33. The Fight at Berbera, 22nd April, 1855.

Unable to let well alone, Burton now wanted to make a new expedition, this time to the Nile, via Berbera and Harar, and on a larger and more imposing scale. On 7th April he was back again at Berbera, taking with him Speke, Stroyan, Herne and 42 assistants, and his first care was to establish an agency on the coast, so as to have the protection of the English gunboat, the "Mahi," which had brought them. Unfortunately, the Government drew off the gunboat, and this had scarcely been done before Burton and his party were attacked by 300 natives, who swarmed round them during the night, and tried to entrap and entangle them by throwing down the tents. A desperate hand-to-hand fight then ensued. Javelins hissed, war-clubs crashed. The forty-two coloured auxiliaries promptly took to their heels, leaving the four Englishmen to do as they could. Stroyan fell early in the fight. Burton, who had nothing but a sabre, fought like a demon; Speke, on his left near the entrance of the tent, did deadly execution with a pair of revolvers; Herne on his right emptied into the enemy a sixshooter, and then hammered it with the butt end. Burton, while sabreing his way towards the sea, was struck by a javelin, which pierced both cheeks, and struck out four of his teeth. Speke received eleven wounds, from which, however, he took no harm—a touching proof, comments Burton, of how difficult it is to kill a man in sound health. Eventually the survivors, stained with blood, and fearfully exhausted, but carrying, nevertheless, the corpse of poor Stroyan, managed to reach a friendly native craft, which straightway took them back to Aden. [160]



Chapter VIII. 9th February 1855-October 1856, The Crimea



Bibliography:

14. First Footsteps in East Africa, 1856.



34. The Crimea.

Owing to his wounds Burton had to return to England, and, on his first opportunity, he gave an account of his explorations before the Royal Geographical Society. Little, however, was now talked of except the Crimean War, which had commenced, it will be remembered in March 1854. The Allies landed in the Crimea in September, Inkermann was fought on the 5th of November, and then followed the tedious siege of Sebastopol. Burton had not long been home before he applied for and obtained leave to join the besieging army; and his brother Edward also went out as surgeon, about the same time. Emulous of the deeds of Napier and Outram, Burton now thought he saw a career of military glory awaiting him. Soon after his arrival at the seat of war he was appointed chief of the staff to General Beatson, and in his "gorgeous uniform blazing with gold" he set vigorously to work to re-organize and drill his contingent of Bashi-Bazouks. He had great difficulties with Beatson, a brave, but passionate and undiplomatic old warrior; but he succeeded marvellously with his men, and his hope of winning fame rose higher than ever. The war, however, was crawling to an end, and the troops he had drilled so patiently had little to do beside look on. At this conjuncture he thought he saw a road to success in the relief of Kars, which had been persistently besieged by the Russians. Elated at the prospect of taking part in a great military feat, he hurried to Constantinople, obtained an interview with the British Ambassador, Lord Stratford, and submitted a plan for approval. To his amazement, Lord Stratford broke into a towering passion, and called him "the most impudent man in the Bombay Army." Later Burton understood in what way he had transgressed. As the war was closing, it had been arranged by the Allies that Kars should be allowed to fall as a peace offering to Russia.

Burton now began to suffer from the untrue tales that were told about him, still he never troubled to disprove them. Some were circulated by a fellow officer of his—an unmitigated scoundrel whose life had been sullied by every species of vice; who not only invented calumniating stories but inserted particulars that gave them a verisimilitude. Two of this man's misdeeds may be mentioned. First he robbed the Post Office at Alexandria, and later he unblushingly unfolded to Lord Stanley of Alderley his plan of marrying an heiress and of divorcing her some months later with a view to keeping, under a Greek law, a large portion of her income. He seemed so certain of being able to do it that Lord Stanley consulted a lady friend, and the two together succeeded in frustrating the infamous design. This sordid and callous rascal tried hard to lead people to suppose that he and Burton were hand and glove in various kinds of devilry, and a favourite phrase in his mouth was "I and Burton are great scamps." Percy Smythe [161] then an official under Lord Stratford, commented on hearing the saying: "No, that won't do, —— is a real scamp, but Burton is only wild." One story put abroad apparently by the same scoundrel is still in circulation. We are told that Burton was once caught in a Turkish harem, and allowed to escape only after suffering the usual indescribable penalty. As this was the solitary story that really annoyed Burton, we think it our duty to say that conclusive documentary evidence exists proving that, whether or not he ever broke into a harem, he most certainly underwent no deprivation. Other slanders of an even more offensive nature got abroad. Pious English mothers loathed Burton's name, and even men of the world mentioned it apologetically. In time, it is true, he lived all this down, still he was never—he is not now—generally regarded as a saint worthy of canonization.

With the suspension of General Beatson—for the machinations of enemies ultimately accomplished the old hero's fall—Burton's connection with the Crimean army abruptly ceased. Having sent in his resignation, he returned to England and arrived here just in time to miss, to his disappointment, his brother Edward, who had again left for Ceylon. Edward's after career was sad enough to draw tears from adamant. During an elephant hunt a number of natives set upon him and beat him brutally about the head. Brain trouble ensued, and he returned home, but henceforth, though he attained a green old age, he lived a life of utter silence. Except on one solitary occasion he never after—and that is to say for forty years—uttered a single word. Always resembling a Greek statue, there was now added to him the characteristic of all statues, rigid and solemn silence. From a man he had become aching marble. To Burton, with his great, warm, affectionate heart, Edward's affliction was an unceasing grief. In all his letters he enquires tenderly after his "dear brother," and could truly say, with the enemy of his boyhood, Oliver Goldsmith:

"Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee: Still to my Brother turns." [162]

Arrived in England, General Beatson promptly instituted civil proceedings against his enemies; and Burton was in constant expectation of being subpoenaed. He thoroughly sympathized with Beatson, but he had no wish to be forced to remain in London, just as he had no wish at any time in his life to be mewed up anywhere. Consequently he disguised himself by wearing green spectacles and tying a pillow over his stomach to simulate corpulence. To one friend who met him, he made himself known. "Are you really Burton?" inquired his friend. "I shall be," replied Burton, "but just now I'm a Greek doctor." Burton's conscience, however, finally had the mastery. He did attend the trial and he corroborated the statements of his late chief. The verdict of the jury went against Beatson, but it was generally felt that the old war dog had fully vindicated his character.



35. Engaged to Isabel Arundell, August 1856.

In August, after a lapse of four years, Burton renewed acquaintance with Isabel Arundell, who one day met him, quite by accident, in the Botanical Gardens, and she kept meeting him there quite by accident every day for a fortnight. He had carried his life in his hand to Mecca and to Harar, he had kept at bay 200 Somalis, but like the man in Camoens, he finally fell by "a pair of eyes." [163] According to Lady Burton, [164] it was Burton who made the actual proposal; and it is just possible.

"You won't chalk up 'Mother will be angry' now I hope," said Burton.

"Perhaps not," replied Miss Arundell, "but she will be all the same."

Mrs. Arundell, indeed, like so many other English mothers, was violently prejudiced against Burton. When her daughter broached the subject she replied fiercely: "He is not an old English Catholic, or even a Catholic, he has neither money nor prospects." She might also have added that he was apt to respect mere men of intellect more than men of wealth and rank, an un-English trait which would be sure to militate against his advancement.

Miss Arundell bravely defended her lover, but without effect. A few days later she again met her old gipsy crone Hagar Burton, who repeated her sibylline declaration. As Miss Arundell never, by any chance, talked about anything or anybody except Burton, and as she paid liberally for consulting the Fates, this declaration necessarily points to peculiar acumen on the part of the gipsy.

At one of their meetings Miss Arundell put round Burton's neck a steel chain with a medal of the Virgin Mary and begged him to wear it all his life. Possessing a very accommodating temperament in matters that seemed to himself of no vital importance, he consented; so it joined the star-sapphire and other amulets, holy and unholy, which, for different purposes, he carried about the world.

That this medal had often acted as a preservative to Burton she was in after life thoroughly convinced.



Chapter IX. December 1856-21st May 1859, The Unveiling of Isis



Bibliography:

15. Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa. 16. Vol. 33 of the Royal Geographical Society.



36. To Fuga. January to March 1857.

The fame of a soldier having been denied him, Burton now turned his thoughts once more to exploration; and his eagerness for renown is revealed conspicuously in some verses written about this time. They commence:

"I wore thine image, Fame, Within a heart well fit to be thy shrine! Others a thousand boons may gain; One wish was mine."

He hoped to obtain one of its smiles and then die. A glorious hand seemed to beckon him to Africa. There he was to go and find his destiny. The last stanza runs:

"Mine ear will hear no other sound, No other thought my heart will know. Is this a sin? Oh, pardon, Lord! Thou mad'st me so."

He would obtain the fame of a great traveller; the earth should roll up for him as a carpet. Happy indeed was Isabel Arundell when he placed the verses in her hand, but melancholy to relate, he also presented copies to his "dear Louisa," and several other dears.

He now read greedily all the great geographers, ancient and modern, and all the other important books bearing on African exploration. If he became an authority on Herodotus, Pliny, Ptolemy, Strabo, and Pomponious Mela, he became equally an authority on Bruce, Sonnini, Lacerda, the Pombeiros, Monteiro and Gamitto.

From Ptolemy downwards writers and travellers had prayed for the unveiling of Isis, that is to say, the discovery of the sources of the Nile; but for two thousand years every effort had proved fruitless. Burning to immortalize himself by wresting from the mysterious river its immemorial secret, Burton now planned an expedition for that purpose. Thanks to the good offices of Lord Clarendon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the Royal Geographical Society promised him the necessary funds; while Cardinal Wiseman, ever his sincere friend, gave him a passport to all Catholic missionaries. [165] To Burton, as we have seen, partings were always distressing, and in order to avoid bidding adieu to Miss Arundell he adopted his usual course, leaving a letter which mentioned love and that he was gone.

He quitted England for Bombay in October 1856, and crossed to Zanzibar in the Elphinstone sloop of war, Speke, who was to be his companion in the expedition, sailing with him. Burton was in the highest spirits. "One of the gladdest moments in human life," he wrote, "is the departing upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the slavery of civilisation, [166] man feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of youth, excitement gives a new vigour to the muscles and a sense of sudden freedom adds an inch to the stature." Among the crew was a midshipman, C. R. Low, who became a life-long friend of Burton. Says Mr. Low, "We used to have bouts of single-stick in the pleasant evening sin the poop, and many's the time he has blacked my arms and legs with his weapons.... Though a dangerous enemy, he was a warm and constant friend." [167] On reaching Zanzibar, Burton, finding the season an unsuitable one for the commencement of his great expedition, resolved to make what he called "a preliminary canter." So he and Speke set out on a cruise northward in a crazy old Arab "beden" with ragged sails and worm-eaten timbers. They carried with them, however, a galvanised iron life-boat, "The Louisa," named after Burton's old love, and so felt no fear.

They passed the Island of Pemba, and on the 22nd reached Mombasa, which Burton was glad to visit on account of its associations with Camoens, who wrote

So near that islet lay along the land, Nought save a narrow channel stood atween; And rose a city throned on the strand, Which from the margent of the seas was seen; Fair built with lordly buildings tall and grand As from its offing showed all its sheen, Here ruled a monarch for long years high famed, Islet and city are Mombasa named. [168]

Indeed he never missed an opportunity of seeing spots associated with his beloved "Master." Then they turned southward and on February 3rd reached Pangany, whence, in company with a facetious fellow named Sudy Bombay, they set out on a canoe and foot journey to Fuga, which they found to be "an unfenced heap of hay cock huts." Though a forbidden city to strangers they managed to get admittance by announcing themselves as "European wizards and Waganga of peculiar power over the moon, the stars, the wind and the rain." They found the sultan of the place, an old man named Kimwere, sick, emaciated and leprous. He required, he said, an elixir which would restore him to health, strength, and youth. This, however, despite his very respectable knowledge of medicine, Burton was not able to compound, so after staying two days he took his leave. "It made me sad," says Burton, "to see the wistful, lingering look with which the poor old king accompanied the word Kuahery! (Farewell!)" On the return journey Speke shot a hippopotamus which he presented to the natives, who promptly ate it. By the time Pangany was again reached both travellers were in a high fever; but regarding it simply as a seasoning, they felt gratified rather than not. When the Zanzibar boat arrived Speke was well enough to walk to the shore, but Burton "had to be supported like a bedridden old woman."



37. Zanzibar to Tanganyika, 26th June 1857 to 26th May 1858.

Burton left Zanzibar on his great expedition at the end of June, carrying with him various letters of introduction from the Sultan of Zanzibar, a diploma signed by the Shaykh El Islam of Mecca, and the passport already mentioned of Cardinal Wiseman. To his star-sapphire he added some little canvas bags containing horse chestnuts which he carried about "against the Evil Eye, and as a charm to ward off sickness." [169] Beside Burton and Speke, the party consisted of two Goa boys, two negro gun-carriers, Sudy Bombay, and ten Zanzibar mercenaries. Dr. Steinhauser, who had hoped to join them, was restrained by illness. "My desire," says Burton, "was to ascertain the limits of Tanganyika Lake, to learn the ethnography of its tribes, and to determine the export of the produce of the interior." He held the streams that fed Tanganyika to be the ultimate sources of the Nile; and believed that the glory of their discovery would be his. Fortune, however, the most fickle of goddesses, thought fit to deprive him of this ardently coveted boon.

The explorers landed at Wale Point on June 26th, and on July 14th reached K'hutu. At Dug'humi Burton, despite his bags of chestnuts, fell with marsh fever, and in his fits he imagined himself to be "two persons who were inimical to each other," an idea very suitable for a man nursing the "duality" theory. When he recovered, fresh misfortunes followed, and finally all the riding asses died. Burton, however, amid it all, managed to do one very humane action. He headed a little expedition against a slave raider, and had the satisfaction of restoring five poor creatures to their homes.

The tropical vegetation and the pleasant streams afforded delightful vistas both by daylight and moonlight, but every mile the travellers were saddened by the sight of clean-picked skeletons or swollen corpses. Sometimes they met companies of haggard, heavy-gaited men and women half blind with small-pox—the mothers carrying on their backs infants as loathsome as themselves. Near every kraal stood detached huts built for the diseased to die in. They passed from this God-forsaken land to a district of springs welling with sweet water, calabashes and tamarinds, and circlets of deep, dew-fed verdure. The air was spicy, and zebras and antelopes browsed in the distance. Then the scene again changed, and they were in a slimy, malarious swamp. They were bitten by pismires an inch long, and by the unmerciful tzetze fly. The mercenaries, who threatened to desert, rendered no assistance, and the leader, one Said bin Salim, actually refused to give Burton a piece of canvas to make a tent. Sudy Bombay then made a memorable speech, "O Said," he said, "if you are not ashamed of your master, be at least ashamed of his servant," a rebuke that had the effect of causing the man to surrender at once the whole awning. At other times the star-sapphire which Burton carried on his person proved a valuable auxiliary—and convinced where words failed. But the mercenaries, mistaking Burton's forbearance for weakness, became daily bolder and more insolent, and they now only awaited a convenient opportunity to kill him. One day as he was marching along, gun over shoulder and dagger in hand, he became conscious that two of his men were unpleasantly near, and after a while one of them, unaware that Burton understood his language, urged the other to strike. Burton did not hesitate a moment. Without looking round, he thrust back his dagger, and stabbed the man dead on the spot. [170] The other, who fell on his knees and prayed for mercy, was spared. This, however, did not cure his followers of their murderous instincts, and a little later he discovered another plot. The prospective assassins having piled a little wood where they intended to kindle a fire, went off to search for more. While they were gone Burton made a hole under the wood and buried a canister of gunpowder in it. On their return the assassins lighted the fire, seated themselves comfortably round, and presently there weren't any assassins. We tell these tales just as Burton told them to his intimate friends. The first may have been true, the second, we believe, simply illustrates his inveterate habit of telling tales against himself with the desire to shock. In any circumstances, his life was in constant peril; but he and the majority of the party, after unexampled tortures from thirst, arrived footsore and jaded in a veritable land of Goshen—Kazeh or Unyanyembe, where they met some kindly Arab merchants.

"What a contrast," exclaims Burton, "between the open-handed hospitality and the hearty good-will of this noble race—the Arabs—and the niggardliness of the savage and selfish African. It was heart of flesh after heart of stone." Burton found the Arabs of Kazeh living comfortably and even sybaritically. They had large, substantial houses, fine gardens, luxuries from the coast and "troops of concubines and slaves." Burton gallantly gives the ladies their due. "Among the fair of Yombo," he says, "there were no fewer than three beauties—women who would be deemed beautiful in any part of the world. Their faces were purely Grecian; they had laughing eyes their figures were models for an artist with—

"Turgide, brune, e ritondette mamme."

like the 'bending statue' that delights the world. The dress—a short kilt of calabash fibre—rather set off than concealed their charms, and though destitute of petticoat they were wholly unconscious of indecorum. These beautiful domestic animals graciously smiled when in my best Kenyamwezi I did my devoir to the sex; and the present of a little tobacco always secured for me a seat in the undress circle."

Of the native races of West Africa Burton gave a graphic account when he came to write the history of this expedition. [171] All, it seems, had certain customs in common. Every man drank heavily, ate to repletion and gambled. They would hazard first their property and then themselves. A negro would stake his aged mother against a cow. As for morality, neither the word nor the thing existed among them. Their idea of perfect bliss was total intoxication. When ill, they applied to a medicine man, who having received a fee used it for the purpose of getting drunk, but upon his return to sobriety, he always, unless, of course, the patient took upon himself to die, instead of waiting, attended conscientiously to his duties. No self-respecting chief was ever sober after mid-day. Women were fattened for marriage just as pigs are fattened for market—beauty and obesity being interchangeable terms. The wearisome proceedings in England necessary to a divorce, observes Burton, are there unknown. You turn your wife out of doors, and the thing is done.

The chief trouble at Kazeh, as elsewhere, arose from the green scorpion, but there were also lizards and gargantuan spiders. Vermin under an inch in length, such as fleas, ants, and mosquitoes, were deemed unworthy of notice. The march soon began again, but they had not proceeded many miles before Burton fell with partial paralysis brought on my malaria; and Speke, whom Burton always called "Jack," became partially blind. Thoughts of the elmy fields and the bistre furrows of Elstree and the tasselled coppices of Tours crowded Burton's brain; and he wrote:

"I hear the sound I used to hear, The laugh of joy, the groan of pain, The sounds of childhood sound again Death must be near."

At last, on the 13th February they saw before them a long streak of light. "Look, master, look," cried Burton's Arab guide, "behold the great water!" They advanced a few yards, and then an enormous expanse of blue burst into sight. There, in the lap of its steel-coloured mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine, lay the great lake Tanganyika. The goal had been reached; by his daring, shrewdness and resolution he had overcome all difficulties. Like the soldiers in Tacitus, in victory he found all things—health, vigour, abundance.

No wonder Burton felt a marvellous exultation of spirits when he viewed this great expanse of waters. Here, he thought, are the sources of that ancient river—the Nile. Now are fulfilled the longing of two thousand years. I am the heir of the ages! Having hired "a solid built Arab craft," the explorers made their way first to Ujiji and then to Uvira, the northernmost point of the lake, which they reached on April 26th. On their return voyage they were caught in a terrible storm, from which they did not expect to be saved, and while the wild tumbling waves threatened momentarily to engulf them a couplet from his fragmentary Kasidah kept running in Burton's mind:

"This collied night, these horrid waves, these gusts that sweep the whirling deep; What reck they of our evil plight, who on the shore securely sleep?" [172]

However, they came out of this peril, just as they had come out of so many others. Burton also crossed the lake and landed in Kazembe's country, [173] in which he was intensely interested, and some years later he translated into English the narratives of Dr. Lacerda [174] and other Portuguese travellers who had visited its capital, Lunda, near Lake Moero.



38. The Return Journey, 26th May 1858 to 13th February 1859.

The explorers left Tanganyika for the return journey to Zanzibar on May 26th. At Yombo, reached June 18th, Burton received a packet of letters, which arrived from the coast, and from one he learnt of the death of his father, which had occurred 8 months previous. Despite his researches, Colonel Burton was not missed in the scientific world, but his son sincerely mourned a kind-hearted and indulgent parent. At Kazeh, Fortune, which had hitherto been so favourable, now played Burton a paltry trick. Speke having expressed a wish to visit the lake now called Victoria Nyanza, a sheet of water which report declared to be larger than Tanganyika, Burton, for various reasons, thought it wiser not to accompany him. So Speke went alone and continued his march until he reached the lake, the dimensions of which surpassed his most sanguine expectations. On his return to Kazeh he at once declared that the Victoria Nyanza and its affluents were the head waters of the Nile, and that consequently he had discovered them. Isis (he assured Burton) was at last unveiled. As a matter of fact he had no firmer ground for making that statement than Burton had in giving the honour to Tanganyika, and each clung tenaciously to his own theory. Speke, indeed, had a very artistic eye. He not only, by guess, connected his lake with the Nile, but placed on his map a very fine range of mountains which had no existence—the Mountains of the Moon. However, the fact remains that as regards the Nile his theory turned out to be the correct one. The expedition went forward again, but his attitude towards Burton henceforth changed. Hitherto they had been the best of friends, and it was always "Dick" and "Jack," but now Speke became querulous, and the mere mention of the Nile gave him offence. Struck down with the disease called "Little Irons," he thought he was being torn limb from limb by devils, giants, and lion-headed demons, and he made both in his delirium and after his recovery all kinds of wild charges against Burton, and interlarded his speech with contumelious taunts—his chief grievance being Burton's refusal to accept the Victoria Nyanza-Nile theory. But Burton made no retort. On the contrary, he bore Speke's petulance with infinite patience. Perhaps he remembered the couplet in his favourite Beharistan:

"True friend is he who bears with all His friend's unkindness, spite and gall." [175]

There is no need for us to side either with Speke or Burton. Both were splendid men, and their country is proud of them. Fevers, hardships, toils, disappointments, ambition, explain everything, and it is quite certain that each of the explorers inwardly recognised the merit of the other. They reached Zanzibar again 4th March 1859.

Had Burton been worldly wise he would have at once returned home, but he repeated the mistake made after the journey to Mecca and was again to suffer from it.

Speke, on the other hand, who ever had an eye to the main chance, sailed straight for England, where he arrived 9th May 1859. He at once took a very unfair advantage of Burton "by calling at the Royal Geographical Society and endeavouring to inaugurate a new exploration" without his old chief. He was convinced, he said, that the Victoria Nyanza was the source of the Nile, and he wished to set the matter at rest once and for every by visiting its northern shores. The Society joined with him Captain James A. Grant [176] and it was settled that this new expedition should immediately be made. Speke also lectured vaingloriously at Burlington House. When Burton arrived in London on May 21st it was only to find all the ground cut from under him. While Speke, the subordinate, had been welcomed like a king, he, Burton, the chief of the expedition, had landed unnoticed. But the bitterest pill was the news that Speke had been appointed to lead the new expedition. And as if that was not enough, Captain Rigby, Consul at Zanzibar, gave ear to and published the complaints of some of Burton's dastardly native followers. Although Fortune cheated Burton of having been the actual discoverer of the Source of the Nile, it must never be forgotten that all the credit of having inaugurated the expedition to Central Africa and of leading it are his. Tanganyika—in the words of a recent writer, "is in a very true sense the heart of Africa." If some day a powerful state spring up on its shores, Burton will to all time be honoured as its indomitable Columbus. In his journal he wrote proudly, but not untruly: "I have built me a monument stronger than brass." The territory is now German. Its future masters who shall name! but whoever they may be, no difference can be made to Burton's glory. Kingdoms may come and kingdoms may go, but the fame of the truly great man speeds on for ever.



Chapter X. 22nd January 1861-to August 1861, Mormons and Marriage



Bibliography:

17. The City of the Saints, 1861.



39. We rushed into each other's arms. 22nd May, 1860.

During Burton's absence Isabel Arundell tortured herself with apprehensions and fears. Now and again a message from him reached her, but there were huge deserts of silence. Then came the news of Speke's return and lionization in London. She thus tells the story of her re-union with Burton. "On May 22nd (1860), I chanced to call upon a friend. I was told she had gone out, but would be in to tea, and was asked to wait. In a few minutes another ring came to the door, and another visitor was also asked to wait. A voice that thrilled me through and through came up the stairs, saying, 'I want Miss Arundell's address.' The door opened, I turned round, and judge of my feelings when I beheld Richard!.... We rushed into each other's arms.... We went down-stairs and Richard called a cab, and he put me in and told the man to drive about anywhere. He put his arm round my waist, and I put my head on his shoulder." [177] Burton had come back more like a mummy than a man, with cadaverous face, brown-yellow skin hanging in bags, his eyes protruding and his lips drawn away from this teeth—the legacy of twenty-one attacks of fever.

When the question of their marriage was brought before her parents, Mr. Arundell not only offered no impediment, but remarked: "I do not know what it is about that man, I cannot get him out of my head. I dream of him every night," but Mrs. Arundell still refused consent. She reiterated her statement that whereas the Arundells were staunch old English Catholics, Burton professed no religion at all, and declared that his conversation and his books proclaimed him an Agnostic. Nor is it surprising that she remained obdurate, seeing that the popular imagination still continued to run riot over his supposed enormities. The midnight hallucinations of De Quincey seemed to be repeating themselves in a whole nation. He had committed crimes worthy of the Borgias. He had done a deed which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. Miss Arundell boldly defended him against her mother, though she admitted afterwards that, circumstances considered, Mrs. Arundell's opposition was certainly logical.

"As we cannot get your mother's consent," said Burton, "we had better marry without it."

"No," replied Miss Arundell, "that will not do," nor could any argument turn her.

"You and your mother have certainly one characteristic in common," was the comment. "You are as obstinate as mules."

Burton was not without means, for on the death of his father he inherited some L16,000, but he threw his money about with the recklessness of an Aladdin, and 16 million would have gone the same way. It was all, however, or nearly all spent in the service of the public. Every expedition he made, and every book he published left him considerably the poorer. So eager for exploration was he that before the public had the opportunity to read about one expedition, he had started on another. So swiftly did he write, that before one book had left the binders, another was on its way to the printers. Systole, diastole, never ceasing—never even pausing. Miss Arundell being inflexible, Burton resolved to let the matter remain nine months in abeyance, and, inactivity being death to him, he then shot off like a rocket to America. One day in April (1860) Miss Arundell received a brief letter the tenor of which was as follows:—"I am off to Salt Lake City, and shall be back in December. Think well over our affair, and if your mind is then made up we will marry."

Being the first intimation of his departure—for as usual there had been no good-bye—the message gave her a terrible shock. Hope fled, and a prostrating illness followed. The belief that he would be killed pressed itself upon her and returned with inexplicable insistence. She picked up a newspaper, and the first thing that met her eye was a paragraph headed "Murder of Captain Burton." The shock was terrible, but anxious enquiry revealed the murdered man to be another Captain Burton, not her Richard.



40. Brigham Young. April 1860 to November 1860.

It was natural that, after seeing the Mecca of the Mohammedans, Burton should turn to the Mecca of the Mormons, for he was always attracted by the centres of the various faiths, moreover he wished to learn the truth about a city and a religion that had previously been described only by the biassed. One writer, for instance—a lady—had vilified Mormonism because "some rude men in Salt Lake City had walked over a bridge before her." It was scarcely the most propitious moment to start on such a journey. The country was torn with intestine contentions. The United States Government were fighting the Indians, and the Mormons were busy stalking one another with revolvers. Trifles of this kind, however, did not weigh with Burton. After an uneventful voyage across the Atlantic, and a conventional journey overland, he arrived at St. Joseph, popularly St. Jo, on the Missouri. Here he clothed himself like a backwoodsman, taking care, however, to put among this luggage a silk hat and a frock coat in order to make an impression among the saints. He left St. Jo on August 7th and at Alcali Lake saw the curious spectacle of an Indian remove. The men were ill-looking, and used vermilion where they ought to have put soap; the squaws and papooses comported with them; but there was one pretty girl who had "large, languishing eyes, and sleek black hair like the ears of a King Charles Spaniel." The Indians followed Burton's waggon for miles, now and then peering into it and crying "How! How!" the normal salutation. His way then lay by darkling canons, rushing streams and stupendous beetling cliffs fringed with pines. Arrived at his destination, he had no difficulty, thanks to the good offices of a fellow traveller, in mixing in the best Mormon Society. He found himself in a Garden City. Every householder had from five to ten acres in the suburbs, and one and a half close at home; and the people seemed happy. He looked in vain, however, for the spires of the Mormon temple which a previous writer had described prettily as glittering in the sunlight. All he could find was "a great hole in the ground," said to be the beginning of a baptismal font, with a plain brick building, the Tabernacle, at a little distance. After a service at the "Tabernacle" he was introduced to Brigham Young, a farmer-like man of 45, who evinced much interest in the Tanganyika journey and discussed stock, agriculture and religion; but when Burton asked to be admitted as a Mormon, Young replied, with a smile, "I think you've done that sort of thing once before, Captain." So Burton was unable to add Mormonism to his five or six other religions. Burton then told with twinkling eyes a pitiful tale of how he, an unmarried man, had come all the way to Salt Lake City, requiring a wife, but had found no wives to be had, all the ladies having been snapped up by the Saints. A little later the two men, who had taken a stroll together, found themselves on an eminence which commanded a view both of the Salt Lake city and the Great Salt Lake. Brigham Young pointed out the various spots of interest, "That's Brother Dash's house, that block just over there is occupied by Brother X's wives. Elder Y's wives reside in the next block and Brother Z's wives in that beyond it. My own wives live in that many-gabled house in the middle."

Waving his right hand towards the vastness of the great Salt Lake, Burton exclaimed, with gravity:

"Water, water, everywhere"

and then waving his left towards the city, he added, pathetically:

"But not a drop to drink."

Brigham Young, who loved a joke as dearly as he loved his seventeen wives, burst out into hearty laughter. In his book, "The City of the Saints," Burton assures us that polygamy was admirably suited for the Mormons, and he gives the religious, physiological and social motives for a plurality of wives then urged by that people. Economy, he tells us, was one of them. "Servants are rare and costly; it is cheaper and more comfortable to marry them. Many converts are attracted by the prospect of becoming wives, especially from places like Clifton, near Bristol, where there are 64 females to 36 males. The old maid is, as the ought to be, an unknown entity." [178]

Burton himself received at least one proposal of marriage there; and the lady, being refused, spread the rumour that it was the other way about. "Why," said Burton, "it's like

A certain Miss Baxter, Who refused a man before he'd axed her." [179]

As regards the country itself nothing struck him so much as its analogy to Palestine. A small river runs from the Wahsatch Mountains, corresponding to Lebanon, and flows into Lake Utah, which represents Lake Tiberias, whence a river called the Jordan flows past Salt Lake City into the Great Salt Lake, just as the Palestine Jordan flows into the Dead Sea.

From Salt Lake City, Burton journeyed by coach and rail to San Francisco, whence he returned home via Panama.



41. Marriage. 22nd January 1861.

He arrived in England at Christmas 1860, and Miss Arundell, although her mother still frowned, now consented to the marriage. She was 30 years old, she said, and could no longer be treated as a child. Ten years had elapsed since Burton, who was now 40, had first become acquainted with her, and few courtships could have been more chequered.

"I regret that I am bringing you no money," observed Miss Arundell.

"That is not a disadvantage as far as I am concerned," replied Burton, "for heiresses always expect to lord it over their lords."—"We will have no show," he continued, "for a grand marriage ceremony is a barbarous and an indelicate exhibition." So the wedding, which took place at the Bavarian Catholic Church, Warwick Street, London, on 22nd January 1861, was all simplicity. As they left the church Mrs. Burton called to mind Gipsy Hagar, her couched eyes and her reiterated prophecy. The luncheon was spread at the house of a medical friend, Dr. Bird, 49, Welbeck Street, and in the midst of it Burton told some grisly tales of his adventures in the Nedj and Somaliland, including an account of the fight at Berbera.

"Now, Burton," interrupted Dr. Bird, "tell me how you feel when you have killed a man." To which Burton replied promptly and with a sly look, "Quite jolly, doctor! how do you?" After the luncheon Burton and his wife walked down to their lodgings in Bury Street, St. James's, where Mrs. Burton's boxes had been despatched in a four-wheeler; and from Bury Street, Burton, as soon as he could pick up a pen, wrote in his fine, delicate hand as follows to Mr. Arundell:

"January 23 1861, [180] "Bury Street, "St. James.

"My dear Father, "I have committed a highway robbery by marrying your daughter Isabel, at Warwick Street Church, and before the Registrar—the details she is writing to her mother. "It only remains to me to say that I have no ties or liaisons of any sort, that the marriage is perfectly legal and respectable. I want no money with Isabel: I can work, and it will be my care that Time shall bring you nothing to regret.

"I am "Yours sincerely, "Richard F. Burton."

"There is one thing," said Burton to his wife, "I cannot do, and that is, face congratulations, so, if you are agreeable, we will pretend that we have been married some months." Such matters, however, are not easy to conceal, and the news leaked out. "I am surprised," said his cousin, Dr. Edward J. Burton, to him a few days later, "to find that you are married." "I am myself even more surprised than you," was the reply. "Isabel is a strong-willed woman. She was determined to have her way and she's got it."

With Mr. Arundell, Burton speedily became a prime favourite, and his attitude towards his daughter was Metastasio's:

"Yes, love him, love him, He is deserving even of such infinite bliss;"

but Mrs. Arundell, poor lady, found it hard to conquer her prejudice. Only a few weeks before her death she was heard to exclaim, "Dick Burton is no relation of mine." Let us charitably assume, however, that it was only in a moment of irritation. Isabel Burton, though of larger build than most women, was still a dream of beauty; and her joy in finding herself united to the man she loved gave her a new radiance. Her beauty, however, was of a rather coarse grain, and even those most attached to her remarked in her a certain lack of refinement. She was a goddess at a little distance.

Her admiration of her husband approached worship. She says, "I used to like to sit and look at him; and to think 'You are mine, and there is no man on earth the least like you.'" Their married life was not without its jars, but a more devoted wife Burton could not have found; and he, though certainly in his own fashion, was sincerely and continuously attached to her. If the difference in their religious opinions sometimes led to amusing skirmishes, it was, on the other hand, never allowed to be a serious difficulty. The religious question, however, often made unpleasantness between Mrs. Burton and Lady Stisted and her daughters—who were staunch Protestants of the Georgian and unyielding school. When the old English Catholic and the old English Protestant met there were generally sparks. The trouble originated partly from Mrs. Burton's impulsiveness and want of tact. She could not help dragging in her religion at all sorts of unseasonable times. She would introduce into her conversation and letters remarks that a moment's reflection would have told her could only nauseate her Protestant friends. "The Blessed Virgin," or some holy saint or other was always intruding on the text. Her head was lost in her heart. She was once in terrible distress because she had mislaid some trifle that had been touched by the Pope, though not in more distress, perhaps, than her husband would have been had he lost his sapphire talisman, and she was most careful to see that the lamps which she lighted before the images of certain saints never went out. Burton himself looked upon all this with amused complacency and observed that she was a figure stayed somehow from the Middle Ages. If the mediaeval Mrs. Burton liked to illuminate the day with lamps or camphorated tapers, that, he said, was her business; adding that the light of the sun was good enough for him. He objected at first to her going to confession, but subsequently made no further reference to the subject. Once, even, in a moment of weakness, he gave her five pounds to have masses said for her dead brother; just as one might give a child a penny to buy a top. He believed in God, and tried to do what he thought right, fair and honourable, not for the sake of reward, as he used to say, but simply because it was right, fair and honourable. Occasionally he accompanied his wife to mass, and she mentions that he always bowed his head at "Hallowed by Thy Name," which "shows," as Dr. Johnson would have commented, "that he had good principles." Mrs. Burton generally called her husband "Dick," but frequently, especially in letters, he is "The Bird," a name which he deserved, if only on account of his roving propensities. Often, however, for no reason at all, she called him "Jimmy," and she was apt in her admiration of him and pride of possession, to Dick and Jimmy it too lavishly among casual acquaintances. Indeed, the tyranny of her heart over her head will force itself upon our notice at every turn. It is pleasant to be able to state that Mrs. Burton and Burton's "dear Louisa" (Mrs. Segrave) continued to be the best of friends, and had many a hearty laugh over bygone petty jealousies. One day, after calling on Mrs. Segrave, Burton and his wife, who was dressed in unusual style, lunched with Dr. and Mrs. E. J. Burton. "Isabel looks very smart to-day," observed Mrs. E. J. Burton. "Yes," followed Burton, "she always wears her best when we go to see my dear Louisa."

Burton took a pleasure in sitting up late. "Indeed," says one of his friends, "he would talk all night in preference to going to bed, and, in the Chaucerian style, he was a brilliant conversationalist, and his laugh was like the rattle of a pebble across a frozen pond." "No man of sense," Burton used to say, "rises, except in mid-summer, before the world is brushed and broomed, aired and sunned." Later, however, he changed his mind, and for the last twenty years of his life he was a very early riser.

Among Burton's wedding gifts were two portraits—himself and his wife—in one frame, the work of Louis Desanges, the battle painter whose acquaintance he had made when a youth at Lucca. Burton appears with Atlantean shoulders, strong mouth, penthouse eyebrows, and a pair of enormous pendulous moustaches, which made him look very like a Chinaman. Now was this an accident, for his admiration of the Chinese was always intense. He regarded them as "the future race of the East," just as he regarded the Slav as the future race of Europe. Many years later he remarked of Gordon's troops, that they had shown the might that was slumbering in a nation of three hundred millions. China armed would be a colossus. Some day Russia would meet China face to face—the splendid empire of Central Asia the prize. The future might of Japan he did not foresee.

Says Lady Burton: "We had a glorious season, and took up our position in Society. Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes) was very much attached to Richard, and he settled the question of our position by asking his friend, Lord Palmerston, to give a party, and to let me be the bride of the evening, and when I arrived Lord Palmerston gave me his arm.... Lady Russell presented me at Court 'on my marriage.'" [181]

Mrs. Burton's gaslight beauty made her the cynosure of all eyes.



42. At Lord Houghton's.

At Fryston, Lord Houghton's seat, the Burtons met Carlyle, Froude, Mr. A. C. Swinburne, who had just published his first book, The Queen Mother and Rosamund, [182] and Vambery, the Hungarian linguist and traveller. Born in Hungary, of poor Jewish parents, Vambery had for years a fierce struggle with poverty. Having found his way to Constantinople, he applied himself to the study of Oriental languages, and at the time he visited Fryston he was planning the most picturesque event of his life—namely, his journey to Khiva, Bokhara and Samarcand, which in emulation of Burton he accomplished in the disguise of a dervish. [183] He told the company some Hungarian tales and then Burton, seated cross-legged on a cushion, recited portions of FitzGerald's adaptation of Omar Khayyam, [184] the merits of which he was one of the first to recognise. Burton and Lord Houghton also met frequently in London, and they corresponded regularly for many years. [185] "Richard and I," says Mrs. Burton, writing to Lord Houghton 12th August 1874, "would have remained very much in the background if you had not taken us by the hand and pulled us into notice." A friendship also sprang up between Burton and Mr. Swinburne, and the Burtons were often the guests of Mrs. Burton's uncle, Lord Gerard, who resided at Garswood, near St. Helens, Lancashire.



Chapter XI. August 1861-November 1863, Fernando Po



Bibliography:

18. Wanderings in West Africa. 2 vols. 1863. 19. Prairie Traveller, by R. B. Marcy. Edited by Burton 1863. 20. Abeokuta and the Cameroons. 2 vols. 1863. 21. A Day among the Fans. 17th February 1863. 22. The Nile Basin, 1864.



43. African Gold.

As the result of his exceptional services to the public Burton had hoped that he would obtain some substantial reward; and his wife persistently used all the influence at her disposal to this end. Everyone admitted his immense brain power, but those mysterious rumours due to his enquiries concerning secret Eastern habits and customs dogged him like some terrible demon. People refused to recognise that he had pursued his studies in the interest of learning and science. They said, absurdly enough, "A man who studies vice must be vicious." His insubordination at various times, his ungovernable temper, and his habit of saying out bluntly precisely what he thought, also told against him. Then did Mrs. Burton commence that great campaign which is her chief title to fame—the defence of her husband. Though, as we have already shown, a person of but superficial education; though, life through, she never got more than a smattering of any one branch of knowledge; nevertheless by dint of unremitting effort she eventually prevailed upon the public to regard Burton with her own eyes. She wrote letters to friends, to enemies, to the press. She wheedled, she bullied, she threatened, she took a hundred other courses—all with one purpose. She was very often woefully indiscreet, but nobody can withhold admiration for her. Burton was scarcely a model husband—he was too peremptory and inattentive for that—but this self-sacrifice and hero worship naturally told on him, and he became every year more deeply grateful to her. He laughed at her foibles—he twitted her on her religion and her faulty English, but he came to value the beauty of her disposition, and the goodness of her heart even more highly than the graces of her person. All, however, that his applications, her exertions, and the exertions of her friends could obtain from the Foreign Secretary (Lord Russell) [186] was the Consulship of that white man's grave, Fernando Po, with a salary of L700 a year. In other words he was civilly shelved to a place where all his energies would be required for keeping himself alive. "They want me to die," said Burton, bitterly, "but I intend to live, just to spite the devils." It is the old tale, England breeds great men, but grudges them opportunities for the manifestation of their greatness.

The days that remained before his departure, Burton spent at various Society gatherings, but the pleasures participated in by him and his wife were neutralised by a great disaster, namely the loss of all his Persian and Arabic manuscripts in a fire at Grindley's where they had been stored. He certainly took his loss philosophically; but he could never think of the event without a sigh.

Owing to the unwholesomeness of the climate of Fernando Po, Mrs. Burton was, of course, unable to accompany him. They separated at Liverpool, 24th August 1861. An embrace, "a heart wrench;" and then a wave of the handkerchief, while "the Blackbird" African steam ship fussed its way out of the Mersey, having on board the British scape-goat sent away—"by the hand of a fit man"—one "Captain English"—into the wilderness of Fernando Po. "Unhappily," commented Burton, "I am not one of those independents who can say ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute." The stoic, however, after a fair fight, eventually vanquished the husband. Still he did not forget his wife; and in his Wanderings in West Africa, a record of this voyage, there is a very pretty compliment to her which, however, only the initiated would recognise. After speaking of the black-haired, black-eyed women of the South of Europe, and giving them their due, he says, "but after a course of such charms, one falls back with pleasure upon brown, yellow or what is better than all, red-auburn locks and eyes of soft, limpid blue." How the blue eyes of Mrs. Burton must have glistened when she read those words; and we can imagine her taking one more look in the glass to see if her hair really was red-auburn, as, of course, it was.

Burton dedicated this work to the "True Friends" of the Dark Continent, "not to the 'Philanthropist' or to Exeter Hall." [187] One of its objects was to give a trustworthy account of the negro character and to point out the many mistakes that well-intentioned Englishmen had made in dealing with it. To put it briefly, he says that the negro [188] is an inferior race, and that neither education nor anything else can raise it to the level of the white. After witnessing, at the Grand Bonny River, a horrid exhibition called a Juju or sacrifice house, he wrote, "There is apparently in this people [the negroes] a physical delight in cruelty to beast as well as to man. The sight of suffering seems to bring them an enjoyment without which the world is tame; probably the wholesale murderers and torturers of history, from Phalaris and Nero downwards, took an animal and sensual pleasure in the look of blood, and in the inspection of mortal agonies. I can see no other explanation of the phenomena which meet my eye in Africa. In almost all the towns on the Oil Rivers, you see dead or dying animals in some agonizing position." [189]

Cowper had written:

"Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in white and black the same;"

"which I deny," comments Burton, "affection, like love, is the fruit of animalism refined by sentiment." He further declares that the Black is in point of affection inferior to the brutes. "No humane Englishman would sell his dog to a negro." [190] The phrase "God's image in ebony" lashed him to a fury.

Of his landing at Sierra Leone he gives the following anecdote: [191] "The next day was Sunday, and in the morning I had a valise carried up to the house to which I had been invited. When I offered the man sixpence, the ordinary fee, he demanded an extra sixpence, 'for breaking the Sabbath.' I gave it readily, and was pleased to find that the labours of our missionaries had not been in vain." At Cape Coast Castle, he recalled the sad fate of "L.E.L." [192] and watched the women "panning the sand of the shore for gold." He found that, in the hill region to the north, gold digging was carried on to a considerable extent. "The pits," he says, "varying from two to three feet in diameter, and from twelve to fifty feet deep, are often so near the roads that loss of life has been the result. Shoring up being little known, the miners are not infrequently buried alive.... This Ophir, this California, where every river is a Tmolus and a Pactolus, every hillock a gold-field—does not contain a cradle, a puddling-machine, a quartz crusher, a pound of mercury." That a land apparently so wealthy should be entirely neglected by British capitalists caused Burton infinite surprise, but he felt certain that it had a wonderful future. His thoughts often reverted thither, and we shall find him later in life taking part in an expedition sent out to report upon certain of its gold fields. [193]

By September 26th the "Blackbird" lay in Clarence Cove, Fernando Po; and the first night he spent on shore, Burton, whose spirits fell, wondered whether he was to find a grave there like that other great African traveller, the Cornish Richard Lander. [194]



44. Anecdotes.

Fernando Po, [195] he tells us, is an island in which man finds it hard to live and very easy to die. It has two aspects. About Christmas time it is "in a state deeper than rest":

"A kind of sleepy Venus seemed Dudu."

But from May to November it is the rainy season. The rain comes down "a sheet of solid water, and often there is lightning accompanied by deafening peals of thunder." The capital, Sta. Isabel, nee Clarence, did not prepossess him. Pallid men—chiefly Spaniards—sat or lolled languidly in their verandahs, or crawled about the baking-hot streets. Strangers fled the place like a pestilence. Fortunately the Spanish colony were just establishing a Sanitarium—Sta. Cecilia—400 metres above sea level; consequently health was within reach of those who would take the trouble to seek it; and Burton was not slow to make a sanitarium of his own even higher up. To the genuine natives or Bubes he was distinctly attracted. They lived in sheds without walls, and wore nothing except a hat, which prevented the tree snakes from falling on them. The impudence of the negroes, however, who would persist in treating the white man not even as an equal, but as an inferior, he found to be intolerable. Shortly after his arrival "a nigger dandy" swaggered into the consulate, slapped him on the back in a familiar manner, and said with a loud guffaw, "Shake hands, consul. How d'ye do?" Burton looked steadily at the man for a few moments, and then calling to his canoe-men said, "Hi, Kroo-boys, just throw this nigger out of window, will you?" The boys, delighted with the task, seized the black gentleman by his head and feet, and out of the window he flew. As the scene was enacted on the ground floor the fall was no great one, but it was remarked that henceforward the niggers of Fernando Po were less condescending to the Consul. When night fell and the fire-flies began to glitter in the orange trees, Burton used to place on the table before him a bottle of brandy, a box of cigars, and a bowl containing water and a handkerchief and then write till he was weary; [196] rising now and again to wet his forehead with the handkerchief or to gaze outside at the palm plumes, transmuted by the sheen of the moon into lucent silver—upon a scene that would have baffled the pen even of an Isaiah or a Virgil.

The captains of ships calling at Sta. Isabel were, it seems, in the habit of discharging their cargoes swiftly and steaming off again without losing a moment. As this caused both inconvenience and loss to the merchants from its allowing insufficient time to read and answer correspondence, they applied to Burton for remedy. After the next ship had discharged, its captain walked into the Consulate and exclaimed off-handedly, "Now, Consul, quick with my papers; I want to be off." Burton looked up and replied unconcernedly: "I haven't finished my letters." "Oh d——- your letters," cried the captain, "I can't wait for them." "Stop a bit," cried Burton, "let's refer to your contract," and he unfolded the paper. "According to this, you have to stay here eighteen hours' daylight, in order to give the merchants an opportunity of attending to their correspondence." "Yes," followed the captain," but that rule has never been enforced." "Are you going to stay?" enquired Burton. "No," replied the captain, with an oath. "Very good," followed Burton. "Now I am going straight to the governor's and I shall fire two guns. If you go one minute before the prescribed time expires I shall send the first shot right across your bows, and the second slap into you. Good-day." [197] The captain did not venture to test the threat; and the merchants had henceforth no further trouble under his head.



45. Fans and Gorillas.

During his Consulship, Burton visited a number of interesting spots on the adjoining African coasts, including Abeokuta [198] and Benin, but no place attracted him more than the Cameroon country; and his work Two Trips to Gorilla Land [199] is one of the brightest and raciest of all his books. The Fan cannibals seem to have specially fascinated him. "The Fan," he says "like all inner African tribes, with whom fighting is our fox-hunting, live in a chronic state of ten days' war. Battles are not bloody; after two or three warriors have fallen their corpses are dragged away to be devoured, their friends save themselves by flight, and the weaker side secures peace by paying sheep and goats." Burton, who was present at a solemn dance led by the king's eldest daughter, Gondebiza, noticed that the men were tall and upright, the women short and stout. On being addressed "Mbolane," he politely replied "An," which in cannibal-land is considered good form. He could not, however, bring himself to admire Gondebiza, though the Monsieur Worth of Fanland had done his utmost for her. Still, she must have looked really engaging in a thin pattern of tattoo, a gauze work of oil and camwood, a dwarf pigeon tail of fan palm for an apron, and copper bracelets and anklets. The much talked of gorilla Burton found to be a less formidable creature than previous travellers had reported. "The gorilla," he, says, in his matter-of-fact way, "is a poor devil ape, not a hellish dream creature, half man, half beast." Burton not only did not die at Fernando Po, he was not even ill. Whenever langour and fever threatened he promptly winged his way to his eyrie on the Pico de Sta. Isabel, where he made himself comfortable and listened with complaisance to Lord Russell and friends three thousand miles away fuming and gnashing their teeth.



46. The Anthropological Society, 6th Jan. 1863.

After an absence of a year and a half, Burton, as the result of his wife's solicitation at the Foreign Office, obtained four months' leave. He reached England in December 1862 and spent Christmas with her at Wardour Castle, the seat of her kinsman, Lord Arundell. His mind ran continually on the Gold Coast and its treasures. "If you will make me Governor of the Gold Coast," he wrote to Lord Russell, "I will send home a million a year," but in reply, Russell, with eyes unbewitched [200] observed caustically that gold was getting too common. Burton's comment was an explosion that terrorised everyone near him. He then amused himself by compiling a pamphlet on West African proverbs, one of which, picked up in the Yorubas country, ran, oddly enough: "Anger draweth arrows from the quiver: good words draw kolas from the bag."

The principal event of this holiday was the foundation, with the assistance of Dr. James Hunt, of the Anthropological Society of London (6th January 1863). The number who met was eleven. Says Burton, "Each had his own doubts and hopes and fears touching the vitality of the new-born. Still, we knew that our case was good.... We all felt the weight of a great want. As a traveller and a writer of travels 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, [201] met this difficulty. Burton was the first president, and in two years the Society, which met at No. 4, St. Martin's Place, had 500 members. "These rooms," Burton afterwards commented, "now offer a refuge to destitute truth. There any man, monogenist, polygenist, eugenestic or dysgenestic, may state the truth as far as is in him." The history of the Society may be summed up in a few words. In 1871 it united with the Enthnological Society and formed the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. In 1873 certain members of the old society, including Burton, founded the London Anthropological Society, and issued a periodical called Anthropologia, of which Burton wrote in 1885, "My motive was to supply travellers with an organ which would rescue their observations from the outer darkness of manuscript and print their curious information on social and sexual matters out of place in the popular book intended for the Nipptisch, and indeed better kept from public view. But hardly had we begun when 'Respectability,' that whited sepulchre full of all uncleanness, rose up against us. 'Propriety' cried us down with her brazen, blatant voice, and the weak-kneed brethren fell away. [202] Yet the organ was much wanted and is wanted still." [203] Soon after the founding of the Society Burton, accompanied by his wife, took a trip to Madeira and then proceeded to Teneriffe, where they parted, he going on to Fernando Po and she returning to England; but during the next few years she made several journeys to Teneriffe, where, by arrangement, they periodically met.



Chapter XII. 29th November 1863 to 15th September 1865, Gelele



Bibliography:

23. A Mission to the King of Dahome. 2 vols., 1864. 24. Notes on Marcy's Prairie Traveller. Anthropological Review, 1864.



47. Whydah and its Deity. 29th November 1863.

In November 1863 the welcome intelligence reached Burton that the British Government had appointed him commissioner and bearer of a message to Gelele, King of Dahomey. He was to take presents from Queen Victoria and to endeavour to induce Gelele to discontinue both human sacrifices and the sale of slaves. Mrs. Burton sadly wanted to accompany him. She thought that with a magic lantern and some slides representing New Testament scenes she could convert Gelele and his court from Fetishism to Catholicism. [204] But Burton, who was quite sure that he could get on better alone, objected that her lantern would probably be regarded as a work of magic, and that consequently both he and she would run the risk of being put to death for witchcraft. So, very reluctantly, she abandoned the idea. Burton left Fernando Po in the "Antelope" on 29th November 1863, and, on account of the importance attached by savages to pageantry, entered Whydah, the port of Dahomey, in some state. While waiting for the royal permit to start up country he amused himself by looking round the town. Its lions were the Great Market and the Boa Temple. The latter was a small mud hut, with a thatched roof; and of the 'boas,' which tuned out to be pythons, he counted seven, each about five feet long. The most popular deity of Whydah, however, was the Priapic Legba, a horrid mass of red clay moulded into an imitation man with the abnormalities of the Roman deity. "The figure," he tells us, "is squat, crouched, as it were, before its own attributes, with arms longer than a gorilla's. The head is of mud or wood rising conically to an almost pointed poll; a dab of clay represents the nose; the mouth is a gash from ear to ear. This deity almost fills a temple of dwarf thatch, open at the sides. ...Legba is of either sex, but rarely feminine.... In this point Legba differs from the classical Pan and Priapus, but the idea involved is the same. The Dahoman, like almost all semi-barbarians, considers a numerous family the highest blessing." The peculiar worship of Legba consisted of propitiating his or her characteristics by unctions of palm oil, and near every native door stood a clay Legba-pot of cooked maize and palm oil, which got eaten by the turkey-buzzard or vulture. This loathsome fowl, perched upon the topmost stick of a blasted calabash tree, struck Burton as the most appropriate emblem of rotten and hopeless Dahomey.



48. The Amazons.

Gelele's permit having arrived, the mission lost no time in proceeding northward. Burton was accompanied by Dr. Cruikshank of the "Antelope," a coloured Wesleyan minister of Whydah, named Bernisco, and a hundred servants. At every halting place the natives capered before them and tabored a welcome, while at Kama, where Gelele was staying, they not only played, but burst out with an extemporaneous couplet in Burton's honour:

"Batunu [205]he hath seen the world with its kings and caboceers, He now cometh to Dahomey, and he shall see everything here."

Burton presently caught sight of Gelele's body-guard of 1,000 women—the famous Amazons, who were armed with muskets, and habited in tunics and white calottes. With great protruding lips, and no chin to speak of, they were surely the ugliest women in the world. Of their strength, however, there was no question, and Burton says that all the women of Dahomey are physically superior to the men, which accounts for the employment of so many of them as soldiers. The Amazons were bound to celibacy, and they adhered to it so scrupulously that when Burton arrived, there were only 150 under confinement for breaking their vow. Gelele who was 45 years of age, and six feet high, sat under the shade of a shed-gate, smoking a pipe, with a throng of his wives squatted in a semi-circle round him. All were ugly to a wonder, but they atoned for their deplorable looks by their extreme devotion to, or rather adulation of their master. When perspiration appeared upon the royal brow, one of them at once removed it with the softest cloth, if his dress was disarranged it was instantly adjusted, when he drank every lip uttered an exclamation of blessing. Gelele, drowsy with incense, received Burton kindly, and treated him during the whole of his stay with hospitality. He also made some display of pageantry, though it was but a tawdry show. At the capital, Abomey, "Batunu" was housed with a salacious old "Afa-diviner" [206] called Buko-no, who was perpetually begging for aphrodisiacs.



49. "The Customs."

Upon Gelele's arrival at Abomey the presents from the Queen were delivered; and on December 28th what was called "The Customs" began, that is the slaughtering of criminals and persons captured in war. Burton begged off some of the victims, and he declared that he would turn back at once if any person was killed before his eyes. He tells us, however, that in the case of the King of Dahomey, human sacrifice is not attributable to cruelty. "It is a touching instance of the King's filial piety, deplorably mistaken, but perfectly sincere." The world to come is called by the Dahomans "Deadland." It receives the 'nidon' or soul; but in "Deadland" there are no rewards or punishments. Kings here are kings there, the slave is a slave for ever and ever; and people occupy themselves just the same as on earth. As the Dahoman sovereign is obliged to enter Deadland, his pious successor takes care that the deceased shall make this entrance in royal state, "accompanied by a ghostly court of leopard wives, head wives, birthday wives, Afa wives, eunuchs, singers, drummers, bards and soldiers." Consequently when a king dies some 500 persons are put to death, their cries being drowned by the clangour of drums and cymbals. This is called the "Grand Customs." Every year, moreover, decorum exacts that the firstfruits of war and all criminals should be sent as recruits to swell the king's retinue. Hence the ordinary "Annual Customs," at which some 80 perish. Burton thus describes the horrors of the approach to the "palace"—that is to say, a great thatched shed—on the fifth day of the "Customs." "Four corpses, attired in their criminal's shirts and night-caps, were sitting in pairs upon Gold Coast stools, supported by a double-storied scaffold, about forty feet high, of rough beams, two perpendiculars and as many connecting horizontals. At a little distance on a similar erection, but made for half the number, were two victims, one above the other. Between these substantial structures was a gallows of thin posts, some thirty feet tall, with a single victim hanging by the heels head downwards." Hard by were two others dangling side by side. The corpses were nude and the vultures were preying upon them, and squabbling over their hideous repast. All this was grisly enough, but there was no preventing it. Then came the Court revels. The king danced in public, and at his request, Burton and Dr. Cruikshank also favoured the company. Bernisco, when called upon, produced a concertina and played "O, let us be joyful, when we meet to part no more." The idea, however, of getting to any place where he would never be separated from Gelele, his brutish court, his corpses and his vultures severely tried Burton's gravity. Gelele, who was preparing for an unprovoked attack upon Abeokuta, the capital of the neighbouring state of Lagos, now made some grandiose and rhapsodical war speeches and spoke vauntingly of the deeds that he and his warriors meant to perform, while every now and then the younger bloods, eager to flesh their spears, burst out with:

"When we go to war we must slay men, And so must Abeokuta be destroyed."

The leave-taking between Gelele and "Batunu" was affecting. Burton presented his host with a few not very valuable presents, and Gelele in return pressed upon his guest a cheap counterpane and a slave boy who promptly absconded.

Whydah was reached again on 18th February 1864, and within a week came news that Gelele, puffed up with confidence and vainglory, had set out for Abeokuta, and was harrying that district. He and his Amazons, however, being thoroughly defeated before the walls of the town, had to return home in what to any other power would have been utter disgrace. They manage things differently, however, in Dahomey, for Gelele during his retreat purchased a number of slaves, and re-entered his capital a triumphing conqueror. Burton considered Gelele, despite his butcherings and vapourings, as, on the whole, quite a phoenix for an African. Indeed, some months after his mission, in conversations with Froude, the historian, he became even warm when speaking of the lenity, benevolence and enlightenment of this excellent king. Froude naturally enquired why, if the king was so benevolent, he did not alter the murderous "Customs." Burton looked up with astonishment. "Alter the Customs!" he said, "Would you have the Archbishop of Canterbury alter the Liturgy!"

To a friend who observed that the customs of Dahomey were very shocking, Burton replied: "Not more so than those of England."

"But you admit yourself that eighty persons are sacrificed every year."

"True, and the number of deaths in England caused by the crinoline alone numbers 72." [207]



50. Death of Speke, 15th September 1864.

In August 1864 Burton again obtained a few months' leave, and before the end of the month he arrived at Liverpool. It will be remembered that after the Burton and Speke Expedition of 1860 Speke was to go out to Africa again in company with Captain J. Grant. The expedition not only explored the western and northern shores of the Victoria Nyanza, but followed for some distance the river proceeding northwards from it, which they held, and as we now know, correctly, to be the main stream of the Nile. Burton, however, was still of the opinion that the honour of being the head waters of that river belonged to Tanganyika and its affluents. The subject excited considerable public interest and it was arranged that at the approaching Bath meeting of the British Association, Speke and Burton should hold a public disputation upon the great question. Speke's attitude towards Burton in respect to their various discoveries had all along been incapable of defence, while Burton throughout had exhibited noble magnanimity. For example, he had written on 27th June 1863 from the Bonny River to Staff-Commander C. George, "Please let me hear all details about Captain Speke's discovery. He has performed a magnificent feat and now rises at once to the first rank amongst the explorers of the day." [208] Though estranged, the two travellers still occasionally communicated, addressing each other, however, not as "Dear Dick" and "Dear Jack" as aforetime—using, indeed, not "Dear" at all, but the icy "Sir." Seeing that on public occasions Speke still continued to talk vaingloriously and to do all in his power to belittle the work of his old chief, Burton was naturally incensed, and the disputation promised to be a stormy one. The great day arrived, and no melodramatic author could have contrived a more startling, a more shocking denouement. Burton, notes in hand, stood on the platform, facing the great audience, his brain heavy with arguments and bursting with sesquipedalian and sledge-hammer words to pulverize his exasperating opponent. Mrs. Burton, who had dressed with unusual care, occupied a seat on the platform. "From the time I went in to the time I came out," says one who was present, "I could do nothing but admire her. I was dazed by her beauty." The Council and other speakers filed in. The audience waited expectant. To Burton's surprise Speke was not there. Silence having been obtained, the President advanced and made the thrilling announcement that Speke was dead. He had accidentally shot himself that very morning when out rabbiting.

Burton sank into a chair, and the workings of his face revealed the terrible emotion he was controlling and the shock he had received. When he got home he wept like a child. At this point the grotesque trenches on the tragic. On recovering his calmness, Burton expressed his opinion, and afterwards circulated it, that Speke had committed suicide in order to avoid "the exposure of his misstatements in regard to the Nile sources." In other words, that Speke had destroyed himself lest arguments, subsequently proved to be fundamentally correct, should be refuted. But it was eminently characteristic of Burton to make statements which rested upon insufficient evidence, and we shall notice it over and over again in his career. That was one of the glorious man's most noticeable failings. It would here, perhaps, be well to make a brief reference to the expeditions that settled once and for ever the questions about Tanganyika and the Nile. In March 1870, Henry M. Stanley set out from Bagamoro in search of Livingstone, whom he found at Ujiji. They spent the early months of 1872 together exploring the north end of Tanganyika, and proved conclusively that the lake had no connection with the Nile basin. In March 1873, Lieutenant Verney Lovett Cameron, who was appointed to the command of an expedition to relieve Livingstone, arrived at Unyanyembe, where he met Livingstone's followers bearing their master's remains to the coast. Cameron then proceeded to Ujiji, explored Tanganyika and satisfied himself that this lake was connected with the Congo system. He then continued his way across the continent and came out at Banguelo, after a journey which had occupied two years and eight months, Stanley, who, in 1874, made his famous journey from Bagamoro via Victoria Nyanza to Tanganyika and then followed the Congo from Nyangwe, on the Lualaba, to the sea, verified Cameron's conjecture.

At the end of the year 1864 the Burtons made the acquaintance of the African traveller Winwood Reade; and we next hear of a visit to Ireland, which included a day at Tuam, where "the name of Burton was big," on account of the Rector and the Bishop, [209] Burton's grandfather and uncle.



Chapter XIII. September 1865-October 1869 Santos, Burton's Second Consulate

Bibliography:

25. Speech before the Anthropological Society. 4th April 1865. 26. Wit and Wisdom from West Africa. 1865. 27. Pictorial Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. 28. Psychic Facts, by Francis Baker (Burton). 1865. 29. Notes... connected with the Dahoman. 1865. 30. On an Hermaphrodite. 1866. 31. Exploration of the Highland of the Brazil. 2 vols. 1869.



51. To Santos.

Owing mainly to Mrs. Burton's solicitation, Burton was now transferred from Fernando Po to Santos, in Brazil, so it was no longer necessary for him and his wife to live apart. He wrote altogether upon his West African adventures, the enormous number of 9 volumes! namely: Wanderings in West Africa (2 vols.), Abeokuta and the Cameroons (2 vols.), A Mission to the King of Dahome (2 vols.), Wit and Wisdom from West Africa (1 vol.), Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo (2 vols.). Remorselessly condensed, these nine might, with artistry, have made a book worthy to live. But Burton's prolixity is his reader's despair. He was devoid of the faintest idea of proportion. Consequently at the present day his books are regarded as mere quarries. He dedicated his Abeokuta "To my best friend," my wife, with a Latin verse which has been rendered:

"Oh, I could live with thee in the wild wood Where human foot hath never worn a way; With thee, my city, and my solitude, Light of my night, sweet rest from cares by day."

In her own copy Mrs. Burton wrote close to the lines, "Thank you, sweet love!" [210]

Burton and his wife now set out for Lisbon, where they saw a bull-fight, because Burton said people "ought to see everything once," though this did not prevent them from going to several other bull-fights. Mrs. Burton was not at all afraid of the bulls, but when some cockroaches invaded her apartment she got on a chair and screamed, though even then they did not go away. More than that, numbers of other cockroaches came to see what was the matter; and they never left off coming. After "a delightful two months" at Lisbon, Burton set out for Brazil, while his wife returned to England "to pay and pack." She rejoined him some weeks later at Rio Janeiro, and they reached Santos on 9th October 1865. They found it a plashy, swampy place, prolific in mangroves and true ferns, with here and there a cultivated patch. Settlers, however, became attached to it. Sandflies and mosquitoes abounded, and the former used to make Burton "come out all over lumps." Of the other vermin, including multitudinous snakes, and hairy spiders the size of toy terriers they took no particular notice. The amenities of the place were wonderful orchids, brilliantly coloured parrots and gigantic butterflies with great prismy wings. The Burtons kept a number of slaves, whom, however, they paid "as if they were free men," and Mrs. Burton erected a chapel for them—her oratory—where the Bishop "gave her leave to have mass and the sacraments." Her chief convert, and he wanted converting very badly, was an inhuman, pusillanimous coal-black dwarf, 35 years of age, called Chico, [211] who became her right-hand man. Just as she had made him to all appearance a good sound Catholic she caught him roasting alive her favourite cat before the kitchen fire. This was the result partly of innate diablery and partly of her having spoilt him, but wherever she went Mrs. Burton managed to get a servant companion whom her lack of judgment made an intolerable burden to her. Chico was only the first of a series. Mrs. Burton also looked well after the temporal needs of the neighbourhood, but if she was always the Lady Bountiful, she was rarely the Lady Judicious.



52. Aubertin. Death of Steinhauser, 27th July 1866.

The Burtons resided sometimes at Santos and sometimes at Sao Paulo, eight miles inland. These towns were just then being connected by railway; and one of the superintendents, Mr. John James Aubertin, who resided at Sao Paulo, became Burton's principal friend there. Aubertin was generally known as the "Father of Cotton," because during the days of the cotton famine, he had laboured indefatigably and with success to promote the cultivation of the shrub in those parts. Like Burton, Aubertin loved Camoens, and the two friends delighted to walk together in the butterfly-haunted forests and talk about the "beloved master," while each communicated to the other his intention of translating The Lusiads into English. Thirteen years, however, were to elapse before the appearance of Aubertin's translation [212] and Burton's did not see print till 1880. In 1866 Burton received a staggering blow in the loss of his old friend Dr. Steinhauser, who died suddenly of heart disease, during a holiday in Switzerland, 27th July 1866. It was Steinhauser, it will be remembered, with whom he had planned the translation of The Arabian Nights, a subject upon which they frequently corresponded. [213]



53. The Facetious Cannibals.

Wherever Burton was stationed he invariably interested himself in the local archaeological and historical associations. Thus at Santos he explored the enormous kitchen middens of the aboriginal Indians; but the chief attraction was the site of a Portuguese fort, marked by a stone heap, where a gunner, one Hans Stade, was carried off by the cannibals and all but eaten. Burton used to visit the place by boat, and the narrative written by Hans Stade so fascinated him that he induced a Santos friend, Albert Tootal, to translate it into English. The translation was finished in 1869, and five years later Burton wrote for it an introduction and some valuable notes and sent it to press. Though Burton scarcely shines as an original writer, he had a keen eye for what was good in others, and he here showed for the first time that remarkable gift for annotating which stood him in such stead when he came to handle The Arabian Nights.

Hans Stade's story is so amusing that if we did not know it to be fact we should imagine it the work of some Portuguese W. S. Gilbert. Never were more grisly scenes or more captivating and facetious cannibals. When they told Stade that he was to be eaten, they added, in order to cheer him, that he was to be washed down with a really pleasant drink called kawi. The king's son then tied Stade's legs together in three places. "I was made," says the wretched man, "to hop with jointed feet through the huts; at this they laughed and said 'Here comes our meat hopping along,'" Death seemed imminent. They did Stade, however, no injury beside shaving off his eyebrows, though the younger savages, when hungry, often looked wistfully at him and rubbed their midriffs. The other prisoners were, one by one, killed and eaten, but the cannibals took their meals in a way that showed indifferent breeding. Even the king had no table manners whatever, but walked about gnawing a meaty bone. He was good-natured, however, and offered a bit to Stade, who not only declined, but uttered some words of reproof. Though surprised, the king was not angry; he took another bite and observed critically, with his mouth full, "It tastes good!"

Life proceeds slowly, whether at Santos or Sao Paulo, almost the only excitement being the appearance of companies of friendly Indians. They used to walk in single file, and on passing Burton's house would throw out their arms as if the whole file were pulled by a string. Burton did not confine himself to Santos, however. He wandered all over maritime Brazil, and at Rio he lectured before the king [214] and was several times invited to be present at banquets and other splendid gatherings. On the occasion of one of these notable functions, which was to be followed by a dinner, one room of the palace was set apart for the ministers to wait in and another for the consuls. The Burtons were told not to go into the consular room, but into the ministers' room. When, however, they got to the door the officials refused to let them pass.

"This is the ministers' room," they said, "You cannot come here."

"Well, where am I to go?" enquired Burton.

Mrs. Burton stood fuming with indignation at the sight of the stream of nonentities who passed in without question, but Burton cried, "Wait a moment, my darling. I've come to see the Emperor, and see the Emperor I will."

So he sent in his card and a message.

"What!" cried the Emperor, "a man like Burton excluded. Bring him to me at once." So Burton and his wife were conducted to the Emperor and Empress, to whom Burton talked so interestingly, that they forgot all about the dinner. Meanwhile flunkeys kept moving in and out, anxiety on their faces—the princes, ambassadors and other folk were waiting, dinner was waiting; and the high functionaries and dinner were kept waiting for half an hour. "Well, I've had my revenge," said Burton to his wife when the interview was over. "Only think of those starving brutes downstairs; but I'm sorry on your account I behaved as I did, for it will go against all your future 'at homes.'" At dinner the Emperor and the Empress were most attentive to the Burtons and the Empress gave Mrs. Burton a beautiful diamond bracelet. [215]

Among Burton's admirers was a Rio gentleman named Cox, who had a mansion near the city. One day Mr. Cox arranged a grand dinner party and invited all his friends to meet the famous traveller. Burton arrived early, but presently disappeared. By and by the other guests streamed in, and after amusing themselves for a little while about the grounds they began to enquire for Burton. But no Burton was to be seen. At last someone happened to look up the highest tree in the compound and there was the guest of the day high among the branches squatting like a monkey. He had got up there, he said, to have a little peace, and to keep on with the book he was writing about Brazil. He came down, however, when the lunch bell rang, for though he grumbled at all other noises, he maintained that, somehow that sound always had a peculiar sweetness.

Wit and humour, wherever found, never failed to please Burton, and a remark which he heard in a Brazilian police court and uttered by the presiding magistrate, who, was one of his friends, particularly tickled him:

"Who is this man?" demanded the magistrate, in reference to a dissipated-looking prisoner.

"Un Inglez bebado" (a drunken Englishman), replied the constable.

"A drunken Englishman," followed the magistrate, "What a pleonasm!"

A little later Burton and his wife went down a mine which ran three quarters of a mile into the earth. "The negret Chico," says Burton, "gave one glance at the deep, dark pit, wrung his hands and fled the Tophet, crying that nothing in the wide, wide world would make him enter such an Inferno. He had lately been taught that he is a responsible being, with an 'immortal soul,' and he was beginning to believe it in a rough, theoretical way: this certainly did not look like a place 'where the good niggers go.'" However, if Chico turned coward Burton and his wife did not hesitate. But they had moments of fearful suspense as they sank slowly down into the black abysm. The snap of a single link in the long chain would have meant instantaneous death; and a link had snapped but a few days previous, with fatal results. Arrived at the bottom they found themselves in a vast cave lighted with a few lamps—the walls black as night or reflecting slender rays from the polished watery surface. Distinctly Dantesque was the gulf between the huge mountain sides which threatened every moment to fall. One heard the click and thud of hammers, the wild chants of the borers, the slush of water. Being like gnomes and kobolds glided hither and thither—half naked figures muffled up by the mist. Here dark bodies, gleaming with beaded heat drops, hung in what seemed frightful positions; "they swung like Leotard from place to place." Others swarmed up loose ropes like Troglodytes. It was a situation in which "thoughts were many and where words were few."