316 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 
Chap. LXII. 
with fever; but the head man of the town, whose 
name was A'bu-Bakr, a man of very stately appear- 
ance, was of rather a communicative disposition, so 
that with his assistance I was able to make con- 
siderable progress in my knowledge of the Songhay 
language; and, if I had been able to go on in this 
way, I might soon have mastered the language ; 
but unfortunately my situation became too unsettled 
in the sequel to allow of a quiet course of study ; 
to say nothing of the fact, that the extremely poor 
character of the language itself completely damped 
my enthusiasm. 
I here first discovered the error of Caillie in giving 
to the people of Timbuktu the name of "Kissur," or, 
as he writes, " Kissour," which is evidently nothing 
but a mistake, " ki-so'ri," or rather " ki-songhi," u ki- 
songhay," meaning the language of the Songhay. I 
here also became aware of the fact that this idiom is 
originally monosyllabic, while I observed likewise that 
the language spoken in A'gades, of which I had made 
a vocabulary, though evidently a dialect of the same 
idiom, had been affected to a great extent by the 
influence of the Temashight, or Berber. 
Tuesday, ^ e a ^ length set out to pursue our 
August 2nd. j ournev? which now became full of danger, 
as we had to traverse the province of Dalla, which is 
ruled by a governor in direct subjection to the fa- 
natical chief of Masina residing in Hamda-Allahi, 
who would never allow a Christian to visit his terri- 
tory. I was therefore obliged to assume the character 
of an Arab. Just at that time a change in the govern- 
