I have already stated above that the southern part of the town, which at present is almost entirely deserted, formed the oldest quarter, while katánga, or “báki-n-bírni,” seems to have been its northern limit. Within these limits the town was about two miles in circuit, and when thickly peopled may have contained about thirty thousand inhabitants; but after the northern quarter was added the whole town had a circuit of about three miles and a half, and may easily have mustered as many as fifty thousand inhabitants, or even more. The highest degree of power seems to have been attained before the conquest of the town by Mohammed Áskiá in the year 1515, though it is said to have been a considerable and wealthy place till about sixty years ago (reckoned from 1850), when the greatest part of the inhabitants emigrated to the neighbouring towns of Háusa, chiefly Kátsena, Tasáwa, Marádi, and Kanó. The exact circumstances which brought about this deplorable desertion and desolation of the place I was not able to learn; and the date of the event cannot be made to coincide with the period of the great revolution effected in Middle Sudán by the rising of the Jihádi, “the Reformer,” ʿOthmán da-n-Fódiye, which it preceded by more than fifteen years; but it coincides with or closely follows upon an event which I shall have to dwell upon in the further course of my proceedings. This is the conquest of Gʿao, or Gógo (the former capital of the Sónghay empire, and which since 1591 had become a province of the empire of Morocco), by the Tuarek. As we have seen above that Ágades had evidently been founded as an _entrepôt_ for the great trade with this most flourishing commercial place on the Ísa, or Niger, at that time the centre of the gold trade, of course the ransacking and wholesale destruction of this town could not but affect in the most serious manner the wellbeing of Agades, cutting away the very roots through which it received life. [Illustration: 1, House where I lodged; 2, Great Mosque, or Mesállaje; 3, Palace, or Fáda; 4, Káswa-n-delélti, or Tama-n-lókoy; 5, Káswa-n-rákoma; 6, Katánga; 7, Erárar-n-zákan; 8, Mohammed Bóro’s house; 9, House of the Kádhi; 10, Well Shedwánka; 11, Pools of Stagnant Water; 12, Kófa-n-Alkáli; 13, Masráta Hogúme; 14, Suburb of Ben Gottára.]