It is a pity that Leo says nothing about the language spoken in Ágades[173]; for he lived just at the very period during which the town, from a Berber settlement, became a Negro town. His expression[174] certainly implies that he regarded it as a Negro town. But, while well- informed in general respecting the great conquests of Mohammed Áskiá (or, as he calls him, Ischia, whom he erroneously styles king of Timbúktu), he does not once mention his expedition against Ágades, of which he might have heard as easily as of those against Kátsena and Kanó, which preceded the former only by two years. From his account it would seem that the town was then in a very flourishing state, full of foreign merchants and slaves, and that the king, though he paid a tribute of 150,000 ducats to the king of Timbúktu (Gágho), enjoyed a great degree of independence, at least from that quarter, and had even a military force of his own. Besides, it is stated expressly that he belonged to the Berber race.[175] But it would almost seem as if Leo in this passage represented the state of things as it was when he visited the town, before Áskiá’s time, and not at the date when he wrote, though the circumstance of the tribute payable to that king may have been learnt from later information. In general, the great defect in Leo’s description is, that the reader has no exact dates to which to refer the several statements, and that he cannot be sure how far the author speaks as an eye-witness, and how far from information.[176]