460 REPORT ON CAILLIR'S TRAVELS, 
well as of having taken notes of what relates to the cus- 
toms^ ceremonies, productions, and commerce, of the 
several countries. On the other hand, our programme 
contains conditions which have been partly fulfilled, since 
its publication, by the celebrated English travellers, 
Oudney, Clapperton, and Denham • namely, those which 
relate to the districts east and E. S. E. of Timbuctoo : we 
had, therefore, no longer the same motives for requiring 
their accomplishment. 
In awarding, therefore, to M. Caillie the recompense 
promised to any one who should reach the city of Tim- 
buctoo, and furnish a description of it, the Society will 
satisfy the general expectation, and be assured of possess- 
ing accurate information concerning countries nearly or 
wholly unknown • it will grant its honourable suffrage to 
a man who speaks of them, not upon hearsay, but upon 
the evidence of his own eyes ; who, in his simple and un- 
affected narrative, relates, without any exaggeration, what 
he has observed, and does not endeavour to excite atten- 
tion by extraordinary adventures. This is precisely the 
kind of interest which the Geographical Society attaches 
to discoveries — that of truth. 
It is no small achievement for a man to have broken 
through the species of enchantment, with which every 
European appears to have been struck on reaching the 
mysterious point of the Dhioliba. It is now^certain that 
four or five months are sufficient for a traveller to arrive in 
Europe from Timbuctoo. Now that the possibility of the 
