This character of the author would alone be sufficient to guarantee the trustworthiness of his history, as far as he was able to go back into the past with any degree of accuracy, from the oral traditions of the people, or from written documents of an older period: for that the beginning of his annals, like that of every other nation, should be enveloped in a certain degree of mystery and uncertainty is very natural, and our author himself is prudent enough to pass over the earlier part in the most rapid and cursory manner, only mentioning the mere name of each king, except that he states the prominent facts with regard to the founder of each dynasty. Nay, even what he says of the founder of the dynasty of the Zá, allowance being made for the absurd interpretation of names, which is usual with Arabs and Orientals in general, and also the particulars which he gives with regard to Kilun, or Kilnu, founder of the dynasty of the Sonni[88], is very characteristic, and certainly true in the main. For there is no doubt that the founder of the first dynasty immigrated from a foreign country,—a circumstance which is confirmed by other accounts,— and nothing is more probable than that he abolished the most striking features of pagan superstition, namely, the worship of a peculiar kind of fish, which was probably the famous ayú, or _Manatus_, of which I have spoken on a former occasion[89], and of whose habitat in the waters of the Niger I shall say more further on; while ʿAlí Killun succeeded in usurping the royal power by liberating his country from the sovereignty of the kings of Melle, who had conquered Songhay about the middle of the fourteenth century. Nor can there be any doubt of the truth of the statement that Zá-Kasí, the fifteenth king of the dynasty of the Zá, about the year 400 of the Hejra, or in the beginning of the eleventh century of our era, embraced Islám, and was the first Mohammedan king of Songhay. No man who studies impartially those very extracts which I have been able to make from the manuscript, in great haste and under the most unfavourable circumstances, and which were translated and published in the journal of the Leipsic Oriental Society[90] by Mr. Ralfs, can deny that they contain a vast amount of valuable information. But the knowledge which Europeans possessed of those countries, before my discoveries, was so limited, as to render the greater part of the contents of my extracts, which are intimately related to localities formerly entirely unknown, or in connection with historical facts not better ascertained, difficult of comprehension. But with the light now shed by my journey and my researches over these regions and their inhabitants, I have no hesitation in asserting that the work of Áhmed Bábá will be one of the most important additions which the present age has made to the history of mankind, in a branch which was formerly almost unknown.