other
people thrown out of their natural paths, their souls and brains became
steeped in vice. Their nomadic life reduced them to the level of
vagabonds, thieves, and brigands, and the only law they recognised was
the right of the strongest. Travellers and merchants were their
principal victims, and when these failed, they robbed and killed each
other.

They adopted a vague form of Islamism which they reduced to a belief in
talismans, and the Sudanese bestowed upon them three epithets which
epitomise their psychology--"Thieves, Hyenas, and the Abandoned of God."
Yet it was to these people that Timbuctoo owed its origin, for it was
there that they established a permanent camp. It was under the dominion
of Askia the Great, who drove the Touaregs out of the city, that
Timbuctoo became the great and learned city whose fame spread even to
Europe, and its apogee was reached in 1494-1591.

The decadence of the city began with the Moorish conquest in the latter
year, and it became the scene of repeated incursions by various
tribes--Touaregs, Foulbes, Roumas. Under the hands of a thousand tyrants
the inhabitants were robbed, ill-treated, and killed on the least
provocation. To avoid being pillaged in the open street, and seeing
their houses despoiled, they adopted a new manner of living. They
transformed their garments and dwellings, and ceasing to be Timbuctoo
the Great, they became Timbuctoo the Mysterious. By these means the town
acquired a tumble-down and battered appearance. Timbuctoo is the meeting
place, says an old Sudanese chronicle, of all who travel by camel or
canoe. The camel represents the commerce of Sahara and the whole of
Northern Africa, while the canoe represents the trade of the Sudan and
Nigeria.

A great part of the trade is in rock-salt, derived from the mines of
Taoudenni, near Timbuctoo. Large caravans from Morocco, Algeria, Tunis,
and Tripoli, numbering from 600 to 1,000 camels, and from three to five
hundred men, arrive from December to January, and from July to August.
Their freight represents from six hundred thousand to a million francs'
worth of goods. Smaller caravans of sixty or a hundred camels arrive all
the year round, and between fifty and sixty thousand camels encamp
annually in the caravan suburb before the northern walls of the city.
The city is simply a temporary depot, and the permanent population are
merely brokers and contractors, or landlords of houses which are let to
travelling