128 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY During the reign of Mansa Musa the limits of the Mellestine were extended over the desert until they became practically conterminous with those of Morocco and the westernmost portion of the Barbary States. They were separated from them only by a belt of shifting sands, of the breadth of a three days' journey, known to the Arabs under the name of ''El Areg," or **The Dunes," which, uninhabited by any peoples, stretched more or less continuously across the continent from the Atlantic to the Nile. The Mellestine had by this time become so important that all its towns were frequented by the merchants of Morocco, Barbary, and Egypt. The capital is described by a contemporary writer as a place of considerable extent, very populous and commercial. Numerous streams watered the cultivated lands which surrounded it. Merchandise from all countries was sent to it, and it was the meeting-place of caravans from Morocco, North Africa, and Egypt. The system of government and justice established by Musa would seem to have been that which animated the political existence of Melle during the prosperous period of its history.

Mansa Musa himself reigned twenty-five years, and his death, which took place between the sending of his deputation to congratulate Abou el Hagen on the conquest of Teleman in 1337 and the arrival of the return present of Abou el Hagen, must have been presumably not later than 1339, more probably 1338. Ibn Khaldun says of him : *' Mansa Musa was distinguished by his ability and by the holiness of his life. The justice of his administration was such that the memory of it still lives." This was perhaps not much to say at the end of the fourteenth century, when he had hardly been dead for sixty years ; but nearly 300 years later his Songhay historian, writing with no bias in his favour, in the middle of the seventeenth century, repeats the praise and speaks of him as a pious and equitable prince, unequalled for virtue or uprightness.