of the tawny Moors, and tawny Moors have their good points and their bad. Their good point, from our present point of view, is their commercial enterprise. From the earliest historical account we have of them to the present day, it has been their habit to suck the trade out of the rich and fertile districts, carry it across the desert, and trade it with the white Moors, who, in their turn, carried it to the Mediterranean and Red Sea ports. The opening of the West Coast seaboard trade, inaugurated by the Portuguese, has acted as a commercial loss to the tawny Moors during the past 400 years, and must be held, in a measure, accountable for the decay of the great towns of Timbuctoo, Jenne, Mele, and so on, though only in a measure, for herein comes the bad point of the inhabitants of the Western Soudan, from our point of view, namely, their devotion to religious differences and politics, which prevents their attending to business. As this state of internecine war came on about the same period as the opening to the black Moors and negroes of a market direct with European traders in the Bight of Benin, it hurried the tawny Moors to commercial decay. Timbuctoo never recovered the blow dealt her by the Moorish conquest in 1591. At the breaking up of the Empire of Askia the Great, revolt and war raged through the region, Jenne revolted in the west, an example followed by the Touaregs Fulah and Malinkase tribes. Both north and south were thrown into confusion, and Timbuctoo, their intermediary, finding her commerce injured, rebelled in her turn. She was conquered and brutally repressed by the Moorish conquerors in 1594. A terrible dearth provoked by a lack of rain visited the town, and her inhabitants were reduced to eating the corpses
