quitoes to devour me, and frogs to leap upon me, when there is nothing which so revolts me?’ Ismail was an upright but not brilliant representative of his father’s stock. He replied with grief that he could do nothing. The Askia replied by telling him where there was a secret stock of money, who were the men whom he might trust, and how he was to come into touch with them. And, sitting in his miserable dungeon, in all the feebleness of blind old age, the still unconquered monarch planned and dictated a scheme by which his unworthy nephew was removed from the throne he had usurped, and Ismail was seated upon it in his place.”
Restored to a place of honor in the palace, the great Askia lived on until 1538, being aged about a hundred when he died. In any century and in any empire the qualities and deeds of Mohammed Abu Bekr Et-Tourti would entitle him to be called “the Great.” A few familiar dates will aid imagination to picture how remarkable this Central African ruler was in truth. He ascended the throne when Christopher Columbus was discovering America. He died when Henry VII of England was still on the throne. He was gathered to his fathers fifty years before the defeat of the Spanish Armada, seventy years before
