenne in the middle ages not only r