With regard to exports, they consisted, at the time of my stay in the place, of very little besides gold and a moderate quantity of gum and wax, while ivory and slaves, as far as I was able to ascertain, seemed not to be exported to any considerable amount. However, a tolerable proportion of the entire export from these regions proceeds by way of Árawán, without touching at Timbúktu. At any rate, those gentlemen who estimate the annual export of slaves from Negroland to Morocco at about 4000[22] are certainly mistaken, although in this, as well as in other respects, the exceptional and anarchical state of the whole country at the time of my residence, and my own most critical situation, did not allow me to arrive at any positive results. Thus much is certain, that an immense field is here opened to European energy, to revive the trade which, under a stable government, formerly animated this quarter of the globe, and which might again flourish to great extent. For the situation of Timbúktu is of the highest commercial importance, lying as it does at the point where the great river of Western Africa, in a serpentlike winding, approaches most closely to that outlying and most extensive oasis of “the far West,”—Mághreb el Aksa, of the Mohammedan world,—I mean Tawát, which forms the natural medium between the commercial life of this fertile and populous region and the north; and whether it be Timbúktu, Waláta, or Ghánata, there will always be in this neighbourhood a great commercial _entrepôt_, as long as mankind retain their tendency to international intercourse and exchange of produce. [Footnote 1: I possess two of these essays, the contents of which at the present moment are not quite devoid of interest, as they show in what light these Mohammedans regard the Christians.] [Footnote 2: I assume here the identity of these two rivers, which, however, has not yet been fully demonstrated. Compare also the anomalous rising of the Chobé (Journ. Royal Geol. Soc., vol. xxii. p. 169.); although an isolated phenomenon, caused by an unusual and unequal fall of rain in the basin of the various branches of a great river-system, must not be confounded with a constant and regular course.] [Footnote 3: See Isert in the Journal Hertha, vol. x. a. 1827, p. 374.; M‘Gill in Berghaus’s Journal (Zeitschrift), vol. viii. a. 1848, p. 59-61.; with regard to Cape Palmas, Fraissinet in Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 1855, vol. ii. p. 291-293.]