The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 1 (of 2) / By His Wife, Isabel Burton

He made my husband a Brigadier-General of his Amazons, and I was madly jealous from afar; for I imagined lovely women in flowing robes, armed, and riding thoroughbred Arabs, and above is the Amazon as, to my great relief, I found she was (afterwards). The King gave him a string of green beads, which was a kind of Dahoman "Garter," a necklace of human bones for his favourite squaw, and a silver chain and Cross with a Chameleon on it. We traced in it the presence of former missionaries, who doubtless found that their crucifixes were thought to be a delightful invention for the King to crucify men, and therefore they replaced it by the chameleon. I have lost my paper on it, and am afraid to quote Greek without it. The King sent return presents to Her Majesty; they consisted of native pipes and tobacco for Her Majesty's smoking, and loin-cloths for Her Majesty to change while travelling, and an umbrella to be held over Her Majesty's head whilst drinking. The presents arrived one day whilst I was at the Foreign Office, but as there had been a murder at Fernando Po, and Richard had been ordered to send home the clothes of the murdered man, on opening the box they were supposed to be these latter articles, and were put on one side. I was told they looked quite dirty enough to be that.

The journey occupied three months, during the whole of which time the King made much of him, but holding his life in his hand, and any spiteful moment might have ended it. He told me when he came back, that he had seen enough horrid sights to turn a man's brain; and he said, "I used to have to be perfectly calm and dignified whilst seeing these things, or they would have had a contempt for me; but I frequently used to send to the King to say, that if such or such happened again, I should be obliged to leave his Court, as my Government did not countenance such proceedings, which always had the desired effect." On his return, he received no acknowledgment whatever of his services, but Earl Russell wrote me a kind little note, in which he said, "Tell Captain Burton that he has performed his Mission to my utmost and entire satisfaction." I will renew the subject, as I said, in my "Labours and Wisdom of Richard Burton."

The Bight of Biafra, on the West Coast of Africa, extends from Fernando Po to Bathurst, about six hundred miles of coast, and that was Richard's jurisdiction. The lawless conduct of the rum-corrupted natives gave him a good deal of trouble. The traders and the merchants of the coast are called "palm-oil lambs," and they used to call Richard their "shepherd" (supercargoes and skippers are also called "palm-oil ruffians" and "coast-lambs"). I believe he managed them very amicably, and, in spite of business and the dangerous climate, he was supported by all the better class of European agents and supercargoes. He pursued his explorations with ardour. He knew the whole coast from Bathurst (Gambia) to St. Paulo de Loanda (Angola). He marched up to Abeokuta, he ascended the Cameroon Mountains,[1] the wonderful extinct volcano described by Hanno the Carthagenian and Ptolemy's "Theon Ochema." He wanted the English Government to establish a sanitarium there for the West Coast, and a convict-station for garrotters, the last new crime of that day, and to be allowed to use them to construct roads, and in cultivating cotton and chocolate. He told Lord Russell that he would be responsible for them, and should never chain them or lock them up, because, as long as they remained within a certain extent of ring-fence, they would be well and hearty, and the moment they went outside it, they would die without anybody looking after them. The British Government was too tender over their darling human brutes, the cruel, ferocious, and murderous criminals, though the climate was considered quite good enough for Richard and other honourable and active British subjects. He then told Earl Russell that if he would make him Governor of the "Gold Coast," he could send home annually one million pounds sterling; but Lord Russell answered him, "that gold was becoming too common."

He then visited the cannibal Mpangwe, the Fans of Du Chaillu, whose accuracy he had always stood up for when the world had doubted him, and now he was able to confirm it. He then went to Benin City, which was mostly unknown to the Europeans. Belzoni was born in Padua in 1778. During the last eight years of his life he was an African explorer; and he died in Africa, at Benin, in 1823, and he was buried at Gwato, at the foot of a very large tree; guns were fired, and a carpenter from one of the ships put up a tablet to his memory. It is suspected that he was poisoned for the sake of plunder. It was said that some native had inherited his papers. Richard offered £20 for them, but without avail. Belzoni's tree is of a fine spreading growth, which bears a poison apple, and whose boughs droop nearly to the ground. It is a pretty and romantic spot. He writes, "I made an attempt at digging, in order that I might take home his bones and, if possible, his papers, but I was obliged to content myself with sketching his tree, and sending home a handful of wild-flowers to Padua. He died, some say, on the 26th of November, and some say the 3rd of December, 1820." It is remarkable the tender feeling that Richard had for Travellers' graves abroad; indeed, any English graves abroad, but especially Travellers or Englishmen. The number of graves that we have sought out, and put in a state of repair and furnished with tombstones and flowers, you would hardly believe—Lady Hester Stanhope's in Syria, Jules Jaquemont's in Bombay, a French traveller, and many, many others. It showed the feeling that he had about a traveller coming home to lay his bones to rest in his own land, and the respect he had for their resting-place. It makes me all the more thankful that I was able to bring him home to the place he chose himself, and that our friends enabled me to put up such a monument to him.

He brought out, in Fraser's Magazine, several letters in February, March, and April, 1863, previous to his "Wanderings." He ascended the Elephant Mountain, and when he came home he lectured upon that before the Geographical Society. I remember so well, when Richard had submitted something he had written to Norton Shaw, at the Royal Geographical Society, the latter saying, "I don't ever remember hearing this word before, Burton! Where does it come from?" He threw back his head and laughed. "I coined it myself of course, and who has a better right?" Norton Shaw laughed heartily. "Well," he said, "it is a good word, a very good word." "Oh!" said Richard, "I always coin one when I have not got one; it is the only way." He visited the line of lagoons between Lagos and the Volta river. He explored the Yellahlah rapids of the Congo river, and while engaged in all this he collected 2859 proverbs in different African tongues, as for example the Wolof tongue, Kanuri or Bornuese, the Oji or Ashanti, the Ga or Accra, the Yoruba; some from the Eun or Dahoman; some from the Isubú, and Dúalla, of the Bight of Biafra; some in the Efik of the Old Calabar river, also Bight of Biafra; some from the Fans or Mpangwe, from the Upper Gaboon river. He held that the object of language-study was to obtain an insight into the character and thought-modes of Mankind, and that it was not only necessary to speak their language, but to investigate their literary compositions.

He thought that in the Semitic dialects, and in other Asiatic and Indo-European tongues—as the Persian, which imitate their style—the habit of balancing sentences naturally produces this parallelism, and he believed that "The Thousand and One Nights" supplies as many instances as can be found in the Hebrew poets. He thought that the whole of Yoruba shows more or less the effects of El Islam. With respect to the Kafirs, he says it must be noticed that they are a mixed race of African, Arab, and perhaps Persian blood. He thought that a collection of proverbs of this sort would make a kind of manual of Asiatic thought. The nations of the East, he said, always delight in the significant brevity of aphoristic eloquence; and the Proverbs of Solomon show their antiquity and their extensive uses by the Jews. The Arabs were equally addicted to proverbs, which passed into the Persian and Indian languages. He therefore produced "Wit and Wisdom from West Africa; or, a Book of Proverbial Philosophy, Idioms, Enigmas, and Laconisms," in 1865, in 1 vol., and his "Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomè" (2 vols., 1864), which should be now a very useful book to the French army, as his "First Footsteps in East Africa" or "Harar" should be to the Italians.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOME.

At last the time came round for a second leave, and we had a second joyous meeting at Liverpool—this time to part no more as previously. It was on the 28th of August, soon after his landing, 1864, that we chose our burial-place in the Mortlake Cemetery. We had been for that purpose to one of the big cemeteries—I think it was Kensal Green—and we had seen with discomfort that there was so much damp, and looking into an open grave we saw it was full of water; so he looked round rather woeful, and instead of saying it was melancholy, as most men would have done, and as I thought, he espied a tomb on which the instruments of the Passion were represented, amongst them the cock of St. Peter. So he said, "I don't think we had better be too near that cock, he will always be crowing and waking us up." We were on a visit to my aunts at Mortlake, who had bought Portobello House, close to the station, nearly opposite to where I live now, had been settled there for some years, and where we had had many large family reunions. We walked into the burial-ground where numbers of my people are buried, and he said, "We will have it here; it is like a nice little family hotel;" and he again confirmed the idea in 1882, when we came down to visit my mother's grave.

Whilst Richard had been on the West Coast of Africa, Speke and Grant had been on their Expedition, and returned and had a grand ovation. The labours of the first Expedition had rendered the road easy for the second. "The line had been opened," Richard wrote, "by me to Englishmen; they had only to tread in my steps." In the closing days of December, 1863, Speke made a speech at Taunton, which for vain-gloriousness and bad taste was unequalled. He referred to Richard as "Bigg," asserted "that in 1857 he (Speke) had hit the Nile on the head, but that now (1863) he had driven it into the Mediterranean." It is not much to be wondered at if the following epigram on one of Richard's visiting cards was left on the table of the Royal Geographical Society—

"Two loves the Row of Savile haunt,
Who both by nature big be;
The fool is Colonel (Barren) Grant,
The rogue is General Rigby."

Reprinted from Fraser's Magazine, February, 1869.

"'WHO LAST WINS.'

Some Lines I wrote on Richard and Speke.

"The following lines were suggested to me in the studio of the late Edgar George Papworth, Esq., of 36, Milton Street, Dorset Square, in the winter of 1864.

"Captain Burton had recently returned from Africa. The annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science had just taken place at Bath, and poor Captain Speke's sudden death was still fresh in our memories. We had been invited by the artist to look at Captain Speke's bust, upon which he was then employed. Mr. Papworth said to Captain Burton, 'I only took the cast after death, and never knew him alive; but you who lived with him so long can surely give me some hints.' Captain Burton, who had learnt something of sculpturing when a boy in Italy, took the sculptor's pencil from Mr. Papworth's hand, and with a few touches here and there made a perfect likeness and expression. As I stood by, I was very much impressed by this singular coincidence.

"A moulded mask at my feet I found,
With the drawn-down mouth and deepen'd eye,
More lifeless still than the marbles round—
Very death amid dead life's mimicry;
I raised it, and Thought fled afar from me
To the African land by the Zingian Sea.

"'Twas a face, a shell that had nought of brain,
And th' imbedding chalk showed a yellow thread
Which struck my glance with a sudden pain,
For this seemed alive when the rest was dead;
And poor bygone raillery came to mind
Of the tragic masque and no brain behind.

"But behind there lay in the humblest shrine
A gem of the brightest purest ray:
The gem was the human will divine;
The shrine was the homeliest human clay,
Self-glory—but hush! be the tale untold
To the pale ear thinned by yon plaster mould.

"Shall the diamond gem lose her queenly worth,
Though pent in the dungeon of sandy stone?
Say, is gold less gold, though in vilest earth
For long years it has lurked unprized, unknown?
And the rose which blooms o'er the buried dead,
Hath its pinkness paled, hath its fragrance fled?

"Thus the poet sang, 'Is the basil vile,
Though the beetle's foot o'er the basil crawl?
And though Arachne hath webbed her toil,
Shall disgrace attach to the princely hall?
And the pearl's clear drop from the oyster shell,
Comes it not on the royal brow to dwell?'

"On the guarded tablet was writ by Fate,
A double self for each man ere born,
Who shall love his love and shall hate his hate,
Who shall praise his praise and shall scorn his scorn,
Enduring aye to the bitter end,
And man's other man shall be called a friend.

"When the spirits with radiance nude arrayed
In the presence stood of the one Supreme,
Soul looked unto soul, and the glance conveyed,
A pledge of love which each must redeem;
Nor may spirit enfleshed in the dust, forget
That high trysting-place, ere time was not yet.

"When the first great Sire, so the Legends say,
The four-rivered garden in Asia trod,
And 'neath perfumed shade, in the drouth of day,
Walked and talked with the Hebrew God,
Such friendship was when it first began;
And the first of friends were the God, the man.

"But we twain were not bound by such highborn ties;
Our souls, our minds, and our thoughts were strange,
Our ways were not one, nor our sympathies,
We had severed aims, we had diverse range;
In the stern drear Present his lot was cast,
Whilst I hoped for the Future and loved the Past.

"'Twixt man and woman use oft hath bred
The habits that feebly affection feign,
While the common board and genial bed
And Time's welding force links a length of chain;
Till, when Love was not, it has sometimes proved
This has loved and lived, that has lived and loved.

"But 'twixt man and man it may not so hap
Each man in his own and his proper sphere;
At some point, perchance, may the lines o'erlap;
The far rest is far as the near is near—
Save when the orbs are of friend and friend
And the circles' limits perforce must blend.

"But the one sole point at which he and I
Could touch, was the contact of vulgar minds.
'Twas interest's forcible feeble tie
Which binds, but with lasting bonds ne'er binds;
And our objects fated to disagree,
What way went I, and what way went he?

"And yet we were comrades for many years,
And endured in its troth our companionship
Through a life of chances, of hopes and fears;
Nor a word of harshness e'er passed the lip,
Nor a thought unkind dwelt in either heart,
Till we chanced—by what chance did it hap?—to part.

"Where Fever yellow-skinned, bony, gaunt,
With the long blue nails and lip livid white;
With the blood-stained orbs that could ever haunt
Our brains by day and our eyes by night;
In her grave-clothes mouldy with graveyard taint
Came around our sleeping mats—came and went:

"Where the crocodile glared with malignant stare,
And the horse of the river, with watery mane
That flashed in the sun, from his oozy lair
Rose to gaze on the white and wondrous men;
And the lion, with muzzle bent low to earth,
Mocked the thunder-cloud with his cruel mirth:

"Where the speckled fowls the Mimosa decked
Like blue-bells studded with opal dew;
And giraffes pard-spotted, deer-eyed, swan-necked,
Browsed down the base whence the tree dome grew,
And the sentinel-antelope, aëried high,
With his frightened bound taught his friends to fly:

"Where the lovely Coast is all rank with death,
That basks in the sun of the Zingian shore;
Where the mountains, dank with the ocean's breath,
Bear the incense-tree and the sycamore;
Where the grim fierce desert and stony hill
Breed the fiercest beasts, and men fiercer still:

"Where the Land of the Moon with all blessings blest
Save one—save man; and with name that sped
To the farthest edge of the misty West
Since the Tyrian sailor his sail-sheet spread,
Loves to gaze on her planet whose loving ray
Fills her dells and fells with a rival day:

"Where the Lake unnamed in the Afric wold
Its breast to the stranger eye lay bare;
Where Isis, forced her veil to unfold—
To forget the boast of the days that were—
Stood in dusky charms with the crisp tire crowned
On the hallowed bourne, on the Nile's last bound:—

"We toiled side by side, for the hope was sweet
To engrave our names on the Rock of Time:
On the Holy Hill to implant our feet
Where enfaned sits Fame o'er the earth sublime;
And now rose the temple before our eyes—
We had paid the price, we had plucked the prize;

"When up stood the Shadow betwixt us twain—
Had the dusky goddess bequeathed her ban?
And the ice of death through every vein
Of comradeship spread in briefest span;
The guerdon our toils and our pains had won
Was too great for two, was enough for one;

"And deeper and deeper grew the gloom
When the serpent tongue had power to sting,
While o'er one of us hung the untimely doom—
A winter's night to a day of spring,
And heart from heart parting fell away
At the fiat of Fate by her iron sway.

"It seems as though from a foamy[1] dream
I awake, and this pallid mask behold,
And I ask—Can this be the end supreme
Of the countless things of the days of old?
This clay, is it all of what used to be
In the Afric land by the Zingian Sea?"
——Isabel Burton.

Richard at this time wrote, secretly, a little "squib" of one hundred and twenty-one pages, called "Stone Talk," being some of the marvellous sayings of a petral portion of Fleet Street, London, to one Dr. Polyglot, Ph.D., by Frank Baker, D.O.N., 1865. He kept it quite secret from me, and one day brought it out of his pocket on a railway journey, as if he had bought it from a stall, and gave it to me to read. I was delighted with it, kept reading him out passages from it, with peals of laughter. Fortunately we were alone, and I kept saying to him, "Jemmy, I wish you would not go about talking as you do; I am sure this man has been associating with you at the club, picked up all your ideas and written this book, and won't he just catch it!" At last, after going on like that for a considerable time, the amused expression of his face flashed an idea into my brain, and I said, "You wrote it yourself, Jemmy, and nobody else;" and he said, "I did." When I showed it to Lord Houghton, he told me that he was afraid that it would do Richard a great deal of harm with the "powers that were," and advised me to buy them up, which I did. He took the nom de plume of "Frank Baker" from his second name Francis and his mother's name Baker.

It has been thrown in my teeth, since his death, that he would have married twice before he married me, and as he was between thirty-nine and forty at the time of our marriage, it is very natural that it should be so. I sometimes take comfort in reading passages from "Stone Talk" anent former loves—I do not know who they are:—

"So, standing 'mid the vulgar crowd,
I watched the fair, the great, the proud
That hustled in, when glad surprise
Awaited these my languid eyes.

The pink silk hood her head was on
Did make a sweet comparison
With brow as pure, as clear, as bright,
As Boreal dawn or Polar night,
With lips whose crimson strove to hide
Gems all unknown to Oman's tide,
With eyes as myosotis blue,
With cheeks of peachy down and hue,
And locks whose semi-liquid gold
Over the ivory shoulders rolled.
Not 'low' her dress, yet cunning eye
'Neath gauzy texture could descry
Two silvery orbs, that rose and fell,
With Midland Sea's voluptuous swell,
Intoxicating to the brain
As flowers that breathe from Persian plain
Whereon to rest one moment brief
Were worth a life of pain and grief;
And, though fast closed in iron cage—
Venetian padlock of the age—
The poetry of motion told
Of all by envious flounce and fold
Concealed; each step of nameless grace
Taught glowing Fancy's glance to trace
A falling waist, on whose soft round
No lacing wrinkle might be found
(Nor waspish elegance affright
Thorwaldsen's, Canova's sight),
And rising hips and migniard feet—
Ankle for Dian's buskin meet—
Gastrocunemius——

Cease, Muse! to tell
The things my mem'ry holds too well.

I bowed before the 'Thing Divine'
As pilgrim sighting holy shrine,
And straight my 'chanted spirit soared
To dizzy regions late explored
By Mister Hume—A. B.—C. D.—all
The rout yclept spiritual.
A church of emeralds I see,
An altar-tower lit brilliantly;
A steeple, too, the pave inlaid
With richest tint of light and shade;
A 'deal of purple,' archèd pews;
And all the 'blacks' methinks are 'blues.'
Now throngs the murex-robèd crowd,
A-chanting anthems long and loud,
And children, garbed in purest white,
Kneel with wreathed heads before the light.
I, too, am there, with 'Thing Divine,'
Bending before the marble shrine,
While spirit-parson's sleepy drone
Maketh me hers and her my own.

When sudden on my raptured sight
Falls deadly and discharming blight,
Such blight as Eurus loves to fling
O'er gladsome crop in genial spring.
Fast by the side of 'Thing Divine,'
By spirit-parson fresh made mine,
In apparition grim—I saw
The middle-aged British mother-in-law!!

   *   *   *   *   *

The pink silk hood her head was on
Did make a triste comparison
With blossomed brow and green-grey eyes,
And cheeks bespread with vinous dyes,
And mouth and nose—all, all, in fine,
Caricature of 'Thing Divine.'

Full low the Doppelgänger's dress
Of moire and tulle, in last distress
To decorate the massive charms
Displayed to manhood's shrinking arms;
Large loom'd her waist 'spite pinching stays,
As man-o'-war in bygone days;
And, ah! her feet were broader far
Than beauty's heel in Mullingar.
Circular all from toe to head,
Pond'rous of framework, as if bred
On streaky loin and juicy steak;
And, when she walked, she seemed to shake
With elephantine tread the ground.
Sternly, grimly, she gazed around,
Terribly calm, in much flesh strong,
Upon the junior, lighter throng,
And loudly whispered, 'Who's that feller?
Come! none of this, Louise, I tell yer!'
And 'Thing Divine' averted head,
And I, heart-broken, turned and fled."


DIRGE.

"I also swore to love a face
And form where beauty strove with grace,
And raven hair, black varnished blue,
A brow that robbed the cygnet's hue,
Orbs that beshamed the fawnlet's eyne,
And lips like rosebuds damp with rain.
Ah! where is she? ah! where are they—
The charms that stole my heart away?

"She's fatten'd like a feather bed,
Her cheeks with beefy hue are red,
Her eyes are tarnished, and her nose
Affection for high diet shows;
The voice like music wont to flow,
Is now a kind of vaccine low.
Cupid, and all ye gods above,
Is this the thing I used to love?"

This year, 1864, Richard edited and annotated Marcy's "Prairie Traveller" for the Anthropological Review.

We were asked to numbers of country-houses on the way—to the Bellews', Gormanstons', and Lord Drogheda's; and we had the pleasure of making acquaintance with Lady Rachel Butler and Lord James, who were very kind to us. Dublin was immensely hospitable, and at that time very gay. One of our interesting events was making acquaintance with Mr. Lentaigne, the great convict philanthropist. His mania was to reform his convicts, and make his friends take them for service, if nobody else would. He was the man to whom Lord Carlisle said, "Why, Lentaigne, you will wake up some morning, and find you are the only spoon in the house." He took us to see the prisons and the reformatories, and he implored of me to take out with me a convict woman of about thirty-four, who had been fifteen years in prison. I said, "Well, Mr. Lentaigne, what did she do?" "Poor girl! the sweetest creature—she murdered her baby when she was sixteen." "Well," I answered, "I would do anything to oblige you, but I dare say I shall often be quite alone with her, and at thirty-four she might like larger game."

Richard was veritably, though born of prosaic parents, a child of romance. He had English, Irish, Scotch, and French blood in his veins, and, it has often been suggested (though never proved), a drop of Oriental or gypsy blood from some far-off ancestor. His Scottish, North England, and Border blood came out in all posts of trust and responsibility, in steadiness and coolness in the hour of danger, in uprightness and integrity, and the honour of a gentleman. Of Irish blood he showed nothing excepting fight, but the two foreign strains were strong. From Arab or gypsy he got his fluency of languages, his wild and daring spirit, his Agnosticism, his melancholy pathos, his mysticism, his superstition (I am superstitious enough, God knows, but he was far more so), his divination, his magician-like foresight into events, his insight, or reading men through like a pane of glass, his restless wandering, his poetry. From a very strong strain of Bourbon blood (Richard showed "race" from the top of his head to the sole of his feet) which the Burtons inherit—that is, my Burtons—he got his fencing, knowledge of arms, his ready wit and repartee, his boyish gaiety of character as alternately opposed to his melancholy, and, lastly, but not least, his Catholicism as opposed to the mysticism of the East, which is not in the least like the Agnosticism of the West. But it was not a fixed thing like my Catholicism; it ran silently threaded through his life, alternately with his mysticism, like the refrain of an opera.

He was proud of his Scottish and North England blood, he liked his Rob Roy descent, and also his Bourbon blood, and he used to laugh heartily when, sometimes, I was half-vexed at something and used to chaff him by saying, "You dirty Frenchman!"

Richard was a regular gamin; his keen sense of humour, his ready wit, were always present. He adored shocking dense people and seeing their funny faces and stolid belief, and never cared about what harm it would do him in a worldly sense. I have frequently sat at the dinner-table of such people, praying him by signs not to go on, but he was in a very ecstasy of glee; he said it was so funny always to be believed when you were chaffing, and so curious never to be believed when you were telling the truth. He had a sort of schoolboy bravado about these things that in his high spirits lasted him all the seventy years of his life.

But especially strong were the melancholy, tender, sad hours of the man, full of sensitiveness to pathos in all he said, or did, or wrote. The one paid too much for the other, if I may so express it.

We visited Tuam, which we both thought a dreadful place; but the name of Burton was big there, on account of the Bishop and the Dean, Richard's grandfather and uncle, and hundreds of the poor crowded round us for bakshish (presents). Richard had still some old aunts there, who came to dine with us, his grandfather's daughters. They had a large tract of land here, but Richard's father had made it over to the aunts, and I was very glad of it, as I should have been very sorry to have had to stop there. We were delighted with the fishing population of Lough Corrib, a cross between Spanish and Irish, who have nothing in common with the town; they are called Claddhah, pronounced Clather. We stopped long at the Armagh Cathedral, looking for Drelincourt tombs, of which there are plenty belonging to Richard's people. From Drogheda we went to see the Halls of Tara, the site of the Palace of the Kings, the Stone of Destiny, and then to the site of the Battle of the Boyne, afterwards to Maynooth College, where the boys cheered Richard. Then we proceeded to Blarney and kissed the stone; near Cork to see Captain and Mrs. Lane Fox, now General and Mrs. Pitt-Rivers; and also to Killarney, and thought it very pretty but very small. We enjoyed much hospitality at the Castle during our stay. During all our car-driving our little horse used to have a middle-of-the-day feed, with a pint of whisky and water, and she came in at the end of the time in better condition, and looking in every way better, and twice as frisky as when she started.

On the 17th of May the Polytechnic in London opened with an account of Richard's travels in Mecca, and a dissolving view of Richard's picture in uniform. It was arranged by Mr. Pepper of "Pepper's Ghost," and a quantity of little green pamphlets with the lecture were sold at the door. On the 22nd of May we dined with George Augustus Sala, previous to his going to Algiers, and also with poor Blakeley of the Guns, in his and Mrs. Blakeley's pretty little home; he died so sadly afterwards.

Richard was now transferred to Santos, São Paulo, Brazil.

Farewell Dinner to Captain R. F. Burton.

The Anthropological Farewell Dinner.

"On Tuesday, April 4th, 1865, there was celebrated an event in London of such importance to anthropological science as to deserve an especial record in these pages. On this day the Anthropological Society of London celebrated the election into their society of five hundred Fellows, by giving a public dinner to Captain Richard F. Burton, their senior vice-president. The Right Honourable Lord Stanley, M.P., F.R.S., F.A.S.L., took the chair, and was supported on the right by Captain Burton. [Here follows one hundred and twenty distinguished names.]

Lord Derby's Speech as Chairman.

"The noble Chairman, Lord Derby, in proposing 'The health of Captain Burton,' said—I rise to propose a toast which will not require that I should bespeak for it a favourable consideration on your part. I intend to give you the health of the gentleman in whose honour we have met to-night. (Loud cheers.) I propose the health of one—your cheers have said it before me—of the most distinguished Explorers and Geographers of the present day. (Cheers.) I do not know what you feel, but as far as my limited experience in that way extends, for a man to sit and listen to his own eulogy is by no means an unmixed pleasure, and in Captain Burton's presence I shall say a great deal less about what he has done than I should take the liberty of doing if he were not here. (Cheers.) But no one can dispute this, that into a life of less than forty-five years Captain Burton has crowded more of study, more of hardship, and more of successful enterprise and adventure than would have sufficed to fill up the existence of half a dozen ordinary men. (Cheers.) If, instead of continuing his active career—as we hope he will for many years to come—it were to end to-morrow, he would still have done enough to entitle him to a conspicuous and permanent place in the annals of geographical discoverers. (Cheers.) I need not remind you, except in the briefest way, of the long course of his adventures and their results. His first important work, the 'History of the Races of Scinde,' will long continue to be useful to those whose studies lie in that direction, and those who, like myself, have travelled through that unhappy valley—through that young Egypt, which is about as like old Egypt as a British barrack is like an Egyptian pyramid—will recognize the fact that if there have been men who have described that country for utilitarian purposes more accurately and minutely, no man has described it with a more graphic pen. (Cheers.) With respect to his pilgrimage to Mecca, that, I believe, was part only of a much larger undertaking which local disturbances in the country prevented being carried out to the fullest extent. (Cheers.) I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that not more than two or three Englishmen would have been able to perform that feat. The only two parallels to it that I recollect in one generation are, the exploring journeys of Sir Henry Pottinger into Beloochistan, and the journey of M. Vambéry through the deserts of Central Asia. (Cheers.) I am speaking only by hearsay and report, but I take the fact to be this, that the ways of Europeans and Asiatics are so totally different—I do not mean in those important acts to which we all pay a certain amount of attention while we do them, but in those little trifling details of everyday life, that we do instinctively and without paying attention to them—the difference in these respects between the two races is so wide that the Englishman who would attempt to travel in the disguise of an Oriental ought to be almost Oriental in his habits if he hope to carry out that personation successfully. And if that be true of a journey of a few days, it is far more true of a journey extending over weeks and months, where you have to keep your secret, not merely from the casual observer, but from your own servants, your own friends, and your own travelling companions. To carry through an enterprise of that kind may well be a strain on the ingenuity of any man, and though, no doubt, danger does stimulate our faculties, still it does not take from the merit of a feat that it is performed under circumstances in which, in the event of detection, death is almost certain. (Cheers.) I shall say nothing in this brief review of that plucky though unsuccessful expedition to the Somali country, which so nearly deprived the Anthropological Society of one of its ablest members. But I cannot pass over so lightly the journey into Harar—the first attempt to penetrate Eastern Africa in that quarter. That journey really opened a wide district of country previously unknown to the attention of civilized man. It led the way indirectly to the Nile expeditions, which lasted from 1856 to 1859. With respect to the labours which were gone through in those expeditions, and the controversies which arose out of those labours, I do not require here to say anything except to make one passing remark. With regard to this disputed subject of the Nile, I may be permitted to say—though those who are experienced in geographical matters may treat me as a heretic—(a laugh)—I cannot help it if they do, for I speak by the light only of common sense—(renewed laughter, and cheers)—but it seems to me that there is a little delusion in this notion of searching for what we call the source of a river. Can you say of any river that it has a source? It has a mouth, that is certain—(cheers);—but it has a great many sources, and to my mind you might just as well talk of a plant as having only one root, or a man only one hair on his head, as of a river having a single source. Every river is fed from many sources, and it does not seem to me that the mere accident of hitting upon that which subsequent investigation may prove to be the largest of its many affluents is a matter about which there need be much controversy. The real test of the value of this kind of work is, what is the quantity of land previously unknown which the discoverer has gone through, and which he has opened up to the knowledge of civilized man? (Cheers.) Judged by that test, I do not hesitate to say that the African Expedition of 1856 has been the most important of our time; the only rival which I could assign to it being that separate expedition which was undertaken by Dr. Livingstone through the southern part of the continent. (Hear.) Where one man has made his way many will follow, and I do not think it is too sanguine an anticipation, negro chiefs and African fevers notwithstanding, to expect that within the lifetime of the present generation we may know as much of Africa, at least, of Africa north of the equator, and within fifteen degrees south of it, as we know now of South America. Well, gentlemen, no man returns from a long African travel with health entirely unimpaired, and our friend was no exception to the rule. But there are men to whom all effort is unpleasant, so there are men to whom all rest, all doing nothing, is about the hardest work to which they could be put, and Captain Burton recruited his health, as you all know, by a journey to the Mormon country, travelling thirty thousand miles by sea and land, and bringing back from that community—morally, I think, the most eccentric phenomenon of our days—a very curious and interesting, and, as far as I could judge, the most accurate description we have yet received. (Cheers.) Now, as to the last phase of the career which I am attempting to sketch—the embassy to Dahomè, the discovery of the Cameroon Mountains, and the travels along the African coast, I shall only remind you of it, because I am quite sure that the published accounts must be fresh in all your minds. I do not know what other people may think of these volumes, but to me they were a kind of revelation of negro life and character, enabling me to feel, which certainly I never felt before, that I could understand an African and barbarian court. As to any theories arising out of these journeys, as to any speculations which may be deduced from them, I do not comment upon these here. This is not the place nor the occasion to do it. All I will say about them is, that when a man with infinite labour, with infinite research, and at the imminent risk of his life, has gone to work to collect a series of facts, I think the least the public can do is to allow him a fair hearing when he puts his own interpretation upon those facts. (Loud cheers.) I will add this, that in matters which we all feel to be intensely interesting, and upon which we all know that our knowledge is imperfect, any man does us a service who helps us to arrange the facts which we have at our command, who stimulates inquiry and thought by teaching us to doubt instead of dogmatizing. I am quite aware that this is not in all places a popular theory. There are a great many people who, if you give them a new idea, receive it almost as if you had offered them personal violence. (Laughter.) It puts them out. They don't understand it—they are not used to it. I think that state of the public mind, which we must all acknowledge, is the very best defence for the existence of scientific societies such as that to which many of us belong. It is something for a man who has got a word to say, to know that there is a society where he will get a fair and considerate hearing; and, whether the judgment goes against him or not, at least he will be met by argument and not by abuse. I think Captain Burton has done good service to the State in various ways. He has extended our knowledge of the globe on which we live, and as we happen to be men, and not mere animals, that is a result which, though it may not have any immediate utilitarian result, we ought to value. (Cheers.) He has done his share in opening savage and barbarous countries to the enterprise of civilized man, and though I am not quite so sanguine as many good men have been as to the reclaiming of savage races, one has only to read his and all other travellers' accounts of African life in its primitive condition, to see that whether they gain much or not by European intercourse, at any rate they have nothing to lose. (Laughter.) But there is something more than that. In these days of peace and material prosperity (and both of them are exceedingly good things), there is another point of view in which such a career as that of our friend is singularly useful. It does as much as a successful campaign to keep up in the minds of the English people that spirit of adventure and of enterprise, that looking to reputation rather than money, to love of effort rather than to ease—the old native English feeling which has made this country what it has become, and which, we trust, will keep this country what it is to be—a feeling which, no doubt, the tendency of great wealth and material prosperity is to diminish; but a feeling which, if it were to disappear from among us, our wealth and our material prosperity would not be worth one year's purchase. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I propose the health of Captain Burton, and my best wish for him is that he may do for himself what nobody else is likely to do for him, that by his future performance he may efface the memory of his earlier exploits. (Loud cheers.)

"The toast was drunk with three times three.

Richard returns Thanks.

"Captain Burton, who, on rising, was greeted with loud and protracted cheering, said—My Lord Stanley, my lords and gentlemen, it falls to the lot of few men to experience a moment so full of gratified feeling as this, when I rise to return thanks for the honour you have done me on this, to me, most memorable occasion. I am proud to see my poor labours in the cause of discovery thus publicly recognized by the representative of England's future greatness. (Cheers.) The terms of praise which have fallen from your lordship's lips are far above my present deserts, yet I treasure them gratefully in my memory as coming from one so highly honoured, not only as a nobleman, but as a man. I am joyed when looking round me to see so many faces of friends who have met to give me God-speed—to see around me so many of England's first men, England's brains, in fact; men who have left their mark upon the age; men whose memories the world will not willingly let die. These are the proudest laurels a man can win, and I shall wear them in my heart of hearts that I may win more of them on my return.

"But, however gratifying this theme, I must bear in mind the occasion which thus agreeably brings us together. We meet to commemorate the fact that on March 14, 1865, that uncommonly lusty youth, our young Anthropological Society, attained the respectable dimensions of five hundred members. My lord and gentlemen, it is with no small pride that I recall to mind how, under the auspices of my distinguished and energetic friend Dr. James Hunt, our present president,—and long may he remain so,—I took the chair on the occasion of its nativity. The date was January 6, 1863. The number of those who met was eleven. Each had his own doubts and hopes, and fears touching the viability of the new-born. Still we knew that our cause was good; we persevered, we succeeded. (Cheers.)

"The fact is, we all felt the weight of the great want. As a traveller and a writer of travels during the last fifteen years, I have found it impossible to publish those questions of social economy and those physiological observations, always interesting to our common humanity, and at times so valuable. The Memoirs of the Anthropological Society now acts the good Samaritan to facts which the publisher and the drawing-room table proudly pass by. Secondly, there was no arena for the public discussion of opinions now deemed paradoxical, and known to be unpopular. The rooms of the Anthropological Society, No. 4, St. Martin's Place, now offer a refuge to destitute truth. There any man, monogenist or polygenist, eugenestic or dysgenestic, may state the truth as far as is in him. We may truly call these rooms

'Where, girt by friend or foe,
A man may say the thing he will.'

All may always claim equally from us a ready hearing, and what as Englishmen we prize the most, a fair field and plenty of daylight. (Cheers.)

"And how well we succeeded—how well our wants have been supplied by the officers of our society, we may judge by this fact: During the last twenty days not less than thirty members have, I am informed by my friend Mr. Carter Blake, been added to the five hundred of last month. I confidently look forward to the day when, on returning from South America, I shall find a list of fifteen hundred names of our society. We may say vires acquirit eundo, which you will allow me to translate, 'We gain strength by our go,' in other words, our progress. This will give us weight to impress our profession and opinions upon the public. Already the learned of foreign nations have forgotten to pity us for inability to work off the grooves of tradition and habit. And we must succeed so long as we adhere to our principles of fair play and a hearing to every man. (Cheers.)

"I would now request your hearing for a few words of personal explanation, before leaving you for some years. I might confide it to each man separately, but I prefer the greatest possible publicity. It has come to my ears that some have charged me with want of generosity in publishing a book which seems to reflect upon the memory of poor Captain Speke. Without entering into details concerning a long and melancholy misunderstanding, I would here briefly state that my object has ever been, especially on this occasion, to distinguish between personal enmities and scientific differences. I did not consider myself bound to bury my opinions in Speke's grave; to me, living, they are of importance. I adhere to all I have stated respecting the Nile sources; but I must change the form of their expression. My own statement may, I believe, be considered to be moderate enough. In a hasty moment, I appended one more, which might have been omitted—as it shall from all future editions. I may conclude this painful controversial subject, by stating that Mr. Arthur Kinglake, of Weston-super-Mare, writes to me that a memorial bust of my lamented companion is to be placed this year in the shire-hall, Taunton, with other Somersetshire heroes, Blake and Locke. I have seen the bust in the studio of Mr. Papworth, and it is perfect. If you all approve, it would give me the greatest pleasure to propose a subscription for the purpose before we leave this room. (Cheers.)

"And now I have already trespassed long enough upon your patience. I will not excuse myself, because I am so soon to leave you. Nor will I say adieu, because I shall follow in mind all your careers; yours, my Lord Stanley, to that pinnacle of greatness for which Nature and Fate have destined you; and yours, gentlemen and friends, each of you, to the high and noble missions to which you are called. Accompanied by your good wishes, I go forth on mine with fresh hope, and with a vigour derived from the wholesome stimulus which you have administered to me this evening. My Lord Stanley, my lords and gentlemen, I thank you from my heart.

"[Here followed twenty-five speeches. Dr. Hunt, the President, concluded:] He should be very sorry if they were to separate on that occasion, when they had met to bid farewell to Captain Burton, without drinking the health of one on whom they all looked with respect and admiration—Mrs. Burton. (Loud cheers.) He felt it, therefore, to be their duty to join most heartily in drinking long health and prosperity to Mrs. Burton, and may she be long spared to take care of her husband when far away in South America. Those who paid homage to her paid homage also to him, whom they had met to honour, and the more they knew of him the more they respected him. (Loud cheers.)

"Captain Burton: I only hope in the name of Heaven that Mrs. Burton won't hear of this. (Laughter.)

"Dr. Hunt said that as Captain Burton refused to respond to the toast in a proper manner, he must return thanks for Mrs. Burton. She begged him to say that she had great difficulty in keeping her husband in order, but that she would do what she could to take care of him, and to make him as innocent a man as they believed him to be. (Loud laughter.)

"Lord Stanley then left, and the company soon afterwards separated."

Nile.