cover a league of the river banks....
And, above everything else, we are free men and joyous men, working for
the delight of living without restraint, and our reward is the thought
that our work is very great and good and beautiful, since it is the
creation of another France, the sovereign France of to-morrow."

From that moment Dominique paused no more. There was no longer any need
to question him, he poured forth all the beauty and grandeur in his
mind. He spoke of Djenny, the ancient queen city, whose people and
whose monuments came from Egypt, the city which even yet reigns over
the valley. He spoke of four other centres, Bamakoo, Niamina, Segu,
and Sansandig, big villages which would some day be great towns. And he
spoke particularly of Timbuctoo the glorious, so long unknown, with a
veil of legends cast over it as if it were some forbidden paradise, with
its gold, its ivory, its beautiful women, all rising like a mirage of
inaccessible delight beyond the devouring sands. He spoke of Timbuctoo,
the gate of the Sahara and the Western Soudan, the frontier town where
life ended and met and mingled, whither the camel of the desert
brought the weapons and merchandise of Europe as well as salt, that
indispensable commodity, and where the pirogues of the Niger landed the
precious ivory, the surface gold, the ostrich feathers, the gum, the
crops, all the wealth of the fruitful valley. He spoke of Timbuctoo the
store-place, the metropolis and market of Central Africa, with its
piles of ivory, its piles of virgin gold, its sacks of rice, millet,
and ground-nuts, its cakes of indigo, its tufts of ostrich plumes, its
metals, its dates, its stuffs, its iron-ware, and particularly its slabs
of rock salt, brought on the backs of beasts of burden from Taudeni, the
frightful Saharian city of salt, whose soil is salt for leagues around,
an infernal mine of that salt which is so precious in the Soudan that it
serves as a medium of exchange, as money more precious even than gold.
And finally, he spoke of Timbuctoo impoverished, fallen from its high
estate, the opulent and resplendent city of former times now almost in
ruins, hiding remnants of its treasures behind cracked walls in fear of
the robbers of the desert; but withal apt to become once more a city
of glory and fortune, royally seated as it is between the Soudan, that
granary of abundance, and the Sahara, the road to Europe, as soon as
France shall have opened that road, have