page_title: René Caillié
section_title: Journey to Timbuktu
hierarchical_section_title: René Caillié / Journey to Timbuktu
caption_attribution_description: English: René Caillié dressed in arab clothing. Picture is opposite page 74 in: Caillié, René (1830), Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo; and across the Great Desert, to Morocco, performed in the years 1824–1828. Vol. II, London: Colburn &amp; Bentley. Available from Google books here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y8wNAAAAQAAJ&amp;pg=PA74-IA1 The caption is: Mr. Caillié meditating upon the Koran and taking notes.
context_page_description: Auguste René Caillié was a French explorer and the first European to return alive from the town of Timbuktu. Caillié had been preceded at Timbuktu by a British officer, Major Gordon Laing, who was murdered in September 1826 on leaving the city. Caillié was therefore the first to return alive.
  Caillié was born in western France in a village near the port of Rochefort. His parents were poor and died while he was still young. At the age of 16 he left home and signed up as a member of the crew on a French naval vessel sailing to Saint-Louis on the coast of modern Senegal in western Africa. He stayed there for several months and then crossed the Atlantic to Guadeloupe on a merchantman. He made a second visit to West Africa two years later when he accompanied a British expedition across the Ferlo Desert to Bakel on the Senegal River.
  Caillié returned to Saint-Louis in 1824 with a strong desire to become an explorer and visit Timbuktu. In order to avoid some of the difficulties experienced by the earlier expeditions, he planned to travel alone disguised as a Muslim.
context_section_description: Starting from Kakondy near Boké on the Rio Nuñez on 19 April 1827, Caillié travelled east along the hills of Fouta Djallon, passing the head streams of the Senegal River and crossing the Upper Niger at Kurussa (now Kouroussa). 
  Caillié reached Kankan in present-day Guinea on 17 June 1827 travelling with a caravan transporting kola nuts. He stayed there for a month. The town was an important commercial centre with a market held three times a week. Instead of having a surrounding mud wall, the town was defended by quickset hedges. Caillié was advised not to travel north along the Milo River as the town of Kankan was fighting for control of the Bouré gold producing area around Siguiri and the Tinkisso River. Instead Caillié left the town heading east in the direction of Minignan in the Ivory Coast. He wished to visit Djenné but wanted to avoid the town of Ségou on the Niger River as Ségou was at war with Djenné. He also feared that he might be recognised as a Christian in Ségou as Mungo Park had visited the town in 1796. 
  Continuing eastwards he reached the Kong highlands, where at the village of Tiémé in present-day Ivory Coast, he was detained for five months (3 August 1827 – 9 January 1828) by illness. Resuming his journey in January 1828 he went north-east and reached the city of Djenné, where he stayed 11–23 March. Djenné lies 5 km (3.1 mi) north of the Bani River to which it is connected by a narrow channel that is only navigable in the wet season. Caillié confused the Bani with the Niger River (which he referred to as the Dhioliba). The Bani joins the Niger 115 km (71 mi) downstream from Djenné at Mopti (Caillié's Isaca). From Djenné he continued his journey to Timbuktu on a boat transporting merchandise and 20 slaves. After two days they arrived at the village of Kouna where the cargo was transferred to a larger vessel. The boat crossed Lac Débo and then followed the more easterly and smaller branch of the river, the Bara-Issa. At the busy port of Sa they were joined by 30 or 40 other vessels also heading for Timbuktu as travelling in a flotilla provided some degree of protection against bandits. He arrived in Timbuktu on 20 April 1828.
  In 1550 Leo Africanus described the inhabitants of Timbuktu as being very rich with a king that possessed large quantities of gold. The perception of Timbuktu as a very wealthy city had been fuelled by various accounts published in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Caillié recorded his first impression of the town: "I had formed a totally different idea of the grandeur and wealth of Timbuctoo. The city presented, at first view, nothing but a mass of ill looking houses, built of earth." He compared it unfavourably with Djenné:
  ... afterwards I took a turn round the city. I found it neither so large nor so populous as I had expected. Its commerce is not so considerable as fame has reported. There was not as at Jenné [Djenné] a concourse of strangers from all parts of the Soudan. I saw in the streets of Timbuctoo only the camels, which had arrived from Cabra [Kabara] laden with the merchandise of the flotilla, a few groups of the inhabitants sitting on mats, conversing together, and Moors lying asleep in the shade before their doors. In a word everything had a dull appearance.
  After spending a fortnight in Timbuktu, Caillié left the city on 4th May 1828 accompanying a caravan of 600 camels heading north across the Sahara Desert. After six days the caravan reached Araouane, a village 243 km (151 mi) north of Timbuktu that acted as an entrepôt in the trans-Sahara trade. When the caravan left Araouane on 19th May it included 1,400 camels and 400 men. It was transporting slaves, gold, ivory, gum, ostrich feathers, clothing and cloth. Caillie reached Fez on 12 August. From Tangier he returned by frigate to Toulon in France.
  Caillié had been preceded at Timbuktu by a British officer, Major Gordon Laing, who was murdered in September 1826 on leaving the city. Caillié was the first to return alive. He was awarded the prize of 9,000 francs offered by the Société de Géographie to the first trave
caption: Dressed in Arab clothing
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