Of the first part of our expedition there has already appeared the Narrative of the late Mr. Richardson, published from his manuscript journals, which I was fortunately able to send home from Kúkawa. It is full of minute incidents of travelling life, so very instructive to the general reader. But from my point of view, I had to look very differently at the objects which presented themselves; and Mr. Richardson, if he had lived to work out his memoranda himself, would not have failed to give to his Journal a more lasting interest. Moreover, my stay in Ágades afforded me quite a different insight into the life, the history, and geography of those regions, and brought me into contact with Timbúktu. Extending over a tract of country of twenty-four degrees from north to south, and twenty degrees from east to west, in the broadest part of the continent of Africa, my travels necessarily comprise subjects of great interest and diversity. After having traversed vast deserts of the most barren soil, and scenes of the most frightful desolation, I met with fertile lands irrigated by large navigable rivers and extensive central lakes, ornamented with the finest timber, and producing various species of grain, rice, sesamum, ground-nuts, in unlimited abundance, the sugar-cane, etc., together with cotton and indigo, the most valuable commodities of trade. The whole of Central Africa, from Bagírmi to the east as far as Timbúktu to the west (as will be seen in my narrative), abounds in these products. The natives of these regions not only weave their own cotton, but dye their home-made shirts with their own indigo. The river, the far-famed Niger, which gives access to these regions by means of its eastern branch, the Bénuwé, which I discovered, affords an uninterrupted navigable sheet of water for more than six hundred miles into the very heart of the country. Its western branch is obstructed by rapids at the distance of about three hundred and fifty miles from the coast; but even at that point it is probably not impassable in the present state of navigation, while, higher up, the river opens an immense highroad for nearly one thousand miles into the very heart of Western Africa, so rich in every kind of produce.