NEGROLAND AND WESTERN ARABS 87 year 757 of our era. He describes it as being situated at the junction of several streams, in a plain of which the soil was impregnated with salt and was extraordinarily fertile. Among their crops the people grew ''Chinese wheat." The town was large, containing some very splendid buildings, and was surrounded by extensive suburbs and gardens. Grapes, dates, and all kinds of fruits were very plentiful, and amongst other industries the town was celebrated for drying raisins. There was a gold currency, and it was regarded as a peculiarity that gold pieces at Sidjilmessa were received by count and not by weight.

The founder and first governor of this town was black. It seems contrary to modern ideas that white people should under any circumstances consent to be ruled by blacks, but it will be seen that in the history of the Western Soudan this objection was not universally felt. Instances are common, especially in the western portions of the territory of the Soudan, of Berbers paying tribute to black sovereigns. The Fulani, who counted themselves a white race, were constantly subject to black rulers, and it is related of the black women of one of the kingdoms of the Soudan, that when their monarch was overthrown by a contemporary Berber king, they, " too proud to allow themselves to fall into the hands of white men," preferred to commit suicide.

Sidjilmessa was already Mohammedan in El Bekri's time. It was the meeting-place of many roads : those leading from Wargelan and other places in the Barbary States which were marts of the trade of the Soudan, and also from Morocco, Telemgan, and the coast. For all these roads it formed the most westerly entrance to the desert.

From Sidjilmessa to Ghana in the Land of Blacks there was a march of nearly two months to be made across a practically uninhabited desert. Throughout this vast region only nomad tribes were in El Bekri's day to be met with, having, he says, no town for their head-