CiiAP. LXX. IMPORTANT POSITION OF TIMBU'kTU. 37 
without touching at Timbuktu. At any rate, those 
gentlemen who estimate the annual export of slaves 
from Negroland to Morocco at about 4000* are 
certainly mistaken, although in this, as well as in 
other respects, the exceptional and anarchical state of 
the whole country at the time of my residence, and 
my own most critical situation, did not allow me to 
arrive at any positive results. Thus much is certain, 
that an immense field is here opened to European 
energy, to revive the trade which, under a stable 
government, formerly animated this quarter of the 
globe, and which might again flourish to great ex- 
tent. For the situation of Timbuktu is of the 
highest commercial importance, lying as it does at 
the point where the great river of Western Africa, 
in a serpentlike winding, approaches most closely to 
that outlying and most extensive oasis of "the far 
West," — Maghreb el Aksa, of the Mohammedan 
world, — 1 mean Tawat, w^hich forms the natural me- 
dium betw^een the commercial life of this fertile and 
populous region and the north ; and whether it be 
Timbuktu, Walata, or Ghanata, there will always be 
in this neighbourhood a great commercial entrepot^ 
as long as mankind retain their tendency to interna- 
tional intercourse and exchange of produce. 
* Graberg de HemsS, Specchio di Morocco, p. 146. Besides 
slaves, he enumerates as articles of export from Timbuktu to 
Morocco, ivory, rhinoceros horns, incense, gold dust, cotton 
strips ( ? verghe), jewels, ostrich feathers of the first quality, gum 
copal, cotton, pepper, cardamom, asafoetida, and indigo. 
D 3 
