which met their eyes until they arrived at Tebelbelt, or Tebelbert, one hundred miles south of Segelmessa, a city thickly inhabited, abounding in water and dates. Here the inhabitants employ themselves greatly in hunting the ostrich, the flesh of which is among them an important article of food.
They now proceeded through a country utterly desolate, where a house or a well of water was not met with above once in a hundred miles, reckoning from the well of Asanad to that of Arsan, about one hundred and fifty miles north of Timbuctoo. In the first part of this journey, through what is called the desert of Zuensiga, numerous bodies of men who had died of thirst on their way were found lying along the sand, and not a single well of water was met with during nine days. It were to be wished that Leo had entered a little more minutely into the description of this part of his travels, but he dismisses it with the remark that it would have taken up a whole year to give a full account of what he saw. However, after a toilsome and dangerous journey, the attempt to achieve which has cost so many European lives, he reached Timbuctoo for the second time, the name of the reigning chief or prince being Abubellr Izchia.
The city of Timbuctoo, the name of which was first given to the kingdom of which it was the capital only about Leo's time, is said to have been founded in the 610th year of the Hejira, by a certain Meusa Suleyman, about twelve miles from a small arm or branch of the Niger. The houses originally erected here had now dwindled into small huts built with chalk and thatched with straw; but there yet remained a mosque built with stone in an elegant style of architecture, and a palace for which the sovereigns of Central Africa were indebted to the skill of a native of Granada. However, the number of artificers, merchants, and cloth and cotton weavers, who had all their shops in the city, was very con-
