Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/419

 amphitheater of small houses appeared at the bend of the river; on the roofs and terraces was collected all the provender received from the neighboring districts.

"There is Kabra," cried the doctor, joyfully. "It is the port of Timbuctoo, the town is not five miles distant."

"Are you satisfied now, sir?" asked Joe.

"Delighted, my lad."

"So much the better," said Joe.

In two hours, the "Queen of the Desert," the mysterious Timbuctoo—which at one time possessed, like Rome and Athens, its professors and philosophers—unfolded itself before the travelers' eyes.

Ferguson perceived that Barth's plan of it was correct in its minutest detail. The town describes a vast triangle upon a plain of white sand. The apex is towards the north. There is nothing in the neighborhood but a little grass, some mimosas, and stunted trees.

As for the appearance of Timbuctoo, its streets were narrow, and bordered with one-storied houses made of bricks, and huts of straw and reeds; the former of a conical shape, the latter square. Over the terraces some of the inhabitants were lazily extended, robed in gaudy colors, lance or musket in hand.

No women, however, were visible at that hour.

"But it is said they are beautiful," added the doctor. "Do you see the three towers of the three mosques, which are all that are left of a great number. The town is much divested of its former splendor. At the apex of the triangle rises the Mosque of Sankore, with its ranges of galleries supported by arcades of a very pure style. Further on is the quarter of Saua Gungu, the mosque of Sidi Yahia, and some two-storied houses. There are no palaces nor monuments. The sheik is only a trader, and his residence, a shop."

"It appears to me," said Kennedy, "that there are some broken ramparts."

"They were destroyed by the Foullanes in 1826, when the town was larger by a third; for Timbuctoo, from the eleventh century, was an object coveted generally, and belonged successively to the Touaregs, to the Sourayens, to the Marocuins, and Foullanes; and this great center of