188 CAILLIE. 



manner as to leave him no hope of ever returning. Laing, 

 thus obUged to accelerate his retreat, made an arrangement 

 with Barbooshi, a Moorish merchant, to accompany and 

 protect him in the route by Sego to the coast, which he had 

 determined to follow. Three days after leaving Timbuc- 

 too, when the caravan was in the heart of the Desert, this 

 wretch, instigated by the basest avarice, murdered, in the 

 night-time, the individual whom he had undertaken to 

 guard, taking possession of all his effects. Yet Major 

 Laing's papers, it appears, were carried to Timbuctoo ; nay, 

 the Quarterly Review has produced strong reasons for be- 

 lieving that they were actually conveyed back to Tripoli, 

 and that it was owing to the vilest treachery, in a quarter 

 where it ought least to have been apprehended, that they 

 have not been forwarded to the British government. As, 

 however, the light, which is still much wanted, may per- 

 haps be hereafter thrown on this dark transaction, we wish 

 not at present to allude to it in a more pointed manner. 



Another journey was now announced, which, in the first 

 instance, strongly excited the public expectation. The 

 French savayis proclaimed throughout Europe, that M. 

 Cailli^, their countryman, animated by the hope of a prize 

 offered by the Society of Geography, had penetrated across 

 Africa from Sierra Leone to Morocco, having passed through 

 Jenne and Timbuctoo, those two great seats of commerce 

 which modern travellers had sought so long to reach, and 

 whence none had ever returned. Cailli^, rewarded with a 

 pension and the cross of the Legion of Honour, was imme 

 diately classed with the first of modern travellers. These 

 somewhat extravagant pretensions, contrasted with the de- 

 fects of the narrative itself when laid before the public, gave 

 rise in high quarters to a doubt whether there were any 

 reality whatever in this expedition, and whether M. Cailli^ 

 were not another Bamberger. On a careful examination 

 of circumstances we are inclined to believe the accuracy of 

 the narrative. There seems good authority for admitting 

 his departure from Sierra Leone ; for his having announced 

 the intention to undertake this journey; and, lastly, for his 

 arrival at Rabat in Morocco, in the condition of a dis- 

 tressed, way-worn traveller. His statement, too, with all 

 its defects, bears an aspect of simplicity and good faith, and 

 contains various minute details, including undesigned coiii- 



