All the native inhabitants of Timbuctoo are zealous Mahometans; their dress is similar to that of the Moors. Like the Arabs, they are allowed to have four wives each. The women attend to domestic occupations, and they are not like the Mandingo females, subject to the punishment of beating. The people of Timbuctoo, who are in constant communication with the half-civilized inhabitants of the Mediterranean, have some idea of the dignity of human nature. I have constantly observed in my travels, that in proportion as a people was uncivilized the women were always more enslaved. The female sex in Africa have reason to pray for the progress of cultivation. The women of Timbuctoo are not veiled like those of Morocco: they are allowed to go out when they please, and are at liberty to see any one. The people are gentle and complaisant to strangers. In trade they are industrious and intelligent; and the traders are generally wealthy and have many slaves. The men are of the ordinary size, well made, upright, and walk with a firm step. Their colour is a fine deep black. Their noses are a little more aquiline than those of the Mandigoes, and like them they have thin lips and large eyes. I saw some women who might be considered pretty. They are all well fed: their meals, of which they take two a day, consist of rice, and couscous made of small millet, dressed with meat or dried fish. Those negroes who are in easy circumstances, like the Moors, breakfast on wheaten bread, tea, and butter made from cow’s milk. Those of inferior condition use vegetable butter. Generally speaking, the negroes are not so well lodged as the Moors. The latter have great influence over them, and indeed, consider themselves far their superiors. [Illustration: WOMAN OF THE CITY OF TIMBUCTOO.] The inhabitants of Timbuctoo are exceedingly neat in their dress and in the interior of their dwellings. Their domestic articles consist of calabashes and wooden platters. They are unacquainted with the use of knives and forks, and they believe that, like them, all people in the world eat with their fingers. Their furniture merely consists of mats for sitting on; and their beds are made by fixing four stakes in the ground at one end of the room, and stretching over them some mats or a cow-hide. The rich have cotton mattresses, and coverlets, which the neighbouring Moors manufacture from camel’s hair and sheep’s wool. I saw a woman of Cabra employed in spinning these coverlets.