The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917

The second kind of caravans were those conducted by merchants, traveling with hired camels, and making rapid and direct journeys across the desert to and from the chief slave markets. These caravans would come into the Sudan composed of men mounted upon camels, asses and mules, bringing salt, hides, cloth, and sundry articles from civilized North Africa, and return with slaves through Tibbu to Fezzan, and there fatten them for the Tripoli slave markets. Those that came to Timbuktu returned to any of the Barbary States, and there transferred their slaves to other traders who carried them as far as Turkey in Asia. Those that came to Kano usually passed out by