IN CENTRAL AFRICA. '^^^ 
less importance than the problem of the sources of the 
Nile, and which is become almost as celebrated with the 
moderns, as the other was amongst the ancients. It is 
also observable that of forty-two European travellers, 
twenty-two are supposed to have taken this route, inde- 
pendently of six Europeans shipwrecked on that coast, 
carried into the interior by the Moors, and who have col- 
lected information respecting either Timbuctoo or other 
central countries. These travellers not having for the 
most part pursued the same track with M. Caillie, and an 
abridged history of their discoveries having been already 
compiled by M. Walckenaer and other learned geogra- 
phers, I consider it altogether superfluous to review them. 
The reader will have double cause to rejoice in the cur- 
tailment of these observations, and in being at the same 
time directed to such excellent sources of information. 
I shall only state, from these vai-ious authorities, the 
epoch and extent of the principal journeys, succinctly 
analyzing those which present a line of route crossed by 
that of M. Caillie, or which have something in common 
with it. The reader will thus have before him a striking 
picture of the several efforts made, with admirable per- 
severance, by Europeans, during the last two centuries 
and a half. 
In 1588, Thompson.. reached Tenda by the Gambia. 
1620, Robert Jobson. . idem. idem. 
1670, Paul Imbert. . . . Timbuctoo... Morocco. 
1698, De Bru6 — — — Gaiam Saint-Louis. 
1715, Compagnon. . . . Bambouk. . ..- idem. 
1723., Stibbs „ Gambia. 
