As this passage is quoted from Aly Bey, by the first literary society of Great Britain, and is, therefore, calculated to create a doubt of the accuracy of what I have said, respecting the distance of the Nile El Abeed from Timbuctoo, in the enlarged editions of my account of Marocco, &c. page 297. I consider it a duty which I owe 436 to my country and to myself, not to let this sentence pass through the press without submitting to the public my observations on the subject.
Sidi Matte Buhlal is a native of Fas: the name is properly Sidi El Mattie Bû Hellal. This gentleman is one out of twenty authorities from whom I derived the information recorded in my account of Marocco, respecting Timbuctoo and the interior of Africa; his whole family, which is respectable and numerous, are among the first Timbuctoo merchants that have their establishments at Fas. I should, however, add, that among the many authorities from whom I derived my information relative to Timbuctoo, there were two muselmen in particular,--merchants of respectability and intelligence, who came from Timbuctoo to Santa Cruz, soon after _I opened that port to Dutch commerce, in the capacity of agent of Holland, by order of the then Emperor of Marocco, Muley Yezzid_, brother and predecessor of the present Emperor Soliman. These two gentlemen had resided at Timbuctoo, and in other parts of Sudan, fifteen years, trading during the whole of that period with Darbeyta, on the coast of the Red Sea, with Jinnie, Housa, Wangara, Cashna, and other countries of the interior, from whom, and from others, equally intelligent and credible, I procured my information respecting the _mediterranean sea in the interior of Africa, called El Bahar Assudan, i.e. the Sea of Sudan_, situated fifteen days' 437 journey east of Timbuctoo. These two muselmen merchants had amassed considerable fortunes at Timbuctoo, and were on their journey to Fas, their native place; but in consequence of a civil war at that time raging throughout West Barbary, particularly in the province of Haha, through which it was indispensable that they should pass, on their way to Fas, they sojourned with me two months; after which they departed for Fas with a caravan.