ABSTRACT

Up to the middle of the eighteenth century every attempt by Europeans to explore the interior of northern Africa had been inspired by desire for gain and had failed miserably. A brilliant band of explorers penetrated, but did not lift, the veil which had for so long obscured the interior. But after curiosity had been satisfied by the solution of the problems of the course and termination of the Niger and by the disappointing discovery that Timbuktu was in reality only a large collection of mud huts, interest in the part of Africa quickly evaporated. The dispatches blandly invited Henry Barth to endeavour to reach Timbuktu. Political feeling in Timbuktu was running very high. The control of the city was at the time, as so frequently in its history, a matter of dispute between the desert tribes, now under the leadership of El Bekkai, and the Fulani of Massina.