anked above Timbuctoo as a
city, but took a place among the great commercial centres of Islam.
Jenne taught the Sudanese the art of commercial navigation, and her
fleets penetrated beyond Timbuctoo and the Kong country. Regular lines
of flyboats even now carry merchandise and passengers at a fixed tariff,
and for a consideration of two and a half francs you can go to
Timbuctoo, a twenty days' journey, and for three francs can send thither
a hundredweight of goods. The characteristics of the people are
sympathy, kindness, and generosity.

Here trades are specialised. Conformably with, and contrary to, Arab
usage, it is the men who weave the textiles, and not the women. The
latter do the spinning and the dyeing. Masonry is man's work--in negro
countries it is the women who build the houses--and in the blacksmith's
and other trades the craft descends from father to son.

_IV.--Timbuctoo, Queen of the Sudan_

The day of my departure from Jenne was occupied in receiving farewell
visits from scores of friends, who first believed me a harmless lunatic
as "the man with the questions," and then received me with affection.
From Jenne to Timbuctoo we journeyed by boat for 311 miles in a
labyrinth of meandering tributaries, creeks, and channels along the
course of the Niger, and reached at last the Pool of Dai, whose waters
appear under the walls of Timbuctoo itself; and then, a few miles
further on, we arrived at Kabara, the landing-place and port of
Timbuctoo.

Two things arrest attention on disembarking--the sand and the Touaregs.
The sand, because you have no sooner set your foot on shore than you
flounder about in it as if it were a mire; and it pursues you
everywhere--in the country, in the streets, and in the houses. The
Touaregs are impressed on you because, though you never see them,
everything recalls them. The town is in ruins, but its wretchedness is
overpowered by life and movement. The quays are astir with lively
bustle, and encumbered with bales, jars, and sacks in the process of
unloading. To travel from Kabara to Timbuctoo, only five miles distant,
there is a daily convoy--medley of people, donkeys and camels, attended
by twenty _tirailleurs_ with rifles on their shoulders.

An immense and vivid sky, and an immense and brilliant stretch of land,
with the grand outlines of a town uniting the two. A dark silhouette,
large and long, an image of grandness in immensity--thus appeared the
Queen of the Sudan. She