The Reserve, With Which We Have Seen Grounds For Receiving The Testimony Of The Natives Of Africa, May Reasonably Accompany Us In Our Further Comparative Examination Of Their Accounts And Those Of Adams, Respecting The Population And External Appearance Of The City Of Timbuctoo.

We cannot give such latitude to our credulity as to confide in the statements of Sidi Hamet; nor do we place much reliance on the account of Caillie, who was the last European who may be said to have entered its walls.

Notwithstanding, therefore, the alleged splendour of its court, the polish of its inhabitants, its civilized institutions, and other symptoms of refinement, which some modern accounts or speculations, founded on native reports, have taught us to look for, we are disposed to receive the humbler descriptions of Adams, as approaching with much greater probability to the truth. Let us, however, not be understood as rating too highly the value of a sailor's reports. They must of necessity be defective in a variety of ways. Many of the subjects upon which Adams was questioned, were evidently beyond the competency of such an individual fully to comprehend or satisfactorily to describe; and we must be content to reserve our final estimates of the morals, religion, civil polity, and learning, if the term may be allowed us, of the negroes of Timbuctoo, until we obtain more conclusive information than could possibly have been derived from so illiterate a man as Adams. A sufficiency, however, may be gathered from his story, to prepare us for a disappointment of the extravagant expectations, which have been indulged respecting this boasted city.

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