Through much of the month of November 1815, an illiterate African American sailor sat in an office in the City of London, talking with some of the most powerful men in Britain about Timbuctoo. Had they passed him in the crowded streets of Regency London, these men of affairs — merchants, statesmen, scientists, and military officers — would not even have glanced at the dark, impoverished, and sickly figure sitting before them. But he had a story to tell that they could not afford to ignore. He had, he claimed, crossed the deadly Sahara as a slave, spent six months in the fabled city on the Niger, and (most remarkably) returned to tell the tale. For those who listened to his narrative, this was important news indeed. No reliable witness — that is, no one from the West — had brought Europe information about Timbuctoo since Leo Africanus in the sixteenth century, and Leo was, after all, but a Christianized Moor of Granada. An account of Timbuctoo by an ignorant American “mulatto” might require some sifting, but his subject was worth the effort. For the City merchants in attendance, the word Timbuctoo triggered visions of a great emporium in the African interior, the wealth of which rested mainly on its trade in gold and slaves. Those who came from Westminster and Whitehall, fresh from conversations about Britain's role in the world five months after Waterloo, thought of both gold and national power. A lot might depend on what this black man had to say.