44 SETTLEMENTS OF THE ARABS. 



It was from Fez that Ibn Batuta commenced his peregri- 

 nation through Interior Africa. He went first to Segil- 

 missa, which he describes as a handsome town, situated in 

 a territory abounding with date-trees. Having joined a ca- 

 ravan, he came, after a journey of twenty-five days, to 

 Thargari, which some manuscripts make Tagaza, and is 

 therefore evidently the Tegazza of Leo, supposed by Major 

 Rennel to be the modern Tishect, containing the mine 

 whence Timbuctoo is chiefly suppUed with salt. To our 

 traveller the place appeared to contain no object desirable or 

 agreeable : there was nothing but salt ; the houses were 

 built wuth slabs of that mineral, and roofed with the hides 

 of camels. It even appeared to him that nature had lodged 

 this commodity in regular tables in the mine, fitted for being 

 conveyed to a distance ; but he probably overlooked an arti- 

 ficial process by which it is usually brought into this form. 

 From Thargari he went in twenty days to Tashila, three 

 days beyond which commenced a desert of the most dreary 

 aspect, where there was neither water, beast, nor bird, 

 " nothin^g but sand and hills of sand." In ten days he 

 came to Abu Latin, a large commercial town, crowded with 

 merchants from various quarters of the continent. The 

 manners of the people, as is indeed too common in the 

 scenes of inland traffic throughout Africa, appeared to him 

 very licentious, and wholly destitute of that decorum which 

 usually marks a Mussulman residence. The women main- 

 tained a greater share of respectability than the other sex ; 

 yet this did not prevent them from hiring themselves as tem- 

 porary wives to those whom the pursuits of trade induced 

 to visit Abu Latin. The editor has not hazarded a conjec- 

 ture what place this is ; but on finding it in one manuscript 

 called Ayulatin, and in another Ewelatin, I think there is 

 no doubt of its being Walet, which lay completely in the 

 route of our traveller, and is the only great city in that 

 quarter of Africa. 



From Abu Latin the adventurer proceeded in tw^enty-four 

 days to Mali, then the most flourishing country and city in 

 that part of the continent. This Mali is evidently the Melli 

 of Leo, who described it as situated on a river to the south 

 of Timbuctoo ; but it is not so easy to identify it with any 

 modern position. Our traveller makes heavy complaints of 

 the cold reception and narrow bounty of an African poten- 

 tate in this district. After waitina upon liis majeety, he 



