Farther on, and near to the Sane-Gungu quarter,
is the Mosque of Sidi-Yahia and some two-story houses.
But do not look for either palaces or monuments: the
sheik is a mere son of traffic, and his royal palace is a
counting-house."
"It seems to me that I can see half-ruined ramparts,"
said Kennedy.
"They were destroyed by the Fouillanes in 1826; the
city was one-third larger then, for Timbuctoo, an object
generally coveted by all the tribes, since the eleventh
century, has belonged in succession to the Touaregs, the
Sonrayans, the Morocco men, and the Fouillanes; and this
great centre of civilization, where a sage like Ahmed-Baba
owned, in the sixteenth century, a library of sixteen hundred
manuscripts, is now nothing but a mere half-way house for
the trade of Central Africa."
The city, indeed, seemed abandoned to supreme neglect;
it betrayed that indifference which seems epidemic
to cities that are passing away. Huge heaps of rubbish
encumbered the suburbs, and, with the hill on which the
market-place stood, formed the only inequalities of the
ground.
When the Victoria passed, there was some slight show
of movement; drums were beaten; but the last learned
man still lingering in the place had hardly time to notice
the new phenomenon, for our travellers, driven onward
by the wind of the desert, resumed the winding course of
the river, and, ere long, Timbuctoo was nothing more than
one of the fleeting reminiscences of their journey.
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