IN CENTRAL AFRICA. 307 
determine him^ especially if he dissents from the opinions 
of his predecessors. 
Timbuctoo is placed, on the general map of the tra- 
vels, in the latitude resulting from the observation of the 
shadow and the length of the route from Time to Timbuc- 
too. A great part of this route, it may be observed, is 
in a northerly direction, vrhich was far from being con- 
jectured from the course of the river in this quarter. If 
Mungo Park could have acquainted us with the particu- 
lars of his journey beyond Sansanding, we should not 
have been so long uncertain of this direction, which has 
uniformly been carried easterly, and that because the si- 
tuation of Timbuctoo was imagined (as it is still) to be very 
central in the continent. Park's map (travels in 1805) 
places it under the meridian of Paris ; Clapperton at 
0^ 6"" ' west. Rennell at 2*" 3"" : but the data of which we 
have been for ten years in possession oblige us to bring 
it nearer to the ocean ; M. Walckenaer has done so, in 
adopting a longitude from nine to twelve minutes more 
westerly. I have always proposed to carry this position 
much farther west, and even placed it four years ago four 
degrees west.* M. Brue has since adopted 3° 34' : per- 
haps it should have been advanced as far as the sixth de- 
gree. For the reasons I have elsewhere given, the route 
from Timbuctoo to Fez cannot be fixed at more than two 
English miles an hour : to this rate I have reduced the 
* See the Bulletin of the Geographical Society, the second volume 
of its memoirs, and the map of the course of the Gambia beyond Cous- 
saye etc. 
X 2 
