"
"Still another victim!" said the sportsman.
"It was then that a brave young man, with his own
feeble resources, undertook and accomplished the most
astonishing of modern journeys--I mean the Frenchman
Rene Caillie, who, after sundry attempts in 1819 and 1824,
set out again on the 19th of April, 1827, from Rio Nunez.
On the 3d of August he arrived at Time, so thoroughly
exhausted and ill that he could not resume his journey
until six months later, in January, 1828. He then joined
a caravan, and, protected by his Oriental dress, reached
the Niger on the 10th of March, penetrated to the city
of Jenne, embarked on the river, and descended it, as far
as Timbuctoo, where he arrived on the 30th of April. In
1760, another Frenchman, Imbert by name, and, in 1810, an
Englishman, Robert Adams, had seen this curious place;
but Rene Caillie was to be the first European who could
bring back any authentic data concerning it. On the 4th
of May he quitted this 'Queen of the desert;' on the 9th,
he surveyed the very spot where Major Laing had been
murdered; on the 19th, he arrived at El-Arouan, and left
that commercial town to brave a thousand dangers in
crossing the vast solitudes comprised between the Soudan
and the northern regions of Africa.
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