The shegar or king is always guarded by one hundred men on mules, armed with good guns, and one hundred men on foot, with guns and long knives.

He would not go into the millah, and we saw him only four or five times in the two moons we staid at Timbuctoo, waiting for the caravan; but it had perished in the desert, neither did the yearly caravan arrive from Tunis and Tripoli, for it also had been destroyed." "The city of Timbuctoo is very rich, as well as very large; it has four gates to it; all of them are opened in the day time, but very strongly guarded and shut at night.

The negro women are very fat and handsome, and wear large round gold rings in their noses, and flat ones in their ears, and gold chains and amber beads about their necks, with images and white fish bones, bent round, and the ends fastened together, hanging down between their breasts; they have bracelets on their wrists and on their ankles, and go barefooted.

I had bought a small snuff-box, filled with snuff, at Morocco, and showed it to the women in the principal street of Timbuctoo, which is very wide.

There were a great number about me in a few minutes, and they insisted on buying my snuff and box; one made me an offer, and another made me another, until one, who wore richer ornaments than the rest, told me, in broken Arabic, that she would take off all she had about her, and give them to me for the box and its contents.