René Caillié

Alexander Gordon Laing had left Tuat on January 10, 1826, and made for Timbuktu across the desert of Tanezrouft, one of the most desolate parts of the Sahara.

Letters written in May and July tell of his suffering from fever and the plundering of his caravan by another group of Tuareg.

Laing describes being wounded in twenty-four places in the fighting.

Together with another survivor, he had managed to reach Sidi Al Muktar, penniless and having lost his right hand.

He joined another caravan and reaches Timbuktu, thus becoming the first European to cross the Sahara from north to south.

His letter dated from Timbuktu on September 21 announced his arrival in that city on the preceding  August 18, and the insecurity of his position owing to the hostility of the Fula chieftain Bello, who rules the city at this time.

He adds that he intended leaving Timbuktu in three days time.

No further news will be received from the explorer.

From information pieced together later, it will be ascertained that he left Timbuktu on the day he had planned.

He was brutally strangled by Tuareg raiders—two men pulling on each end of a turban wrapped around Laing's neck—on or about the night of September 26, 1826.

Laing's papers will never be recovered, and his father-in-law Hanmer Warrington will accuse the French (who also want  to reach Timbuktu) of interference and having procured Laing's journal; however, there will never be any evidence for this.

René Caillié will reach Timbuktu two years after Laing and by returning alive will be able to claim the ten thousand-franc prize offered by the Société de Géographie for the feat.

Both men will be awarded the Gold Medal of the Society for 1830.

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 ...

...he continues his journey to Timbuktu by water.

The Scot Gordon Laing had arrived in September 1826 but had been killed shortly after by local Muslims who were fearful of European discovery and intervention. (Only three other Europeans will reach the city before 1890: Heinrich Barth in 1853 and the German Oskar Lenz with the Spanish Cristobal Benítez in 1880.)

After spending two weeks (April 20 to May 4) in Timbuktu, Caillié joins a caravan for its three-month crossing of the Sahara to Morocco. (He is to reach Fez on August 12, and from Tangier will return to France.)

The explorer René Caillié, returning in August to a hero's welcome in France, claims the prize of ten thousand francs offered by the Société de Géographie to the first traveler who should gain exact information of Timbuktu, to be compared with that given by Mungo Park.

He also receives the order of the Legion of Honor, a pension, and other distinctions.