vi INTRODUCTION. 



interior resions of northern Africa, we are indebted to the 

 Arabian writers of the middle ages, and to the information 

 of Arabian travellers of our own times. After them the 

 Portuguese were the first Europeans to penetrate beyond 

 the coast into the interior, where they no doubt collected 

 much information ; but, unfortunately for the world, it 

 was their plan to conceal what they discovered, till it has 

 been lost even to themselves. That this nation sent frequent 

 embassies to Tombuctoo, we have the authority of De 

 Barros, which can seldom be called in question, and never, 

 we believe, when he states mere matters of fact, which is 

 the case in the present instance ; but though he mentions 

 the names of the persons sent on these missions, he omits 

 all the circumstances and occurrences of the journey, and 

 fails even to describe this renowned cit3^ There are 

 however some circumstances which make it possible that 

 .the Tombuctoo of De Barros was no other than the Tam- 

 bacunda of Park and others, as in ail the maps of the 

 sixteenth century, taken from Portuguese authority, Tom- 

 buctoo is placed not more than from three to four hundred 

 miles from the coast, Avhich is about one-third part only 

 of its real distance. The Portuguese, however, followed 

 the Arabian geographers in describing the stream of the 

 Niger to flow from east to west, which Herodotus had 

 learned, nearly twenty centuries before, to flow in a con- 

 trary direction ; an opinion which Ptolemy afterwards 

 seems to have adopted, perhaps on information gained 

 from the same source; though it must be confessed, that 

 Ptolemy is unusually obscure in his geographical delin- 

 eation of the rise, direction, and termination of this cele- 

 brated river. 

 In the midst of these conflicting opinions respecting the 



