René Caillé
Encyclopedia
Timbuktu
Timbuktu , formerly also spelled Timbuctoo, is a town in the West African nation of Mali situated north of the River Niger on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. The town is the capital of the Timbuktu Region, one of the eight administrative regions of Mali...
.
Caillié was born at Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon
Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon
Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon is a commune in the Deux-Sèvres department in western France.-References:*...
, Deux-Sèvres
Deux-Sèvres
Deux-Sèvres is a French département. Deux-Sèvres literally means "two Sèvres": the Sèvre Nantaise and the Sèvre Niortaise are two rivers which have their sources in the department.-History:...
, Poitou
Poitou
Poitou was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers.The region of Poitou was called Thifalia in the sixth century....
, the son of a baker. He was born into the lowest levels of European society. The orphaned son of a prison convict, uneducated, frail, and thin, he was the antithesis of the traditional military commander adventurer. The reading of Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
kindled in him a love of travel and adventure, and at the age of sixteen he made a voyage to Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
whence he went to Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...
. Returning to Senegal in 1818 he made a journey to Bondu
Bondu
Bondu was a state in West Africa, later a French protectorate dependent on the colony of Senegal. It lay between the Faleme River and the upper course of the Gambia River, that is between 13 and 15 N., and 12 and 13 W.-Description:...
to carry supplies to a British expedition then in that country. Ill with fever he was obliged to go back to France, but in 1824 was again in Senegal with the idea of reaching Timbuktu. The Paris based Société de Géographie
Société de Géographie
The Société de Géographie , is the world's oldest geographical society. It was founded in 1821 . Since 1878, its headquarters has been at 184 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris. The entrance is marked by two gigantic caryatids representing Land and Sea...
was offering a 10,000 franc reward to the first European to see and return alive from Timbuktu, believed to be a rich and wondrous city.
He spent eight months with the Brakna Moors living north of the Senegal River
Sénégal River
The Sénégal River is a long river in West Africa that forms the border between Senegal and Mauritania.The Sénégal's headwaters are the Semefé and Bafing rivers which both originate in Guinea; they form a small part of the Guinean-Malian border before coming together at Bafoulabé in Mali...
, learning Arabic and being taught, as a convert, the laws and customs of Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. He laid his project of reaching Timbuktu before the governor of Senegal, but receiving no encouragement went to Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
where the British authorities made him superintendent of an indigo
Indigo
Indigo is a color named after the purple dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria and related species. The color is placed on the electromagnetic spectrum between about 420 and 450 nm in wavelength, placing it between blue and violet...
plantation. Having saved £80 he joined a Mandingo
Mandinka people
The Mandinka, Malinke are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa with an estimated population of eleven million ....
caravan going inland. He was dressed as a Muslim, and gave out that he was an Arab from Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
who had been carried off by the French to Senegal and was desirous of regaining his own country.
Starting from Kakondy near Boké
Boké
Boké is the capital city of Boké Prefecture within the Boké Region of Lower Guinea near the border with Guinea-Bissau. It is also a sub-prefecture of Guinea. Located along the Rio Nuñez which flows to its not-too-distant mouth on the Atlantic Ocean, Boké is a port. It is known for the Fortin de...
on the Rio Nuñez on April 19, 1827, he travelled east along the hills of Fouta Djallon
Fouta Djallon
Fouta Djallon is a highland region in the centre of Guinea, West Africa. The indigenous name is Fuuta-Jaloo...
, passing the head streams of the Senegal and crossing the Upper Niger at Kurussa. Still going east he came to the Kong highlands, where at a place called Time he was detained five months by illness. Resuming his journey in January 1828 he went north-east and reached the city of Djenné
Djenné
Djenné is an Urban Commune and town in the Inland Niger Delta region of central Mali. In the 2009 census the commune had a population of 32,944. Administratively it is part of the Mopti Region....
, whence he continued his journey to Timbuktu by water. After spending a fortnight (April 20 - May 4) in Timbuktu he joined a caravan crossing the Sahara
Sahara
The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...
to Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, reaching Fez on the August 12. From Tangier he returned to France.
Caillié was preceded at Timbuktu by a British officer, Major Gordon Laing
Alexander Gordon Laing
Major Alexander Gordon Laing was a Scottish explorer and the first European to reach Timbuktu via the north/south route.-Education and service:...
, but Laing had been murdered in September 1826 on leaving the city and Caillié was the first to return alive. He was awarded the prize of 10,000 francs offered by the Société de Géographie to the first traveller who should gain exact information of Timbuktu, to be compared with that given by Mungo Park
Mungo Park (explorer)
Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the Niger River.-Early life:...
. He also received the order of the Legion of Honor, a pension, and other distinctions, and it was at the public expense that his Journal d'un voyage à Temboctou et à Jenné dans l'Afrique Centrale, etc. (edited by Edmé-François Jomard
Edmé-François Jomard
Edme François Jomard was a French cartographer, engineer, and archaeologist. He edited the Description de L'Égypte and was a member of the Institut d'Egypt established by Napoleon. He supervised the educational and cultural mission sent to France from Egypt by Muhammad Ali of Egypt....
) was published in three volumes in 1830.
Caillié died on May 17, 1838, at La Gripperie-Saint-Symphorien (then Saint-Symphorien-du-Bois), commune of Charente-Maritime
Charente-Maritime
Charente-Maritime is a department on the west coast of France named after the Charente River.- History :Previously a part of Saintonge, Charente-Inférieure was one of the 83 original departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...
where he owned the manor L'Abadaire, of a malady contracted during his African travels. For the greater part of his life he spelt his name Caillé, afterwards omitting the second "i".
Caillié is remarkable for his approach to exploration. In a period given to large scale expeditions supported by soldiers and employing black porters, Caillié spent years learning Arabic, studying the customs and Islamic religion before setting off with a companion, and later on his own, traveling and living as the natives did. He also did not romanticize his discoveries to increase his fame, unlike Laing who recorded that Timbuktu was a wondrous city, Caillié told the truth: it was a small, unimportant, and poor village with no hint of the fabled reputation that preceded it (and which it had once deserved).
Further reading
. Google books: Volume 1, Volume 2.. Gallica: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3. Google books: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3..See also
- Scramble for AfricaScramble for AfricaThe Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914...