For a month Laing was allowed to remain unmolested. Then he was ordered to leave the city of the Faithful. There was no resisting the mandate, and he passed forth on the 22nd September, only to be foully murdered two days later by the people who had undertaken to escort him across the desert. With him unfortunately perished the records of his observations and inquiries.
Two years later, Caillé, a somewhat illiterate, though persevering and intrepid Frenchman, entered the city from which Laing had been driven forth. Years before, this young explorer, in his far-off French home, had heard the echoes of African enterprise. Inflamed with the romantic story, he had seen by the blank maps of the continent how much there was to be done, and what fame there was to be acquired by him who could make his mark on those still virgin sheets. To be an African traveller became thenceforth the object of his life. For years he dreamed of and prepared himself for the work. But it was one thing to dream of—one thing even to reach the threshold of new lands—and quite another to penetrate them, as he soon found. Time after time his hopes, when almost at the point of realisation, were rudely dashed to the ground; but uncrushed, he waited his time and opportunity, though without private means, and conscious that the ears of the wealthy and the powerful were deaf to his schemes and representations.
But while Caillé dreamed and petitioned he also worked. As a subordinate official under the Government of Sierra Leone, he was enabled by dint of economy and industry to save the sum of £80. To him this slender sum appeared the “open sesame” of fame and fortune. It was the instrument whereby he should open the oyster shell, and gain the priceless pearl within.
On the 19th April 1827, Caillé left Kakundy, on the River Nunez, and midway between Sierra Leone and the Gambia, in the company of a small caravan of Mandingoes. Travelling east, he crossed the country of Futa Jallon, through which northward ran the upper tributaries of the Senegal, and eastward those of the Niger. The latter river was reached at Kurusa, in the district of Kankan, and was found to be even there a fine stream from eight to ten feet deep.
Having crossed the Niger, he continued east to the country of Wasulu, a well cultivated and thickly inhabited region. Thence he travelled north-east, till at length he again reached the banks of the Niger, a short distance to the west of Jenné. This town he was the first European to enter, though Park had seen it on his last journey.
From Jenné, Caillé sailed down the Niger in a rudely built vessel of considerable dimensions to Kabara, the port of Timbuktu, whence he proceeded on horseback to the city itself.
The aspect of Timbuktu in nowise realised the glowing anticipations of the traveller. Instead of the wealthy and powerful city, touched with the glamour of the shining orient, which he had been taught to expect, there lay before him only a collection of miserable mud buildings, among which rose several mosques, looking imposing only in comparison with the rude huts around them. To the north-east and south spread the immensity of the great desert as one vast plain of burning, repellent sands, over which the silence of death brooded, except where pariah dogs or loathsome vultures feasted on the carrion or offal thrown out of the town. Such was the place in which Commerce had established her Central African emporium, and gathered together the trading veins and arteries which ramified more or less throughout the whole of North-eastern Africa. Here, too, amid these dreary wastes, Moslem learning had made her seat; and here the religion of Islam had found an abiding centre from which to radiate its influence into the most barbarous depths of negro Africa.
Seen thus in relation to its surroundings, its position, and its functions, the mud huts and rudely built mosques which compose it acquire a tinge of the sublime, and strike the imagination more even than the stupendous wonders of a London or a Paris.
For a fortnight Caillé—secure in his disguise—remained in Timbuktu, after which he set forth with a caravan to cross the desert to Morocco. Along no other part of the Sahara does the desert appear in such a terror-striking aspect. Through one tract the caravan had to travel with all possible expedition for ten days, not a drop of water being obtainable. The privations endured were indescribable, men and animals alike being reduced to the direst extremity before water was reached and their tortures assuaged. Further north similar experiences awaited them, till the caravan arrived at the River Dra. Thence the march was performed with comparative comfort by way of Tafilet and the Atlas to Fez and Tangier, where Caillé arrived on the 18th August 1828.
