Timbuktú is situated about six miles from the Niger, in lat. 18° N. Its shape is that of a triangle, the apex of which is turned towards the desert. Its circuit at the present time is about three miles and a half; but of old it extended over a much larger area. It is by no means the wealthy, powerful, and splendid city which was dreamed of in the fond imaginations of the early travellers. Its streets are unpaved, and most of them narrow. There are a thousand houses clay-built, and, in the northern and north-western suburbs, some two hundred huts of reeds. No traces exist of the ancient palace, nor of the Kasba; but the town has three large and three small mosques, and a chapel. It is divided into seven quarters, inhabited by a permanent population of thirty thousand souls, which is increased to thirty-five or forty thousand from November to January, the epoch of the caravans. Founded early in the twelfth century by the Towaregs, on one of their old pasture-grounds, Timbuktú belonged to the Souray in the first half of the fourteenth. Recovered, a century later, by its founders, it was snatched from them by Sami Ali, who sacked it, then rebuilt it, and drew thither the merchants of Ghadami. As early as 1373 it is marked upon the Spanish charts, not only as the entrepôt of the trade in salt and gold, but as the scientific and religious centre of the Western Soudan; and exciting the cupidity of Mulay Ahmed, it fell, in 1592, with the empire of the Askias, under the sway of Marocco. Down to 1826 it remained in the hands of the Ramas, or Maroccan soldiers settled in the country. Next came the Fulbi; then the Towaregs, who drove out the Fulbi in 1844. But this victory, by isolating Timbuktú on the border of the river, led to a famine. Through the intervention of El Bakay, however, a compromise was effected in 1848; the Towaregs recognized the nominal supremacy of the Fulbi, on condition that they should keep no garrison in the city; the taxes were to be collected by two cadis, a Souray and a Fulbi; and the administration, or rather the police, was entrusted to two Souray magistrates, controlled simultaneously by the Fulbi and the Towaregs, between whom was divided the religious authority, represented by the sheikh, a Rama by origin. Dr. Barth’s residence in Timbuktú was a source of intense dissatisfaction to some of the ruling spirits. Even in the sheikh’s own family it led to grave dissensions; and many demanded that he should be expelled. El Bakay remained firm in his support, and, to protect the life of his visitor, moved him to Kabara. Dr. Barth speaks in high terms of this liberal and enlightened man, and of the happiness of his domestic circle. Europe itself could not produce a more affectionate father or husband; indeed, Dr. Barth hints that he yielded too much to the wishes of his august partner.