^98 REMARKS ON TRAVELS 
The points common to the route of M. Caillie and 
to the list of positions considered by geographers as per- 
fectly or sufficiently established, are confined to the fol- 
lowing : the points of the western coast of Africa, Ka- 
kondy, Timbo, Sami and Yamina (for the latitude), Bakel, 
Elimane, Fez ; and I shall add to them the position of 
Ain-Salah, though published here for the first time. 
With respect to the positions of Djenne, Timbuctoo, and 
the places situated in the great desert, the uncertainty is 
so great, that there is no resting any solid calculation 
upon them, and they are of no use in verifying the exact- 
ness of new itineraries. 
Thus we are reduced, for a space which compi ehends 
twenty five degrees of latitude and from ten to twelve 
degrees of longitude, to eight points in the interior.'^ 
Still, the point whence the traveller set out on the first 
pajt of his travels, the position of Timbo in the middle of 
this part, and the very probable knowledge of the parallel 
of Sego, a town which is connected with the itinerary and 
attaches itself to the fixed points of the Senegambia, with 
the almost certain situation of Fez, form a first basis, 
which may serve to verify as well the inflections of the 
route as the length of the lines travelled over. I began 
by estabhshing the lines from Kakon dy to Time, from 
Time to Djenne and Timbuctoo, and from Timbuctoo to 
el-Araouan ; first, by supporting them separately upon 
Timbo, the parallel of Sego, and the position of Fez ; and 
* I am not speaking of points more or less in the neighbourhood 
of the route, as Labc, or of the first part of the course of the Dhioliba. 
