Timbuktu (in present Mali) had begun to…

Timbuktu (in present Mali) had begun to decline after explorers and slavers from Portugal, then other European countries landed in West Africa, providing an alternative to the city’s slave market and the trade route through the world's largest desert.

The decline had been hastened in 1591 when Morisco mercenaries armed with European-style guns invaded the city in the service of the Moroccan sultan.

Many European individuals and organizations have made great efforts to discover Timbuktu and its fabled riches.

A group of titled Englishmen had formed the African Association in 1788 with the goal of finding the city and charting the course of the Niger River.

The Paris based Société de Géographie has a standing offer of ten thousand francs to the first European to see and return alive from Timbuktu, believed to be a rich and wondrous city.

French explorer René Caillié, who had sailed to the West Indies and twice explored Senegal while still in his teens, had determined to visit Timbuktu.

The reading of Robinson Crusoe had kindled in him a love of travel and adventure, and at the age of sixteen he had made a voyage to Senegal whence he went to Guadeloupe.

Returning to Senegal in 1818, he had made a journey to Bondu to carry supplies to a British expedition then in that country.

Ill with fever, he had been obliged to go back to France, but in 1824 was again in Senegal with the idea of reaching Timbuktu.

Caillié had spent eight months with the Brakna Moors living north of the Senegal River, learning Arabic and being taught, as a convert, the laws and customs of Islam.

He laid his project of reaching Timbuktu before the governor of Senegal, but receiving no encouragement went to Sierra Leone where the British authorities made him superintendent of an indigo plantation.

Having saved £80, he has joined a Mandingo caravan going inland.

Dressed as a Muslim, he gives gave out that he is an Arab from Egypt who had been carried off by the French to Senegal and is desirous of regaining his own country.

Starting from Kakundi near Boké on the Rio Nunez on April 19, 1827, he has traveled east along the hills of Fouta Djallon, passing the head streams of the Senegal and crossing the Upper Niger at Kurussa.

Continuing east, he had come to the Kong highlands, where at a place called Time he had been detained five months by illness.

Resuming his journey in January 1828, the twenty-eight-year-old explorer travels northeast and reaches the city of Djenné, whence ...