ADAMS OF TIMBUKTU.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10196, 4 July 1911, Page 2

ADAMS OF TIMBUKTU.

CENTURY-OLD GEOGRAPHICAL HOAX. . In October, 1815, there wandered about the docks of London vainly looking lor work an American sailor newly recovered from a severe illness, idle and poverty-stricken. But. ll lioiiert Adams, for sucn was the sailor's name, :it toe moment lacked goocl lortune lie deserved it. and at no distant date achieved it. tor this American adventurer had a marvellous tale to relate, did in fact, from time to time stop the passers-by to telJ tiiem that he was newly cciuo from limbuktu, then '' the mysterious," that lie had spent three months m this unknown Airican capital. Adams sailed from New "York in June, 1810, on the ship Charles, which touched at Gibraltar, dropped down the Airican coast to Cape Blanco, and was wrecked. Sailing in search of slaves, the ship's crew, such as survived the wreck, found themselves presently the slaves of a party of Moors who came upon them on the seashore. Several years after, Adams appeared on the Moroccan coast at Mogador, was ransomed by the British Consul, and went to England. The story he told of his African adventure was as follows: — His Moorish captors were themselves set upon by negroes, carried off to Timbuktu, a twenty-live days' march, and there sold into slavery, all but Adams, who, as a new kind of human being, was reserved to amuse the Queen of Timbuktu, permitted to walk the streets, to study the people. Ultimately he was carried north across the desert to Mogador and there ransomed. 1 f news travelled more slowly then and there were lacking the efficient makers of ship news for the newspapers. still tue narrative of Adams came at last to the ears of members of that association devoted to the patronage of exploration in the interior of Africa, which among its members Palnierston and Northumberland. Five guineas was the memberI ship subscription of this aristocratic association, which had sent Mungo j I'ark to the Niger and Major Houghton to the Gambia.

Even in that remote day explorers were objects of suspicion, und not easily did the story of Adams acquire merit in the minds of the members of the African Association. A simple sailor man Adams seems to have been, unable to lead or write, and when his tale reached the African Association he was promptly hailed before a tribunal, examined, cross-examined, questions and answers were set down and a week after repeated. But from this examination Adams emerged triumphant. Then his story, reduced to writing, was submitted to Bathurst, Chance'lor of the Exchequer, and at the appropriate time there came a fitting reward for the hitherto unlucky sailor. Subsequently the member of the British Cabinet charged with the War Department reported the following impression, derived from a reading of the records of Adams as transcribed by the learned members of the Association : " After the examination of your work which 1 have made and tlio confirmatory declarations that I have heard by word of mouth from Adams himself, I remain perfectly convinced of the truth of all the accounts you have had from this traveller." On his part Adams seems to have recognised the need of realising in a rising market. Presently he announced that he must depart, that the call of Africa had sounded again in his ears. To tho distinguished members of the

African Society nothing was more natural, more in keeping with the part of a man who had actually readied the heart of Africa. Negotiations of a satisfactory character followed, there was an immediate reward, there was the promise of a further benefit later, and the entire profits to be derived from the publication of the book, the great book, edited by the members of the learned society, which was to contain the record of the amazing visit to Timbuktu. Thus the volume was written, passed into the permanent record of African exploration, may yet tie found in the bibliography of the Nisrer. Such is the story of Robert Adams as told by the most famous of all contemporary of French travellers in the Timbuktu region, Felix Dubois, who seventeen years ago crossed irom the Senegal to the Niger and in a river boat descended this stream to Timbuktu, setting forth in his subsequent narrative, "Timbuktu, the Mysterious," the first description of this ancient stronghold as the French found it. He tells it in his recent book, Notre Beau Niger." written after a journey from the? Mediterranean across the Sahara to the Niger and from the Niger by Timbuktu to the Atlantic. As one visitor to Timbuktu interested in the experiences of a predecessor, M. Dubois devotes a chapter to examining the century old story of Robert Adams, whose name had stared at him from all the : geographies and histories he had read. I Dubois's analysis of the statements of I Adams is too minute to permit repetition. Adams found the city composed j of buildings of one story, without 1 streets, with no mosques, without any evidence ol religion anywhere. Dubois found ancient mosques, high houses, i unmistakable streets, and a population i which twice a day prostrated itself in i the sand to worship Allah, as their ! ancestors had for centuries. Further, : he writes: " According to Adams, Timbuktu was situated 700 feet from a river called Mar-Zarah, half a mile wide here and filled with brackish water. It flowed south-west between two mountains as high as the Atlas. But the Niger at

Timbuktu is fresh, flows five miles from the town through a perfectly flat plain, and its direction is north-east." According to Adams the principal fruits of Timbuktu were pineapples and cocoanuts, but pineapples require a moist climate, and the Sahara is at tlio gates of Timbuktu; as for the cocoa-nut, it is found only on the seacoast. 1' urther similar evidence is supplied at great length, and Dubois concludes: " If any further proof that ho was in impostor were needed, one would find't in Adams's description of his road from Timbuktu to Taudeni. .For ten days, he says, he followed a watercourse in a country which was like a lawn and covered with a sort of moss. But the road to Morocco, far from offering such allurements, is marked by an utter absence of water, by sand and sand alone, for it is the true desert." So M. Dubois disposes of the legend of Adams. For the story itself his explanation is simple. The shipwreck and the arrival at Mogador are matter of records. The period of Moorish slavery is easily credible. From _ his Jello-v slaves, negroes of the Niger Valley, *\dams learned of tho river, but of tho river as it flowed, not by Timbuktu, but by Bammaku, five hundred miles upstream, where the banks are mountainous. As for the Queen of Timbuktu, described by Adams in' a manner suggesting the sailor rather than the scientist, she, her attendants, the _inhabitants of Timbuktu, are but fabrications ; their costumes, customs, manners—these are but faithful descriptions jf the negro slaves, with whom Adams lived as a fellow slave for several years. Dubois's closing comment is not uninteresting. He writes of the geographers. those members of a learned society who blazed the path since followed in Denmark and elsewhere by equally eminent geographers: '' They were but the first victims of that transatlantic importation 'le bluff' ! Let us be just to everybody, even to Adams. The simple sailor played his bluff with a master hand, for he turned it into honour and fortune at the time, and a century later his fame survives." Naturally Adams saw no " purple snows," the field of his scientific research precluded such a contribution. But the Niger, rolling down between the mountains of Timbuktu a mass of .salt water while yet a thousand miles from the sea—this is an honourable contribution of imagination, and suggests an equality of genius between the sailor and that other explorer who almost precisely a century later came as near to the North Pole as did Adams to Timbuktu.