IN CENTRAL AFRICA. Sai 
south; this contains Wangara, Maleb^ and Dau^ four 
days' journey from each other ; to the west is Meczara, 
to the east^ Vancara^ to the north Ghana, and a desert 
to the south. 
Many of these statements agree sufficiently with M. 
CailHe's marches across the desert ; I can here only 
slightly mention this conformity, because it would be ne- 
cessary otherwise to enter into details on the extent of a 
day's journey and on the different kinds of days' journeys ; 
an important question which shall be discussed elsewhere. 
Takrour corresponds perhaps with the locality which has 
since become the seat of Timbuctoo* : the importance of 
this ancient town is proved by the name of Takrour, then 
given to the whole of the Soudan, and applied to it by 
the natives even to the present time. Sala is a point 
known to M. Caillie, but to the right of the route from 
Timbuctoo to Tafilet, and not to the west of Timbuctoo ; 
and it must not be confounded with Ain-Salak, the oasis 
of Agably. 
May not the Oulil of el-Edricy, so long sought, be 
an island in the sense understood by the word oasis, as 
surrounded on all sidles by an ocean of sand ? this place 
* M. Walckenaer has already remarked that on the ancient map 
on wood in the King's Hbrary (of the middle of the i4th century) Tim- 
buctoo is indicated by the name of Tenbuch. Its foundation dated 
about a century and a half earlier. Rech, sur I'Afr. Septentr. ^c, p. 14, 
