PREFACE. 
1 offer^ at length, to the public the narrative of my 
travels in the interior of Africa, which should have ap- 
peared long since ; several causes have, however, con- 
curred during the fifteen months that have elapsed since 
my return to my native soil, to retard its publication till 
the present time. I have brought home, from the regions I 
have traversed, only fugitive and very laconic notes, written 
in haste and trepidation : they would have been inexo- 
rable evidences against me, had I been surprised tracing 
unknown characters, and unveiling as it were to the 
Whites the mysteries of these countries. In Africa, espe- 
cially in those districts occupied by the Foulahs and the 
Moors, religious hypocrisy in a stranger is the most 
flagrant of outrages, and it were a hundred times better 
to pass there for a Christian, than for a false Mahometan ; 
so that if my mode of travelling had its advantages, which 
its success has proved, it was also attended with terrible 
inconveniences. I carried always in my wallet a sen- 
tence of death, and how often was that wallet necessarily 
confided to the hands of enemies ! On my arrival in Paris, 
the notes, written mostly in pencil, were found so faint 
and so much effaced by time, my wanderings, and my 
