288 THE FAIR. 



where triumphed like the soldiers of Cortes and 

 Pizarro in Mexico and Peru. These musketeers 

 made enormous conquests, not for their master, but 

 for themselves. They established an oligarchy of 

 their own ; it was afterwards dethroned by the natives, 

 but there yet exist men who, as Barth informs us, are 

 called the descendants of the musketeers and who 

 wear a distinctive dress. But that imperial expedi- 

 tion was the last exploit of the Moors. After the 

 conquest of Granada by the Christians and of Algeria 

 by the Turks, Morocco, encompassed by enemies, be- 

 came a savage and isolated land ; Timbuctoo, its com- 

 mercial dependent, fell into decay, and is now chiefly 

 celebrated as a cathedral town. 



The Arabs carried cotton and the art of its manu- 

 facture into the Soudan, which is one of the 

 largest cotton growing areas in the world. Its Man- 

 chester is Kano, which manufactures blue cloth and 

 coloured plaids, clothes a vast negro population, and 

 even exports its goods to the lands of the Mediter- 

 ranean Sea. Denham and Clapperton, who first 

 reached the lands of Haoussa and Bornou, were aston- 

 ished to find among the negroes magnificent courts ; 

 regiments of cavalry, the horses caparisoned in silk for 

 gala days and clad in coats of mail for war ; long 

 trains of camel laden with salt, and natron, and corn, 

 and cloth, and cowrie shells, which form the currency, 

 and kola nuts, which the Arabs call " the coffee of the 

 negroes." They attended with wonder gigantic fairs at 

 which the cotton goods of Manchester, the red cloth of 

 Saxony, double-barrelled guns, razors, tea and sugar, 

 Nuremberg ware and writing-paper were exhibited for 

 sale. They also found merchants who offered to cash 

 their bills upon houses at Tripoli ; and scholars ac- 



