NEGROLAND divided into Nations.

Ibn Khaldún, after making some prefatory remarks on the origin and genealogy of the Blacks, borrows from an earlier writer the following account of the nations into which they were supposed to be divided:—

“Ibn Sʿaíd, a most diligent writer, enumerates nineteen nations of Blacks, beginning with the Zinj on the shores of the Indian Ocean, who have a city called Mombásah. They profess idolatry, and are the same people who in the reign of Al-Muʿatamid, seized on the city of Baṣrah; where great numbers of them were in slavery. They took up arms against their masters, and, assisted by the Zinj, got possession of the city.[195]

“Near the Zinj are the Berber, among whom Islamism made great progress. They have a city named Maḳdishó, which is partly inhabited by Mohammedan merchants. In their country are the people called Demádem, who go naked. It is recorded in history that these made an irruption into Abyssinia and Nubia, exactly at the time when the Tatars invaded Irak. After laying waste the country, however, they retreated homewards.[196]

“Adjoining the Berber are the Abyssinians, the most numerous and powerful of the Blacks. From their country Yemen once had its kings. The king of the Abyssinians was entitled Al-Negáshí, and the capital of his kingdom was the city of Kʿaber. The Abyssinians are Christians, but it is said that one of their kings embraced the true faith when Mohammed visited their country in the Hijra. They believe that they are destined to become masters of Yemen and all Arabia.[197]

“Next to the Abyssinians are the Bojá, a mixed nation of Christians and Mohammedans, who possess Suwákin, an island in the sea of As-Suweís (the Red Sea).[198] They have for neighbours the Nubians, who are brethren of the Zinj and Abyssinians, and have, on the west of the Nile, a city called Donḳalah. They are chiefly Christians, and border on Egypt, where many of them are sold as slaves. Adjoining them are the Zagháwah, who are Mohammedans, and from whom are sprung the Tájúah.[199]

“Next comes Al-Kánem, a populous kingdom, wherein the true faith is largely disseminated. Its capital city is Jíma. At one time the people of Kánem held the whole Ṣaḥrá in subjection; their ascendency being due to their intimacy with the Sultans of the house of Ḥafṣ, when this dynasty flourished in its prime.[200]

“Next to the people of Kánem, on the west, are the people of Kaúkaú, and after them Beghárah, and At-Tekrúr, and Kimi, and Yemyem, and Jábi, and Kúra, and Inkizár; by the side of the ocean towards the west they reach the people of Ghánah in the west. What precedes has been copied from Ibn Sʿaíd’s work.”[201]

It is observable that the names in this list of places or countries lying west of Kánem (nine in number) are not recognized at all, or not confidently, by modern geographers. But before we proceed to determine the position of each of them, it will be advantageous to examine the information which Makrízí, in quoting Ibn Sʿaíd, adds to that of his author.[202] His words are as follows:—“Al-Kánem is an extensive region watered by the blessed Nile, and distant a ten days’ journey from the borders of At-Tájú. In that country (Kánem) are naked Blacks, among whom are the Iklí, ruled by a just and mighty king; and Afnú, whose King, called Mastúr, guards his wives with extreme jealousy. Near this is another kingdom named Mambó, next to which lie Kátakúmá, Kátakú, and Ibkarem (Bekarmi), and another kingdom greater than the preceding, named Rábúmá (Umburm), the great kingdom of Haúdama (Adamawa), and the tribe of Ankarú, rich in herds, flocks, and elephants.[203] Next to these are the tribes Shádí, Mábiná, Abham, Atʿaná, Yáfalam, and Makabá, who are all naked Blacks, and hold clothed men in derision. The tribe of Mábiná is the most numerous, and the chief part of it is called Kálkín.[204] This region is covered with great trees and with pools from the overflowing of the Nile. It was invaded in the year 650 (A.D. 1252-3) by the King of Kánem, who killed many of the natives, or led them into slavery. Beyond this, westward to Kaúkaú, are many populous tribes, of which those next to Mábiná are the Adermá and Dafúmú, among whom are Mohammedan temples. Also the Abkalá (Ankalá), who have camels, wear skins for clothing, and are accounted unbelievers; and the Túkámá, who dwell on the borders of At-Tájú, possess palm-trees, and drink of the Nile. Al-Kánem is the greatest kingdom of Negroland, and has on the west Kaúkaú, then Baḳárah, Tekrúr, Nama, Temím, Já, and Inkizár, which extend in the west from the ocean to Ghánah.”[205]

In this list of countries or tribes lying within the circle, as it were, of Kánem, the name Afnú, given by the people of Bornú to the adjacent part of Houssa, stands conspicuous, and cannot fail to be recognized. The Arab writer appears to have commenced his survey from a prominent point, the Iklí being probably on the frontier of Negroland, between Afnú and the desert.[206] Kátakúmá may also be fairly assumed to be the Katagum of Clapperton; the writer therefore proceeds eastwards or south-eastwards, and consequently Mambó or Manbú will be near the country called Anbur by the English traveller. Continuing in the same course, he necessarily arrives at Kátakú and Bekarmi, having thus traced the frontiers of the independent tribes of Bornú facing Kánem.[207] He then seems to make the tour of the hilly country forming the remote boundary of the same region; but, it must be confessed, that this portion of his path is less easily investigated, and leaves a larger scope to conjecture. However it is a natural supposition that he enumerates the chief nations or tribes behind the line already traced, and so, eastward from Bekarmi, are Rábúmá (Umburm, a kingdom near Jacoba), Haúdama (ʿAdám, or, in the language of Houssa, Adamawa), and Ankarú (Angarú), the western part of Bornú.[208]

Adjoining these, we should expect to find Baúshí, with its decried inhabitants; and accordingly our author here names several tribes of savages “who hold clothed men in derision.” Shádí is certainly the name of a place in Baúshí; but we must not yield to the temptation of detecting resemblances of names which may easily prove deceitful.[209] It is more important to consider the force of the words “from Mábiná westwards to Kaúkaú,” from which it may be concluded that Mábiná lay towards Kaúkaú, or was the north-westernmost point of the region described, and consequently that the Arab author proceeds in a circle, agreeably to our hypothesis, and terminates at a point in Afnú whence he first started. His picture, too, of a region covered with great trees and pools from the overflowing of the Nile, corresponds exactly with the physical character of Zegzeg and Zamfara.[210] The invasion by the King of Kánem for the purpose of carrying off slaves, further confirms the supposition that the country described was Houssa and Baúshí. What other region had equal attractions for the slave hunter,—or where else could be found a long line of savage tribes extending to the frontiers of the desert and of Kaúkaú? Next to the Mábiná, towards the desert, followed the Adermá and Dafúmú, who were not strangers to the Mohammedan rites; and then came the Túkámá (Togáma) and Angála, of whom the former have given their name to a place in the desert not far from Kachenah, while similar traces of the latter remain on the shores of Lake Chad.[211] The Túkáma of Makrízí, it is true, were on the east of Kánem, near Tajúah; but so easily do the tribes of the desert change their dwellings, that there is no improbability in the supposition that the same tribe subsequently spread westwards and settled near Houssa.

In considering the interpretation here offered of Makrízí’s statement, less weight is to be allowed to the resemblance of names than to the order, coherence, and accordance with probability which the whole passage acquires from the mode of viewing it. Some points in it may be obscure; but others, as Afnú and Katagum, hardly admit of doubt; and we feel justified, therefore, in concluding that the nations or countries, as Kaúkaú, Baḳárah, Tekrúr, &c., which Makrízí (copying Ibn Sʿaíd) arranges west of Kánem, are all excluded from the region above described—that is to say, from Bornú and the hills of Baúshí and Houssa immediately encompassing it on the west.

In endeavouring to ascertain the positions of the various nations mentioned by early Arab writers as extending across Negroland, it will be advantageous to compare the whole series of those nations with the list of kingdoms arranged by Leo Africanus in the same line. For this purpose Ibn Sʿaíd’s list shall be inverted, or taken from west to east; and then the names which are clearly related being placed opposite to each other, we shall have the geography of Negroland in the latter half of the thirteenth century, contrasted with that of the beginning of the sixteenth, as in the following table:—

Ibn Sʿaíd. Leo.

Ghánah Gualata.

Ghinea.

Melli.

Inkizár { Tombuto.

Gago.

Guber.

Kúra.

Agadez.

Jábí.

Cano.

Yemyem.

Casena.

Kimí.

Zegzeg.

Tekrúr.

Zanfara.

Baghárah.

Guangara.

Kaúkaú.

Kánem Borno.

Gaoga.

Zagháwah.

Núbah Nubia.

Here then, in the first place, it is manifest that Ghánah coincides with Gualata (Walata). The salient point of Negroland towards the north-west ranks as the extreme west, and the countries which lie to the south, though extending further westward, are placed after it. Hence the Ghinea and Melli of Leo, both supposed by him to reach the ocean, nevertheless follow Gualata.

From the southern countries, Ghinea and Melli, Leo turns eastwards down the river to Tombuto and Gago; and thence proceeds across the desert to Guber, on the northern frontiers of Houssa. Ibn Sʿaíd, on the other hand, goes in two steps from Ghánah to Kúra, the western frontier (as will be seen further on) of the same region. He seems to take the straight road through Negroland to the eastern settlements of the Tekrúrí, while Leo keeps to the desert and the roads frequented by Moorish merchants. Inkizár then appears to be the region encompassed by the great circuit of the river between Jenni and Kághó. Its collective name, little known to geographers, probably never enjoyed political importance, but it seems still to survive in the name of the language called by Caillié the Kissour. This language extends from Jenni down the river to Tomboktú, where it is spoken, as the same traveller informs us, by the negro or indigenous population. But there is no authority for supposing that it extends no further eastward than Tomboktú; and it seems more reasonable to enlarge the limits of a language occupying so important a position, so that it may fill the area encircled by the river, and comprise Kághó (the Gago of Leo) in its domain. Inkizár then was a kingdom situate on the right bank of the Great River, between Jenni, Tomboktú, and Kághó, of which the political fabric has long since fallen to ruin, while a vestige of the original bond of unity still remains in the Kissour language.[212]

From Gago Leo passes to Guber, on the northern frontier of Houssa; then to Agadez, which is more easterly; then to Cano and Casena, lying further south; then to Zegzeg and Zanfara, still more in the rear, till at length he arrives at Guangara (Wanghárah), which fills the remote interior. But he shows his imperfect acquaintance with Houssa, by setting Casena (Kachenah) on the east of Cano (Kanó), and Zanfara in like manner on the east of Zegzeg. It is not surprising, therefore, that he should place Guangara on the east of Zanfara. He may possibly have confounded (like some modern writers) Angarú, the western province of Bornú, with Wanghárah or Guangara; but it is more likely that his information was substantially good, and that he knew Wanghárah to be a region extending widely at some distance from Houssa; but his systematical ideas left no room for such expansion south-westward from Houssa, and consequently he was obliged to shift Wanghárah to the south-east. Since Nufí and the other comparatively industrious countries on the Great River, are not expressly named by him, it may be fairly presumed that they were included in his Wanghárah.[213]

Ibn Sʿaíd, in like manner, passes from Inkizár to Houssa; not however to the northern part of this country next to the desert, but to its western side near the river. He goes not in the track of the merchant or slave dealer, but in that of the slave hunter. It may appear indeed difficult at first sight to recognize any part of Houssa in the names Kúra, Jábí, &c., but a little patient examination will dissipate the obscurity which involves them, and concentrate on them so many rays of probability as to guide us safely through the difficulties encompassing the first steps of our inquiry.

In the Geographical Dictionary of Yakút, an earlier writer than Ibn Sʿaíd, and who is copied with little change by Abú-l-fedá, the names Kúra and Jábí occur together, with such explanatory details as to prove that the former is applied to the river Kowára, while the latter (probably pronounced Gábí) seems meant for Kábí. It is there stated that the King of Kaúkaú (Kághó) wages war with the moslim of Ghánah on the west, and with those of Tekrúr on the east; and that a little to the east of Kaúkaú is the Lake Kúra, which must consequently be near Tekrúr: and, indeed, the author adds, that it is navigated by the Tekrúri and their neighbours dwelling on its northern bank. On the shores of this lake is Jábí, near the capital of which flows the Nile of Ghánah, so that the continuity of the Nile of Ghánah with Lake Kúra seems to be here offered as a fact; and this statement must not be set in the same category with the theory afterwards enunciated by the Arab geographer, that Lake Kúra is the common source from which issue the Niles of Ghánah, of Egypt, and of Maḳdishó.[214]

The same authors inform us that the tribes inhabiting the countries near Lake Kúra were cannibals: among the people of Jábí, whoever died was eaten by his neighbours. No one had ever seen the south side of the lake, but it was known that, at its remote end, it branched into two; and that by some means it extended westward into Kánem, whence flowed the Nile of Egypt. Now at the present day, the Kowára is generally called by the natives a lake; its name, written by them, is Lake Kúra; it is thought by them to join the sea, or rather to become a sea, a little below Núfí; they are quite ignorant of its southern termination, but know that it separates into what they consider as two branches, by one of which (the Chadda) it is supposed to communicate with Lake Chad, in Kánem and Bornú, and thence to mingle its waters with those of the Egyptian Nile.[215] In the country adjoining the Kowára and the Chadda are still found the Yemyem or cannibals. Thus it appears that the rudiments of the geographical system of the thirteenth century, so far as regards the waters of Central Africa, were precisely the same which now compose the native accounts of the Kowára, and its supposed continuation, the Chadda.[216]

Next to Jábí, in the east, Ibn Sʿaíd places Yemyem, then Kimi, of which we are unable to give any account. Next to that, and towards the north perhaps, he sets Tekrúr; then Baghárah, probably a tribe of the desert, and then Kaúkaú, after which comes Kánem.[217] Leo, on the other hand, passes from Guangara (Wanghárah) eastwards to Bornú, which coincides sufficiently well with the Kánem of Ibn Sʿaíd to serve with it as an established point of adjustment. He then goes to Gaoga, a kingdom extending, according to him, from Bornú to Nubia, and which appears to be the Kaúghah placed by some modern inquirers in the Baḥr el-Gazel. At all events care must be taken not to confound the Kaúkaú of Ibn Sʿaíd, which lay beyond the north-western bounds of Kánem and Bornú, with the Kaughah of Leo, on the east of the latter kingdom.[218] East of Kánem stands Zagháwah in Ibn Sʿaíd’s list, and beyond that Núbah, which coincides with Leo’s Nubia.

The results obtained by comparing Ibn Sʿaíd’s list of Negro nations with that furnished by Leo, are not, in a general view, of a doubtful character. At the extreme west, the coincidence of Ghánah with Walata is manifest. It is hardly less certain that Inkizár is the country embraced by the Great River, between Jenni and Kághó, and in which the Kissour (perhaps rather N’Kiṣár) language prevails. Though the Kánem of Ibn Sʿaíd and the Bornú of Leo do not exactly coincide, yet they approach so nearly to coincidence as to serve for terms of adjustment in the compared schemes. The tracts extending therefore between Inkizár and Kánem, in the one author, and from Gago to Bornú, in the other, may be said to lie between the same meridians, and to contain either the same countries under different names, or contiguous and intermingled countries. Now within those limits Leo describes the greater part of Houssa, proceeding, or meaning to proceed, from west to east, and from north to south. Ibn Sʿaíd, commencing with Kúra, goes on to Tekrúr and Kaúkaú, evidently from west to east, and from south to north. Tekrúr extended westwards from Zamfara (which may indeed have been included in it) to the desert, and therefore Kúra, Jábí or Gábí, Yemyem and Kimí, were all south-westward of the countries of Houssa named by Leo.[219] There can be little doubt that Kúra was a district situate on the Great River, the name of which is variously written or pronounced Kúra, Kuḍa, Quorra or Quolla. Jábí was Kábí, to the east (or south-east) of which lay Yowí or Yúfí (the modern Núfí), on the northern shore of Lake Kúra, and under which, as we are also informed, flowed the Nile of Ghánah.[220]

The difference between Ibn Sʿaíd and Leo in their modes of viewing the same region, may be naturally ascribed to changes in the channels and manner of intercourse with it. The people of Gúber once possessed the desert of ʿAhír, but were displaced by the Tawárik. The invasion of Tekaddá by the people of Málí, had probably for its object to relieve the trade of Kághó from the exactions levied on caravans in the desert. It can hardly have failed to improve the road through that country, and increase the influx of strangers. A few years later, Aghades was founded, probably by the Kiliwah (the Kolluvi of Hornemann), who are now the predominant Berber tribe on the frontiers of Houssa. When these various changes are all taken into consideration, it will no longer appear surprising, that while Ibn Sʿaíd viewed Houssa from the road opened to it by the people of Tekrúr, Leo should look at it only from the opposite quarter, or from Aghades.[221]

It is needless to follow the parallel between the systems of Ibn Sʿaíd and Leo beyond the western frontiers of Kánem and Bornú. Further east, the few points touched on by Arab geographers are not liable to misinterpretation. The inquiry into the early geography of Negroland, so far as concerns representations founded on fact, might here terminate. But it is worth while to observe how the framers of theories, the compilers of Dictionaries and Complete Treatises of Geography, dealt with the obscurer portion of it: how they endeavoured to fill up every void, and by arbitrary suppositions to give unity and coherence to their fragmentary information. The popular belief that the Great River of Negroland unites with the Nile of Egypt, is of ancient date, and may perhaps be traced back even to the time of Herodotus. It is stated with more or less distinctness by all the Arab geographers. Leo, however, discarded it, and adopted an original opinion of his own. The Shary, according to him, is the source of the Niger; for this river, he says, rises in the Desert of Seu (or country of the Shaúá), south-east of Bornú, and enters the Lake of Gaoga (the Chad). Respecting the hypothetical course of the river westwards from the lake, he is quite silent; and when he says that Cano is 500 miles east of the Niger, he seems to acknowledge his ignorance of its course south of that country. However, he believed it to flow westwards by Tomboktú and Jenni to the Western Ocean.

At the present day all African geographers believe in the junction of the Kowára with Lake Chad. Some suppose the line of connexion to be formed by the Quorrama and the Yeou; others look upon the Chadda as the continuation of the Kowára, and think that they can trace its course into Lake Chad by the river of Katagum and the Yeou; while others again carry it through Adamawa into the Shary.[222] All this hypothesis arises naturally from the constitution of the human mind, which is averse from doubt and systematic suspension of opinion. It hurries on to the solution of every problem presented to it. Furnished with a knowledge of portions of seas, continents, or rivers, it feels no pleasure in devising their limits and separations, but prefers joining the fragments together, as if it thus advanced a step in discovery, or mounted to a higher and simpler truth. Illustrations of this remark might be drawn from the history of geography in every age and country. It is not extraordinary therefore that Yaḳút, copied by Abú-l-fedá and others, should delineate decisively and with the air of a master, that assemblage of waters in Central Africa, the existence of which seemed proved by popular belief. Lake Kúra, says Abú-l-fedá, is 1000 miles long. On its western side, near Jábi, flows the Nile of Ghánah; and at its north-eastern angle, near the capital of Kánem, the Nile of Egypt issues from it. Here it is apparent that the lake Kúra described by Ibn Fáṭimah, the lake Kúra, or river Kowára or Quorra of the present day, is supposed to be united with Lake Chad, and that it gives its name to the great inland sea, thus formed by theory. The lake Kúra of Yáḳút and Abú-l-fedá derives its origin from facts arbitrarily combined and expanded; it owes its magnitude to the distance between the waters thus connected together, and its name to the western portion of them, the river Kowára or Quorra.

Some of the systematic Arab geographers divided Africa into three great regions, viz. Genéwah, Kaúkaú or Karkar, and Habesh or Abyssinia; others into four, Genéwah, Nubia, Habesh, and Zinj.[223] Genéwah, or the western division, was disproportionately enlarged, owing to the protraction of the Great River, the incurvations of which were overlooked, and because, in speculative geography, the known has a constant tendency to encroach upon and narrow the limits of the unknown. Zinj, on the other hand, must have been diminished, since Ibn Baṭúṭah believed Sofálah to be but a month’s journey distant from Yúfi (Núfí), on the left bank of the Great River, before it turned towards Nubia. The centre of the continent, where those divisions met, was occupied by Lake Kúra, whence issued the Niles of Ghánah, Egypt, and Maḳdishó. The shores of the lake were inhabited by the Demdem or (in the Arabicised plural) Demádem, who therefore stood, as occupants of the remote interior, in a defined relation with the coasts to which those rivers descended. When Arab writers, therefore, in speaking of the eastern coast of Africa, state that the interior is possessed by the Demádem, who invaded Abyssinia and Nubia in the early part of the thirteenth century, it is obvious that they speak the language of system (the name Demdem or Demádem being in reality unknown on the eastern coast), and hypothetically trace the course of the invaders from the shores of Lake Kúra and the sources of the great rivers.[224]

There is no injustice done to the Arabs in thus ascribing altogether to theory a positive statement made by many of their best authors. It is in the highest degree improbable, that with little or no knowledge of the various Black nations inhabiting the eastern coast of Africa, they should have had any accurate acquaintance with the remote interior: and besides, the acquiescence in system here imputed to them, is no greater than must have inevitably arisen from the imperfect state of their knowledge. Little more than a century ago, European geographers represented Abyssinia as occupying nearly a fourth of the African continent; on its eastern borders they placed a great lake, from which issued the Egyptian Nile, and all the great rivers of Southern Africa.[225] The maps of Africa of that date exhibit less vacant space than they do at the present day. The improvement of geography, with respect to that quarter of the globe, has consisted chiefly in reducing what is known within its proper limits. Distant nations were of course as easily brought together and united as distant countries. The different African tribes which, in the course of the sixteenth century, devastated the widely-separate coasts of Sierra Leone, of Angola, and of Melinda, were, by a sweeping generalization, all supposed to be one and the same people, and were furthermore identified with the Agows and Gallas of Abyssinia.[226] Vestiges of these ideas still remain in our treatises of geography, and in some of the latest maps, nor is the system of thinking from which they emanated yet quite obsolete.[227] But the close resemblance of European theories respecting the mysterious interior of Africa to those of the Arabs, is strikingly manifest in the following words of the Portuguese historian, Da Couto:—“About the year 1570, a horde of barbarians, like locusts, issued from the heart of Ethiopia, from the great lake whence flows the Cuama, the Zaire, the Rhapta, and the Nile.”[228]—Here then we have the exact counterpart of Lake Kúra and the Demdem or Demádem. The subsequent history of the horde referred to by Da Couto is taken up by other learned writers, who affect to describe its march southwards from Mombása to the Cape of Good Hope; thence to Angola, whence it spread to Sierra Leone and elsewhere: so that not even the Demádem were ever carried by conjecture so far from their native homes.[229] Thus it appears that the theories ascribed above to the Arabs, much excelled in sobriety, while they were exactly parallel in design with the geographical speculations of a later age.

The position of the kingdoms of Negroland enumerated by Arab writers having been now discussed and determined, and the efforts of Arab theorists to mould into unity and form the isolated facts before them, having been traced out, our task is at an end. The demonstration of the fact that Ghánah lay between the desert and the Great River near Tomboktú, at once reconciles with nature and probability, the history of the constant intercourse of that state with Sijilmésah. The nation whose language is spoken in the most important part of Negroland, is now brought into light. The Tekrúr have been traced from the vicinity of Silla to the eastern bank of the Kowára. The History of Málí has been made known, and the limits of that empire partially determined. It has been clearly shown that Kághó was also called Kaúkaú, but that the application of the latter name to one or more other places, further east, has caused incurable confusion. The ignorance and erroneous hypothesis of the Africans respecting the course of the Kowára, have been detected in the ancient accounts of Lake Kúra; and the limits of the positive knowledge of the Arabs have been ascertained in the fact that their theoretical geography embraced that lake, and the Demdem who inhabited its shores.

It will not be necessary to dwell here on the general harmony and widely-extended coincidence attending the conclusions arrived at in the preceding pages. A long series of inferences, each stamped with the character of likelihood, and all agreeing perfectly among themselves, yet obtained independently of one another, not by straining arbitrarily selected texts, but by eliciting and examining each author’s fullest meaning, and which form together a complete whole, reconcileable not only with geographical facts, but also with that speculative mind, which in the history of human knowledge is itself an incontestible though not easily seized fact;—such a series of inferences, we say, carries with it an internal evidence of truth not easily impugned. It remains therefore only to recal attention to the chief historical revolutions brought to light in the course of our inquiries. The wars and conquests of the Morabites eventually opened the Western Desert to commercial enterprise. The impulse given by the religious enthusiasm of the same people to Tekrúr, spread rapidly through western Negroland, till at length the wave recoiling on the desert, the Ṣúṣú first, and then the people of Málí, became masters of Ghánah, and reckoned some of the Zenágah tribes among their tributaries.[230] The outlines of the history of Málí deserve particular attention. The establishment of extensive empires in the early stages of society, almost always give rise to a better order of things, by breaking down the obstructions to general intercourse, and allowing free scope to aspiring industry. The progress of Tekrúr eastwards, the foundation of Aghades, and the change effected by both these events in the condition of Houssa, have been already pointed out, and need not be further insisted on.[231]

It is impossible to deny the advancement of civilization in that zone of the African continent which has formed the field of our inquiry. Yet barbarism is there supported by natural circumstances with which it is vain to think of coping. It may be doubted whether, if mankind had inhabited the earth only in populous and adjoining communities, slavery would have ever existed. The Desert, if it be not absolutely the root of the evil, has, at least, been from the earliest times the great nursery of slave hunters.[232] The demoralization of the towns on the southern borders of the desert has been pointed out; and if the vast extent be considered of the region in which man has no riches but slaves, no enjoyment but slaves, no article of trade but slaves, and where the hearts of wandering thousands are closed against pity by the galling misery of life, it will be difficult to resist the conviction that the solid buttress on which slavery rests in Africa, is—The Desert.