From Timbuctoo Leo proceeded to the town of Cabra on the Niger, which was then supposed to discharge its waters into the Atlantic; for the merchants going to the coast of Guinea embarked upon the river at this place, whence they dropped down the stream to the seashore. Still travelling southward, he arrived at a large city without walls, which he calls Gajo, four hundred miles from Timbuctoo. Excepting the dwellings of the prince and his courtiers, the houses were mere huts, though many of the merchants are said to have been wealthy, while an immense concourse of Moors and other strangers flocked thither to purchase the cloths and other merchandise of Barbary and Europe. The inhabitants of the villages and the shepherds, by far the greater portion of the population, lived in extreme misery, and, poverty extinguishing all sense of decorum, went so nearly naked, that even the distinctions of sex were scarcely concealed. In winter they wrapped themselves in the skins of animals, and wore a rude kind of sandal manufactured from camel's hide.
This was the term of Leo's travels towards the south. He now turned his face towards the rising sun, and proceeding three hundred miles in that direction, amid the dusky and barbarous tribes who crouch beneath the weight of tyranny and ignorance in that part of Africa, arrived in the kingdom of Guber, having on the way crossed a desert of considerable extent, which commences about forty miles beyond the Niger. The whole country was a plain, inundated in the rainy season by the Niger, and surrounded by lofty mountains. Agriculture and the useful arts were here cultivated with activity. Flocks and cattle abounded, but their size was extremely diminutive. The sandal worn by the inhabitants exactly resembled that of the ancient Romans. From hence he proceeded to Agad, a city and country tributary to Timbuctoo, inhabited by the fairest
