XVI. WEST COAST OF AFRICA--RICHARD'S FIRST CONSULATE…

XVI. WEST COAST OF AFRICA--RICHARD'S FIRST CONSULATE

In his "Wanderings in West Africa" (2 vols., 1863), Richard describes the whole of his jurisdiction, which was several hundred miles of coast. The ship, after leaving Madeira and Teneriffe, goes to Bathurst on the West Coast, to Sierra Leone, Monrovia, Grand Bassa, Cape Palmas, Half Jack, Grand Baltam, Axim, Elmina, Cape Coast Castle, Salt Pond, Winnebah, Accra, Addah, Quitta, Bagadah, Agwey, Whydah, Lagos, Bonny, Fernando Po, and Old Calabar, one station beyond. He ends up with--"Arriving in these outer places is the very abomination of desolation. I drop, for a time, my pen, in the distinct memory of having felt uncommonly suicidal through that first night at Fernando Po."

It would not suit this book to have large copyings from his works, but I think I should give two which are especially useful--one a description of the Sierra Leone negro, and another on the richness of the Guinea Coast, about which I shall have something to say later on in 1881.

[Sidenote: The West African Negroes.]

"We parted with our consumptives at Madeira; we leave our Africans at Sierra Leone. For this race there is a descending scale of terminology: 1, European; 2, civilized man; 3, African; 4, man--the Anglo-Americans say, 'pussum'--of colour; 5, negro; 6, darkie; 7, nigger, which last, is actionable. Many a £5 has been paid for the indulgence of lèse majesté against the 'man and a brother;' and not a few £50 where the case has been brought into the civil courts. Captain Philip Beaver was justified in declaring that he would 'rather carry a rattlesnake than a negro--who has been in London.' Not so Mr. Hazelface, into whose soul or countenance soggezzione, or shame, never entered--for was he not of the Almighty Negroes? And shall not the most dishonest of Negroes in these days stand before Kings? The second, our Gorilla, or Missing Link, was the son of an emancipated slave, who afterwards distinguished himself as a Missionary and a Minister. His--the sire's--name has appeared in many books, and he wrote one himself, pitying his own 'poor lost father,' because, forsooth, he died in the religion of his ancestors, an honest Fetishist. Our excellent warm-hearted, ignorant souls at home were so delighted with the report of this Lion of the Pulpit, that it was much debated whether the boy Ajáí had not been providentially preserved for the Episcopate of Western Africa.

"These individuals are out of their assiettes. At home they will devour, perforce, Kankey and bad fish, washing them down with Mimbo and Pitta--native and palm wine, and hop-less beer--here they abuse the best of beef, long openly for 'palaver sauce' and 'palm-oil chop,' and find fault with their champagne. At home they will wear breech-clouts and Nature's stockings, only. Here their coats are superfine Saxony, with broadest of silk velvet collars. The elongated cocoa-nut head bears jauntily a black pork-pie felt, with bright azure ribbons, and a rainbow necktie vies in splendour with the loudest of waistcoats from the land of Moses and Son; the pants are tightly strapped down to show the grand formation of the knee, the delicate slimness of the calf, the manly purchase of the heel, and the waving line of beauty that distinguishes the shin-bone.[1] There are portentous studs upon a glorious breadth of shirt, a small investment of cheap, gaudy, tawdry rings sets off the chimpanzee-like fingers, and when in the open air, lemon-coloured gloves invest the hands, whose horny reticulated skin reminds me of the scaly feet of those cranes which pace at ease over the burning sand, for which strong slippers are not strong enough for us; whilst feet of the same order, but slightly superior in point of proportional size, are tightly packed into patent-leather boats, the latter looking as if they had been stuffed with some inanimate substance, say the halves of a calf's head.

"It is hardly fair to deride a man's hideousness, but it is where personal deformity is accompanied by conceit. Once upon a time we all pitied an individual who by acclamation was proclaimed the ugliest man in the B---- army, which is not saying a little. 'Poor E----!' his friends would exclaim; 'it's no matter if a chap's plain, but he is revolting,' and they commiserated him accordingly. Once, however, he was detected by his chums looking into a shaving-glass, and thus soliloquizing: 'Well, E----, I declare you'd be a deuced handsome fellow if you had but a better nose.' The discreet chum, of course, spread the story, and from that moment our compassion departed.

"No one, also, is more hopeless about the civilization of Africa than the semi-civilized African returning to the 'home of his fathers.' One feels how hard has been his own struggle to emerge from barbarism. He acknowledges in his own case a selection of species, and he sees no end to the centuries before there can be a nation equal even to himself. Yet in England, and in books, he will cry up the Majesty of African kings; he will give the people whom he thoroughly despises a thousand grand gifts of morals and industry, and extenuate, or rather ignore, all their faults and shortcomings. I have heard a negro assert, with the unblushing effrontery which animates the negro speechifying in Exeter Hall, or before some learned society, that--for instance, at Lagos, a den of thieves--theft is unknown, and that men leave their money with impunity in the store-house, or on the highway. After which, he goes home, 'tongue in cheek,' despising the facility with which an Englishman and his money are parted.

"Our Africans left the ship without, on our part, or probably on theirs, a single regret. Not so with the Mandengas. The honest and manly bearing of these Moslems--so wonderful a contrast with those caricatures in pork-pie and peg-topped broadcloth--had prepossessed me strongly in their favour. We shook hands, and in broken Arabic bade each other a kindly Allah-speed.

[Sidenote: The Black Man is raised above the White Man.]

"The white man's position is rendered far more precarious on the coast than it might be, if the black man were always kept in his proper place. A European without stockings or waistcoat, and with ragged slops hanging about his limbs, would not be admitted into the cuddy; an African will. Many of the fellows come on board to make money by picking a quarrel. And what does one think of a dusky belle, after dropping her napkin at Government House, saying to her neighbour, 'Please, Mr. Officer-man, pick up my towel'? Or of such a dialogue as this? The steward has neglected to supply soup to some negro, who at every meal has edged himself higher up towards the top of the table, and whose conversation consists of whispering into the ears of an adjacent negro, and of hyæna-like guffaws.

"'I say, daddee, I want my soop; all de passengers, he drink 'im soop; me no drink my soop: what he mean, dis palaver?'

"The words are uttered in a kind of scream; the steward cannot help smiling, and the nigger resumes--

"'Ah, you laff! And for why you laff? I no laff; no drinkee soop!'

"Here the dialogue ends, and the ladies look their acknowledgments that travelling does throw us into strange society.

"From the moment of our arrival, 'negro palaver' began. A cause célèbre, which will be referred home, had just been brought to a close. Mr. M----, a civilian official in the colony, after thrice warning out of his compound a troublesome negro and a suspected thief, had applied a certain vis à tergo, and had ejected the trespasser, not, however, with unnecessary violence. In England the case would have been settled by a police magistrate, and the fine, if any, would have been half a crown. At Freetown the negro, assisted by his friends or 'company,' betakes himself to a lawyer. The latter may be a mulatto, possibly a pettifogger, certainly a moneyless man who lives in a wretched climate for the pure purposes of lucre; his interest is of course to promote litigation, and he fills his pockets by what is called 'sharp practice.' After receiving the preliminary fee of £5, he demands exemplary damages. The consequence was that Mr. M---- was lightened of £50.

"These vindictive cases are endless; half an hour's chat will bring out a dozen, and, as at Aden, the Sons of the White Cliff have nothing to do but to quarrel and to recount their grievances. A purser of the African S.S. Company, finding a West Indian negro substituting dead for live turkeys, called him a 'tief.' The 'tief' laid an action for £1000, and the officer was only too happy to escape with the retainer, three guineas. The same, when a black came on board for a package, sent him off to the quarter-deck; the fellow became insolent, when a military man present exclaimed, 'If you gave me that cheek, I'd have you overboard!' The negro put off, took two of his friends as witnesses, procured an affidavit that the white man had threatened him, and laid an action for defamation of character, etc.; damages £50--a favourite sum. Despite a counter oath, signed by two or three English officers, one of them a colonel, to the effect that no bad language had been used except by the plaintiff, whose insolence had been unbearable, the defendant was compelled to make an apology, and to pay £15 costs. Another told me that for raising a stick to an insolent servant, he was 'actioned' for £50, and escaped by compromise for £12. When the defendant is likely to leave the station, the modus operanda is as follows:--A writ of summons is issued. The lawyer strongly recommends an apology for the alleged offence and a promise to pay costs, warning the offender at the same time that judgment will go against him if absent by default. Should the defendant prudently 'stump up,' the thing ends; if not, a capias is taken out, and the law runs its course. A jury is chosen. The British Constitution determines that a man must be tried by his peers. His peers at Sierra Leone are perhaps a dozen full-blooded blacks, liberated slaves, half-reformed fetishmen, sometimes with a sneaking fondness for the worship of Shángo, and if not criminals in their own country, at least pauper-clad in dish-clouts and palm oil. To see such peers certainly 'takes pride down a peg,' as the phrase is; no use to think of that ancestor who 'came over' with the Conqueror, or that Barony lost in the days of the Rebellion.

"No one raises the constitutional question, 'Are these half-reclaimed barbarians my peers?' And if he did, justice would sternly answer 'Yes!' The witnesses will forswear themselves--not like our porters, for half a crown, but gratis, because the plaintiff is a fellow-tribesman. The judge may be 'touched with the tar-brush,' but be he white as milk, he must pass judgment according to verdict, and when damages are under £200, there is no appeal.

"Sierra Leone contains many sable families--Lumpkins, Lewis, Pratt, Ezidio, Nicols, Macarthy, are a few of their patronymics,--against whom it is useless for a stranger to contend and come off scot and lot free. Besides these, there are seventeen chief and two hundred minor tribes, whilst a hundred languages, according to M. Koelle,--one hundred and fifty, says Bishop Vidal--are spoken in the streets of Freetown. All are hostile to one another; all combine against the white man. After the fashion of the Gold Coast, they have formed themselves into independent republics, called 'companies.' These set aside certain funds for their own advancement, and for the ruin of their rivals. The most powerful and influential races are the Aku and the Ibo.

"If the reader believes that I have exaggerated the state of things at Sierra Leone, he is mistaken; the sketch is under rather than overdrawn. And he will presently see a confirmation of these statements in the bad name which these liberated Africans bear upon the whole of the western coast.

"At breakfast we had been duly primed with good advice, viz. not to notice impudence, and to turn our shoulders--the severest punishment--upon all who tried their hands at annoyance. We rowed to the Government landing, a rickety, slippery flight of wooden stairs, which is positively dangerous at night, or when the waves dash against the jetty. We were careful to carry no luggage; porters fight for the job, and often let the object of emulation drop into the water. One of our mail-bags received this baptism de Sierra Leone last night. On such occasion a push or poke is a forbidden luxury; the man might fall down--you have certainly injured him internally--you must pay exemplary damages."

[Sidenote: Richard inaugurates a Better State of Things.]

Two stories are related about Richard. I do not vouch for them, but they sound likely. One was, that when he arrived in Africa, he found that the negroes were in the state above described, assuming the upper hand, and treating the white men as an inferior race. They were summoning them before tribunals on the most trivial pretext, forwarding complaints home to pander to different people, which a man who had lived in India, and had passed something like twenty-two years in black countries, was not the least likely to stand. A day or two after his arrival at his post, a very dandified-dressed and full-blooded nigger walked into the Consulate, the window of which was not far from the ground, clapped Richard on the back in the most jovial manner, with his disagreeable "yah-yah" laugh. "How do, Consul? Come to shake hands--how do?" holding out his black paw, as if he were a condescending Royalty. There were some other Englishmen waiting about for different business, looking curiously to see what was going to be the attitude of the new Consul. He looked at the bumptious and loud-mannered nigger, with a quiet stare of surprise, and then shouted, "Hi, Kroo-boys, here; throw this nigger out of the window, will you?" The Kroo-boys, his canoemen (of six oars), rushed in, delighted with the commission, and flung him out. It was only a roll of three or four feet--but no niggers in black coats and button-holes came to clap the new Consul on the back after that, nor did they summon him before the Tribunal.

Another story told was, that the merchants on the West Coast were sorely put to inconvenience by the Captains of ships steaming in, discharging their cargo, and steaming off again without giving the merchants time to read and answer to their correspondence. Commerce, therefore, was at a very low ebb, because the merchants were a fortnight behind the world, there being only two steamers a month at that time. They asked Richard in a body, if there was no means of helping them. Richard got out the contracts, and saw that they said "that the Captain of a ship should stop at the port eighteen hours' daylight for that very purpose." The next ship that came in, the Captain came and looked into the Consulate in a jovial way, and said, "Now, Captain, hurry up with my papers; I want to be off; going to clear out." Richard looked up at him with a surprised stare, and drawled out lazily, "Oh, you can't go, for I have not finished my letters!" "Oh, damn your letters, Sir! I'm off." "Stop a bit," said Richard; "let us have a look at your contract?" He pulled it out of the drawer. "The contract says that you shall stop here eighteen hours' daylight, to give the merchants an opportunity of receiving and answering their correspondence, otherwise commerce would be ruined, the merchants being a fortnight behind the world." "Oh yes," he said, "but nobody has ever enforced that; the Consuls have never bothered us about that!" "Ha," said Richard, "more shame for them! Now, are you going to stay?" "No, sir, not I!" "Very well, then; I am going up to the Governor's, and I am going to shot two guns. If you go out one minute before your eighteen hours' daylight expires--mind, I shall go up there and stay myself--I shall send the first gun right across your bows, and the second slap into you. Mind, I am a man of my word. Good morning!" He did not go out till half an hour after his eighteen hours' daylight; and as long as Richard was there none of them ever did.

"The Sierra Leone man is an inveterate thief; he drinks, he gambles, he intrigues, he over-dresses himself, and when he has exhausted his means, he makes Master pay for all. With a terrible partiality for summoning and enjoying himself thoroughly in a court of law, he enters into the spirit of the thing like an attorney's clerk; he soon wearies of the less exciting life in the wilder settlements, where debauchery has not yet developed itself; home sickness then seizes him, and he deserts, after probably robbing the house. He is the horror of Europeans; the merchants of the Gaboon river prefer forfeiting the benefits of the African Steam Ship Company to seeing themselves invaded by this locust tribe, whose most beautiful view is apparently that which leads out of Sierra Leone. At Lagos and Abeokuta, Sierra Leone has returned to his natural paganism, and has become an inveterate slave-dealer, impudently placing himself under native protection, and renegading the flag that saved him from life-long servitude. Even during the Blackland's short stay, the unruly, disorderly character of the man often enough showed itself by fisticuffing, pulling hair, and cursing, with a mixture of English and African ideas, that presented a really portentous tout ensemble.

"With respect to the relative position of Japhet and Ham--perhaps I had better say Ham and Japhet--at Sierra Leone, I may remark that English ultra-philanthropy has granted at times almost all the wishes of the Ethiopian melodist--

'I wish de legislator would set dis darkie free, Oh, what a happy place den de darkie world would be! We'd have a darkie parliament An' darkie code of law, An' darkie judges on de bench, Darkie barristers and aw'!'

"I own that 'darkie' must be defended, and well defended, too, from the injustice and cruelty of the class whom he calls 'poor white trash.' But protection should be within the limits of Reason. If the white man is not to be protected against the black man, why should the Jamaica negro be protected against the coolie? Because he requires it? I think not. Though physically speaking and mentally weaker than his rival, he can hold quite enough of his own--as Sierra Leone proves--by combination, which enables cattle to resist lions. Displays of this sentiment on the part of the whites must, of course, be repressed. Do so freely, but not unfairly. England, however, is still in the throes of her first repentance. Like a veteran devotee, she is atoning for the coquetries of her hot youth. But a few years ago she contracted to supply the Spanish colonies for thirty years with four thousand eight hundred slaves per annum, and she waged wars and destroyed Cities for a traffic which Cardinal Cibo, at the end of the seventeenth century, on the part of the Sacred College, to the Congoese missionaries, denounced as 'a pernicious and abominable abuse.' For this, and for the 2,130,000 negroes imported into the West Indian estates between A.D. 1680 and A.D. 1786, Britannia yet mourns, and, Rachel-like, will not be comforted, because those niggers are not. What the inevitable reaction shall be, quien sabe?

[Sidenote: Method of protecting the Negro.]

"I do not for a moment regret our philanthropy, even with its terrible waste of life and gold. But England can do her duty to Africa, without cant and without humbug.[2] She can contend with a world in arms, if necessary, against the injurious traffic, but she might abstain from violently denouncing all who do not share her opinions upon the subject. Anti-slavery men have hitherto acted rather from sentiment than from reason; and Mr. Buckle--alas! that we should hear from him no more--may be right in determining that morality must not rule, but be ruled by intellect. Let us open our eyes to the truth, and eschewing 'zeal without knowledge,' secure to ourselves the highest merit--perseverance in a good cause when thoroughly disenchanted with it. We have one point in our favour. The dies atra between 1810-1820, when a man could not speak or write what he thought upon the subject of slavery, is drawing to a close. Increased tolerance now permits us to express our opinions, which, if in error, will wither like the grass in an African day; if right, will derive fresh increase from time.

"There are several classes interested in pitting black man against white man, and in winning the day for him, coram publico. An unscrupulous missionary--it is the general policy of the English propagandist to take violent parts in foreign politics--will for his own ends preach resistance to time-honoured customs and privileges, which the negro himself has conceded.[3] An unworthy lawyer will urge a lawsuit, with a view to filling his pockets; a dishonourable Judge or police Magistrate will make a name for philanthropy at the expense of equity and honour; a weak-minded man will fear the official complaints, the false-memorializings which attend an unpopular decision, and the tomahawking that awaits him from the little army of negrophiles at home. But the worst class of all is the mulatto, under which I include quadroon and octaroon. He is everywhere, like wealth, irritamenta malorum. The 'bar-sinister,' and the uneasy idea that he is despised, naturally fill him with ineffable bile and bitterness. Inferior in point of morale to Europeans, and as far as regards physique to Africans, he seeks strength in making the families of his progenitors fall out. Many such men visiting England are received, by virtue of their woolly hair and yellow skin, into a class that would reject a fellow-countryman of similar, nay, of far higher, position; and there are amongst them infamous characters, who are not found out till too late. London is fast learning to distinguish between the Asiatic Mir and the Munshi. The real African, however--so enduring are the sentimentalisms of Wilberforce[4] and Buxton--is still to be understood.

[Sidenote: Teaching Fair Treatment for the Negro.]

"It is hardly fair to pull down one system without having another ready in its stead. I therefore venture to suggest certain steps toward regenerating--diffidently, though, on account of the amount of change to be made in--our unhappy colony, which for years has been steadily declining.

"Creoles, as children of liberated Africans are called here, should be apprenticed for seven years, with superintendents to see that they clear the soil, plant, and build; otherwise the apprenticeship would be merely nominal. For the encouragement of agriculture, I would take a very heavy tax from small shopkeepers and hucksters, who, by virtue of sitting upon a shady board, before a few yards of calico and strings of beads, call themselves merchants. Another very heavy tax--at least £100 per annum--upon all grog-shop licences, very few of which should be issued in the colony. Police magistrates are perfectly capable of settling disputes amongst these people, and of dealing out punishment to the offenders; moreover, in all cases the fines should go to the Crown, not to the complainant: in civil cases, however, there might be an appeal home for the benefit of the litigious. This measure would wipe off at one sweep inducement to engage in actions which the presence of a judicial establishment suggests, and which causes such heart-burning between Europeans and Africans. I would not allow a black jury to 'sit upon' a white man, or vice versâ; and, in the exception of a really deserving mulatto, I would rather see him appointed Lord Lieutenant or Secretary of Ireland than acting Governor or Secretary at Sierra Leone.

"I am convinced that something of the kind will be done, when the real state of affairs in this unfortunate colony is ventilated in England. There are men who are always ready to let bad alone, and to hold that--

'What has answer'd so long may answer still;'

but the extension of Steam Navigation, and the increased number of travellers and visitors, will not allow progress, for want of a little energy, even at Sierra Leone, to be arrested.

"It is supposed that women, being less exposed than men, can better resist the climate of Sierra Leone. I believe the fact to be the contrary; in many cases the German missionaries have lived, whilst their wives have died. Here lie three Spanish Consuls, who in four years fell victims to a climate which has slain five Captains-General, or Governors, in five years. A deserted cemetery, without flowers or whitewash, is always a melancholy spectacle. This was something more. The grass and bush grew dense and dank from the remnants of mortality, and the only tree within the low decaying walls was a poisonous oleander. Another sense than the eye was unpleasantly affected; we escaped from the City of the Slain, as from a slave-ship or from a plague hospital.

"Servants in shoals presented themselves, begging 'mas'er' to take them down coast. In vain. The Sierra Leone man is handier than his southern brother; he can mend a wheel, make a coffin, or cut your hair, operations which in other places must remain wanted. Yet no one, at least if not a perfect greenhorn on the coast, will engage him in any capacity. In civility and respectfulness, he is far below the Brazilian or the Cuban emancipado. He has learned a 'trick or two;' even a black who has once visited Sierra Leone is considered as spoiled for life, as if he spent a year in England.

"An unexpected pleasure was in store for me. Lagos contains, as has been said, some eight hundred Moslems, but not yet two thousand, as it is reported. Though few, they have already risen to political importance; in 1851, our bravest and most active opponents were those wearing turbans. Among these are occasionally found 'white Arabs.' One had lately died at Ekpe, a village on the 'Cradoo waters,' where the ex-king Kosoko lives, and, though a Pagan, affects the Faith. I was presently visited by the Shaykh Ali bin Mohammed El Mekkáwi. The Reverend man was fair of face, but no Meccan; he called himself a Máliki, as indeed are most Moslems in this part of El Islam, and I guessed him to be a Morocco pilgrim, travelling in the odour of sanctity. He was accompanied by the Kazi Mohammed Ghana, a tall and sturdy Hausa negro, with his soot-black face curiously gashed and scarred; he appeared to me an honest man and a good Moslem. The dignitaries were accompanied by a mob of men in loose trousers, which distinguished them from the Pagan crowd; one of them, by trade a tailor, had learned to speak Portuguese in the Brazil.

"Very delightful was this meeting of Moslem brethren, and we took 'sweet counsel' together, as the Missionaries say. The Shaykh Ali had wandered from Tripoli southwards, knew Bornu, Sokatu, Hausa, and Adamáwá, the latter only by name; and he seemed to have suffered but little from a long journey, of which he spoke favourably. He wished me to return with him, and promised me safe conduct. I refused, with a tightening of the heart, a little alleviated, however, by the hope that Fate may spare me to march at some future day through Central Africa homewards. And in that hope I purified my property, by giving the zakat, or legal alms, to the holy man, who palpably could not read or write, but who audibly informed his followers that 'this bondsman' is intimately acquainted with kull'ilm--omnis res scibilis."

N.B.--Benin was a great object of interest, and I quote these few remarks anent the Niger for geographers, and then proceed to the gold, in which millions are interested.--I. B.

"Benin was visited by Captain Thomas Wyndham in 1553, and in 1823, Belzoni of the Pyramids left his bones near its banks.

"After Lagos we came to the Oil Rivers, and direct connection of the Bonny river with the true Niger is still a subject of geographical speculation: I hope to solve the problem, despite all its difficulties.

"It is opined that the Niger falls into the Gulf of Guinea by a great delta, the Rio del Rey being the eastern, and the Great Rio Formoso, or Benin,[5] being its western limits. There are twenty-five streams which discharge themselves into this Great Bight, six of which are Oil Rivers--a disagreeable week's trip. This remarkable hypothesis, right in the main, whilst wrong in detail, and characterized at the time as 'hazardous and uncertain,' was probably suggested by native testimony, the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea being well known to French traders. It is hard indeed to comprehend how an intelligent sailor could pass by these shores without suspecting them to be the delta of some great stream. Caillié, the much-abused discoverer of Timbuktu, wrote in 1828 these remarkable words: 'If I may be permitted to hazard an opinion as to the course of the River Dhioliba, I should say that it empties itself by several mouths into the Gulf of Benin.'

"It is directly connected with the twenty or thirty millions of people in the Sudan; the centres of trade are upon the stream, yet the long and terrible caravan march of four months still supplies articles more cheaply than we can afford to sell them, viâ the Niger.

GOLD IN AFRICA.

"'Slave of the dark and dirty mine: What vanity has brought thee here?' ----LEYDEN.

"'Gold! gold! gold! gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold; Molten, graven, hammer'd, and roll'd; Heavy to get and light to hold.' ----HOOD.

[Sidenote: West African Gold.]

"I lost all patience with Cape Coast Castle. Will our grandsons believe that in these days a colony which cannot afford £150 per annum for a stipendiary magistrate, that men who live in a state of poverty, nay, of semi-starvation, are so deficient in energy as to be content with sitting down hopelessly, whilst gold is among their sands, on their roads, in their fields, in their very walls? That this Ophir--that this California, where every river is a Tmolus and a Pactolus, every hillock is a gold-hill--does not contain a cradle, a puddling-machine, a quartz-crusher, a pound of mercury? That half the washings are wasted because quicksilver is unknown, and that pure gold, selling in England for £3 17_s._ to £4, is here purchaseable for £3 12_s._? I shout with Dominie Sampson, 'Prodi-gious!'

"Baron Humboldt first announced the theory that gold is constant in meridional ranges of the paleozoic and metamorphic formations. In this he was followed by Sir R. Murchison, and he was followed by Professor Sedgwick. The latter 'has no faith whatever in the above hypothesis, though it led to a happy anticipation,' which followed erroneous premises. He continues, 'What we seem to know is, that gold is chiefly found among paleozoic rocks of a quartzose type,' and, moreover, that 'some of the great physical agencies of the earth are meridional, and these agencies may probably--and in a way we do not comprehend--have influenced the deposit of metals on certain lines of bearing.' He thinks, however, it would be a 'hypothetical misdirection' to say that a quartzose paleozoic rock cannot be auriferous, because its strata is not north and south, and that 'experience must settle this point.' The supporters of the meridional theory may quote as instances East Africa Ghauts, the Oural Mountains, the Sierra Nevada of California--which included the diggings in British Columbia--the Australian Cordillera, the New Zealand ranges, and the Western Ghauts of India. On the other hand, there are two notable exceptions--the Central Indian region, in which Sir R. Martin and others, as long as thirty years ago, were convinced that the natives washed for gold; and, still more remarkable, the highly productive African chain, which, for want of a better name, we still call the Kong Mountains.[6]

"The fact is that gold is a superficial formation, and has been almost universally distributed over the surface of earth's declivities. This want of depth Sir R. Murchison is fond of illustrating by the hand with the fingers turned downwards; they represent the golden veins, whilst the palm denotes the main deposit. It is the contrary with other metals. Gold-placers, therefore, are now rare, except in newly explored or exploited lands of primitive formation, where it is common, nay, almost universal; the article, whose utility was early recognized, soon disappeared from the older workings. The Californian digger, provided with pick, pan, and shovel, made $10 per diem in 1852; in 1862 he still makes $2.50, and in 1872 he probably will make $0. The anciently auriferous countries, especially Arabia, have been stripped of their treasure, perhaps before the dawn of what is called true history;[7] and if they linger in Sofala, it is by reason of the people's ignorance;[8] they never traced the metal to its matrix.

"Setting aside the vexed question of the identity of Ophir and Sofala, and the fact that in early times gold was brought down from the eastern regions of the upper Nilotic basin, Western Africa was the first field that supplied the precious metal to Europe. The French claim to have imported it from Elmina as early as A.D. 1382. In 1442, Gonçales Baldeza returned from his second voyage to the regions about Bojador, bringing with him the first gold. Presently a company was formed for the purpose of carrying on the gold trade between Portugal and Africa; its leading men were the navigators, Lanzarote and Gilianez, and the great Prince Henry did not disdain to become a shareholder. In 1471 João de Santarem and Pedro Escobar reached a place on the Gold Coast, to which, from the abundance of gold found there, they gave the name of Oura da Mina, the present Elmina. After this a flood of gold poured into the lap of Europe, and at last, cupidity having mastered terror of the Papal Bull, which assigned to Portugal the exclusive right to the Eastern hemisphere, English, French, and Dutch adventurers hastened to share the spoils.

"The Portuguese, probably foreseeing competition in the Atlantic waters, but sure of their power in the Indian seas, determined, about the middle of the sixteenth century, to seek gold, of which those who preceded them had heard, in Eastern Africa. The Rev. Father João dos Santos, of the order of San Domingo, has left us, in his 'History of Eastern Ethiopia,' a detailed account of the first disastrous expedition. According to him, Dom Sebastian was scarcely seated on the throne of Portugal[9] before he sent to Sofala an expedition under command of Francis Baretto, who 'penetrated into Macoronga,'[10] and 'Maniça,' discovered mines of gold in these kingdoms, of which, by his prudence and valour, he made himself master. Baretto, having successfully passed through, despite a harassing warfare, the territories of the Quiteva or sovereign of Sofala, who fled from his capital, Zimboe, and having contracted with the Moorish or Arab Sultan[11] of Maniça a treaty of amity, which included the article that the King of Chicanga should admit the strangers to trade throughout his territories for gold dust and other merchandise, reached at length the goal of his ambition. His proceedings are told as follows:--[12]

"'The Portuguese were enchanted at having, in so short a time, concluded a treaty of such advantage to their sovereign, and so beneficial to the realm; they, moreover, flattered themselves with the hope of acquiring a store of gold, with which to return enriched to their country; but when they saw what toil was requisite for extracting this precious metal from the bowels of the earth, and the danger incurred by those who worked in the mines, they were speedily undeceived, and no longer regarded their fortunes as instantaneously made. At the same time, they were induced to reflect that the labour and risk of digging the gold from the abysses whence it is drawn, are such as to stamp that value on it which it bears from its consequent rarity.

"'These people have divers methods of extracting the gold, and separating it from the earth with which it is blended; but the most common is to open the ground, and proceed towards the spot where, from certain indications, ore is supposed to abound. For this purpose they excavate vaults, sustained at intervals by pillars, and notwithstanding they make use of every possible precaution, it often happens that the vaults give way, and bury the subterranean sappers beneath their ruins. When they reach the vein in which the gold is found, mixed with the earth, they take the ore as it is and put it into vessels full of water, and by dint of stirring about the water the earth is dissolved, and the gold remains at the bottom.[13]

"'They likewise take advantage of heavy rains, which, occasioning torrents, carry before them whatever loose earth they meet in their way, and thus lay open the spots where gold is embedded in the ravines. This the Caffres collect, and wash with care to purify from the grosser parts of its earthy admixture.

"'These people also, however unpolished they may seem, yet possess a secret, peculiar to themselves, for discovering the gold concealed in certain stones, which they likewise have the ingenuity of extracting, constantly observing the same practice of washing it well to separate all earthy particles from the metal, and thus rendering it equally lustrous with that obtained from the earth. This gold is, however, much cheaper than the other, either owing to its being more common, or to its being obtained with more facility and at less expense than that exfoliated from the bowels of the earth.

"'It is a mere matter of fact that this country is rich in gold and silver mines, but these metals are not so easily obtained as is imagined, for the Caffres are prohibited, under penalty of death and the confiscation of their property, from discovering the site of the mine, either to their neighbours, or to those who pass through their country. When a mine is discovered, the persons finding it make wild outcries, to collect witnesses round them, and cover the spot, above which they place some object to denote the site; and far from being susceptible to be prevailed upon by strangers to point out these spots, they avoid encountering them as much as possible, for fear they should even be suspected of such a deed.

"'The motive of the sovereign for enacting these prohibitory laws, and for exacting a declaration to be made to the Court of all mines discovered, is that he may take possession of them,[14] and by preventing the Portuguese from becoming masters of one portion, give no room for succeeding warfare on their part to seize on the remainder.'

"The melancholy fate of Baretto's expedition deserves mentioning. After passing through Zimbo,[15] where the Quiteva received him with open arms, Baretto returned to Sofala. Being now on good terms with the sovereigns of that place, and of Chicanga, he resolved to open a road into the kingdom of Mongas, the dominions of the Monomotapa, who opposed him with a large army. Baretto signally defeated the 'Caffres,' and reached Chicona, where he found no gold mines. An artful native, however, buried two or three lumps of silver, which, when discovered, brought large presents to the cheat and dreams of Potosi to the cheated.[16] Baretto, in nowise disheartened by discovering the fraud, left two hundred men in a fort at Chicona, whilst he and the remainder of his force retired upon Sena, on the Zambeze. The Caffres then blockaded the fort, and having reduced the gallant defenders to a famine, compelled them to make a sortie, in which every man was slain.

"The ruins of Maniça, north-west of Sofala, and west of and inland from the East African ghauts, are described as being situated in a valley enclosed by an amphitheatre of hills, having a circuit of about two miles. According to Mr. M'Leod, the district is called Matouca (the Matuka of Dr. Livingstone's map), and the gold-washing tribes Botongos.[17] The spots containing the metal are known by the bare and barren surface. The natives dig in any small crevice made by the rains of the preceding winter, and there find gold dust. These pot-holes are rarely deeper than two or three feet, at five or six they strike the ground-rock. In the still portions of the rivers, when they are low, the natives dive for nuggets that have been washed down from the hills. Sometimes joining together in hundreds, they deflect the stream, and find extensive deposits. Mr. M'Leod heard of mines four to five hundred miles from Sofala, where the gold is found in solid lumps, or as veins in the rocks and stones.

"The result of Dr. Livingstone's travels is, that whilst he found no gold in the African interior, frequent washings were met with in the Mashinga Mountains[18] and on the Zambeze river; no silver, however, was met with, nor could the people distinguish it from tin, which, however, does not establish its non-existence; he heard from a Mashanga man, for the first time, a native name for gold, Dalama.[19] The limits of the auriferous region are thus laid down: 'If we place one leg of the compasses at Tete, and extend the other 3° 30', bringing it round from the north-east of Tete by west, and then to the south-east, we nearly touch or include all the known gold-producing country.' This beginning from the north-east would include the Marave country,[20] the now 'unknown' kingdom of Abutua[21] placed, however, south of the Zambesi, and coming round by the south-west, Mashona, or Bazizulu, Maniça, and Sofala. Gold from about Maniça is as large as wheat grains, whilst that found in the rivers is in minute scales. The process of washing the latter is laborious. 'A quantity of sand is put into a wooden bowl with water, a half-rotatory motion is given to the dish, which causes the coarser particles of sand to collect on one side of the bottom. These are carefully removed with the hand, and the process of rotation is renewed until the whole of the sand is taken away, and the gold alone remains.'[22] Mercury is as usual unknown. Formerly one hundred and thirty pounds of gold were submitted to the authorities at Tete for taxation, but when the slave-trade began, the Portuguese killed the goose with the golden eggs, and the annual amount obtained is now only eight to ten pounds.

"It is evident that gold is by no means half worked in Eastern Africa. As in California, it appears to be found in clay shale, which for large profits requires 'hydraulicking.' The South African traveller heard that at the range Mashinga, the women pounded the soft rock in wooden mortars, previous to washing; it is probably rotten quartz, and the yield would be trebled by quicksilver and crushers.

"It is highly probable that the gold formations in those East African ghauts, which Dr. Beke is compelling to become the 'Lunar Mountains,' are by no means limited to the vicinity of the Zambeze. In gold-prospecting, as every geologist knows, the likeliest places often afford little yield and sometimes none. The author of 'The Lake Regions of Central Africa' describes a cordillera which he struck, about a hundred miles from the eastern coast, as primitive, quartzose, and shaly; unfortunately time and health hindered him from exploring it. The same writer, in 'First Footsteps in East Africa' (p. 395), indicates such formation in the small ghauts, and on the western side of that range he is reported to have found gold. What steps he took do not appear; he was probably disheartened by the reflection that all his efforts would be opposed by might and main in official circles. Possibly he feared the fate of Mr. Hargreaves, of Australia, who obtained a reward of £5000, when one per cent. of export would have made him master of eight millions. Local jealousies at Aden also certainly would have defeated his plans, if permitted to be carried out; and the Court of Directors had already regarded with a holy terror his proposals to build a little fort, by way of base upon the seaboard near Berberah. Leaving, however, these considerations, we are justified by analogy of formation and bearing in believing that at some future time gold may be one of the exports from Eastern Intertropical Africa.[23]

"Returning to Western Africa, we find in Leo Africanus, who is supposed to have died about 1526, that the King of Ghana had in his palace 'an entire lump of gold'--a monster nugget it would now be called--not cast nor wrought by instruments, but perfectly formed by the Divine Providence only, of thirty pounds weight, which had been bored through and fitted for a seat before the royal throne.[24] The author most diffuse upon the subject of gold, is Bosman, who treats, however, solely of the Gold Coast.

"The first region which he mentions is Dinkira, under which were included the conquered provinces of Wásá (our Wassaw, Wossa, Wasau, Warsaw, etc.), Encasse and Juffer, each bordering upon one another, and the last upon Commany (Commanda). There the gold is fine, but much alloyed with 'fetishes,' oddly shaped figures used for ornaments, and composed sometimes of pure mountain gold, but more often mixed with one-third, or even half, of silver and copper and filled inside with half weight of the heavy black earth used for moulding them. The second was Acanny, the people of which brought the produce of their own diggings and of their neighbours of Ashantee and Akim: it was so pure and fine, that the negroes called all the best gold 'Acanny Sika,' or Acanny gold. The third was Akim,[25] which 'furnished as large quantities of gold as any land that I know, and that also the most valuable and pure of any that is carried away from this coast; it is easily distinguished by its deep colour.' The fourth and fifth are Ashanti and Ananse, a small province between the former empire and Dinkira. The sixth and last is Awine, our Aowin,[26] which formerly used to export large quantities of fine and pure gold, and they 'being the civilized and the fairest dealers of all the negroes,' the Dutch 'traded with them with a great deal of pleasure.' They were, however, finally subdued by the Dinkiras.

"According to Bosman ('Letters,' vi.) 'the illustrious metal' was found in three sites. The first and best was 'in or between particular hills:' the negroes sank pits there, and separated the soil adhering to it. The second 'is in, at, and about some rivers and waterfalls, whose violence washeth down great quantities of earth, which carry the gold with it. The third is on the seashore, near the mouths of rivulets, and the favourite time for washing is after violent night rains.[27] The negro women are furnished with large and small troughs or trays, which they first fill full of earth and sand, which they wash with repeated fresh water till they have cleansed it from all its earth; and if there be any gold its ponderosity forces it to the bottom of the trough, which if they find it is thrown into the small tray, and so they go on washing it again, which operation generally holds them till noon; some of them not getting above the value of sixpence; some of them pieces of six or seven shillings, though not frequently; and often they entirely lose their labour.'

"The gold thus dug is of two kinds, dust gold and mountain gold. The former is 'fine as flour,' and the more esteemed because there is no loss in melting. The latter, corresponding with our modern 'nugget,' varies in weight from a farthing to two hundred guineas; it touches better than gold dust, but it is a loss from the metal adhering to the stone.

"The natives, in Bosman's day--and to the present time--were 'very subtle artists in the sophisticating of gold.' The first sort was the fetish before alluded to.[28] They also cast pieces so artificially, that whilst outside there was pure gold thick as a knife, the interior was copper, and perhaps iron--then a new trick and the most dangerous, because difficult to detect. The common 'false mountain gold' was a mixture of the precious metal with silver and copper, extremely high coloured, and unless each piece was touched, the fraud passed undetected. Another kind was an artificially cast and tinged powder of coral mixed with copper filings; it became tarnished, however, in a month or two. The official tests of gold were as follows:--If offered at night or in the evening large pieces were cut through with a knife, and the smaller nuggets were beaten with a stone, and then tried as above. Gold dust was cast into a copper brazier, winnowing with the fingers, and blown upon with the breath, which causes the false gold to fly away. These are not highly artificial tests. Bosman, however, strongly recommends them to raw, inexpert people (especially seafaring men), whom he bids to remember the common proverb, that 'there is no gold without dross.' These greenhorns, it seems, tested the metal by pouring aquafortis upon it, when ebullition or the appearance of green proved it to be false or mixed. 'A miserable test, indeed!' exclaims old Trunk-hose, justly remarking that an eighth or tenth part of alloy would produce those appearances, and that such useless and niceness, entailing the trouble of drying, and causing the negroes to suffer, is prejudicial to trade.

"With respect to the annual export from the Gold Coast, Bosman reckons it in peaceful times, when trade is prosperous, to be '23 tun.' The 7000 marks are disposed of as below.[29] Mr. Macqueen estimates this exportation at £3,406,275. The English trade has now fallen to £360,000 to £400,000 per annum.[30]

"The conclusion of Bosman's sixth letter may be quoted as highly applicable to the present day. 'I would refer to any intelligent metallist, whether a vast deal of ore must not of necessity be lost here, from which a great deal of gold might be separated, from want of skill in the metallic art; and not only so, but I firmly believe that large quantities of pure gold are left behind, for the negroes only ignorantly dig at random, without the least knowledge of the veins of the mines. And I doubt not but if this country belonged to the Europeans, they would soon find it to produce much richer treasures than the negroes obtain from it; but it is not probable that we shall ever possess that liberty here, wherefore we must be content with being so far masters of it as we are at present, which, if well and prudently managed, would turn to a very great account.'

"In several countries, as Dinkira, Tueful, Wásá,[31] and especially Akim, the hill region lying due north of Accra, the people are still active in digging gold. The pits, 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 unfrequently buried alive. The stuff is drawn up by ropes in clay pots, or calabashes, and thus a workman at the bottom widens the pit to a pyriform shape: tunnelling, however, is unknown. The excavated earth is carried down to be washed. Besides sinking these holes, they pan in the beds of rivers, and in places collect quartz, which is roughly pounded. The yield is very uncertain, and the Chief of the district is entitled to one-third of the proceeds. During the busy season, when water is abundant, the scene must resemble that described by Dr. Livingstone, near the gold-diggings of Tete. As in California and Australia, prices rise high, and gunpowder, rum, and cotton goods soon carry off the gold dust.

"During the repeated earthquakes of July, 1862, which laid waste Accra, the strata of the Akim Hills were so much shaken and broken up, that, according to report, all the people flocked to the diggings and dispensed with the shafts generally sunk. There are several parts of the Gold Coast where the precious metal is fetish, and where the people will not dig themselves, though perhaps they would not object to strangers risking their lives. One of the most remarkable is the Devil's Hill, called by Bosman 'Monte da Diabo,' near Winnebah, in the Aguna (Agouna) country. In his time, a Mr. Baggs, English agent, was commissioned by the African Company to prospect it. He died at Cape Coast Castle before undertaking a work which, in those days, would have been highly dangerous. Some authorities fix the Seecom river as the easternmost boundary where gold is found. This is so far incorrect, that I have panned it from the sands under James Fort. Besides which, it is notorious that on the banks of the Upper Volta, about the latitude of the Krobo (Croboe) country, there are extensive deposits, regarded by the people as sacred.

"The Slave Coast is a low alluvial tract, and appears to be wholly destitute of gold.[32] According to the Rev. Mr. Brown, however, a small quantity has been found in the quartz of Yoruba, north of Abeokuta; but, as in the Brazil, it is probably too much dispersed to be worth working. And the Niger, which flows, as will presently be seen, from the true auriferous centre, has at times been found to roll down-stream gold.[33]

"The soil of Fante-land and the seaboard is, as has been seen, but slightly auriferous.

"As we advance northwards from the Gold Coast the yield becomes richer. In Ashanti the red and loamy soil, scattered with gravel and grey granite, is everywhere impregnated with gold, which the slaves extract by washing and digging. It is said that in the market-place of Kumasi there are sixteen hundred ounces' worth of gold--a treasure reserved for State purposes. The bracelets of rock-gold, which the caboceers wear on State occasions, are four pounds in weight, and often so heavy that they must rest their arms upon the heads of their slave-boys.

"In Gyaman, the region to the north-west of the capital, the ore is found in large nuggets, sometimes weighing four pounds. The pits are sunk nine feet in the red granite and grey granite, and the gold is highly coloured. From eight to ten thousand slaves work for two months every year in the bed of the Barra river. There, however, as on the Gold Coast, the work is very imperfect, and in some places where the metal is sacred to the fetish, it is not worked at all. Judging from analogy, we might expect to find the precious metal in the declivities inland and northwards from Cape Palmas, and in that sister formation of the East African ghauts, the 'Sierra dol Crystal.' The late Captain Lawlin, an American trader settled on an island at the mouth of the Fernão Vaz, carried to his own country, about the year 1843-44, a quantity of granular gold, which had been brought to him by some country-people. He brought back all the necessary tools and implements to the Gaboon river, but the natives became alarmed, and he failed to find the spot. Finally, according to the tradition of native travellers, the unexplored region called Rúmá,[34] and conjecturally placed south of the inhospitable Waday, is a land of goldsmiths, the ore being found in mountainous and well-watered districts. It is becoming evident that Africa will some day equal half a dozen Californias.

"Mungo Park supplies the amplest notices of gold in the regions visited by him north of the Kong Mountains. The principal places are the head of the Senegal river and its various influents; Dindiko, where the shafts are most deep, and notched, like a ladder; Seronda, which gives two grains from every pound of alluvial matter;[35] Bambuk and Bambarra. In Kongkadu, the 'mountain land,' where the hills are of coarse riddy granite, composed of red feldspar, white quartz, and black shale, containing orbicular concretions, granular gold is found in the quartz, which is broken with hammers; the grains, however, are flat. The diggings at present best known are those of Mandina-land. The gold, we are told, is found not in mines or veins, but scattered in sand and clay. They vary from a pin's head to the size of a pea, and are remarkably pure. This is called sana manko, or gold-powder, in contradistinction to sana birro, or gold-stones--nuggets occasionally weighing five drachms. In December, after the harvest home, when the gold-bearing fiumaras from the hills have shrunk, the Mansa or Shaykh appoints a day to begin sana ku--gold washing.

"Each woman arms herself with a hoe, two or three calabashes, and a few quills. On the morning before departure a bullock is slaughtered for a feast, and prayers and charms are not forgotten. The error made by these people is digging and washing for years in the same spot, which proves comparatively unfruitful unless the torrent shifts its course. They never follow the lead to the hills, but content themselves with exploring the heads of the watercourse, which the rapid stream denudes of sand and clay, leaving a strew of small pebbles that wear the skin off the finger-tips. The richest yield is from pits sunk in the height of the dry season, near some hill in which gold has been found. As the workers dig through the several strata of sand and clay, they send up a few calabashes by way of experiment for the women, whose peculiar duty it is to wash the stuff, and thus they continue till they strike the floor-rock. The most hopeful formation is held to be a bed of reddish sand, with small dark specks, described as 'black matter, resembling gunpowder,' and called by the people sana mira, or gold-rust; it is probably titeria. In Murray's edition of 1816, there are illustrations of the various positions, and a long description (vol. i. p. 450, and vol. ii. p. 75) of the style of panning. I will not trouble the reader with it, as it in no way differs from that now practised on the Gold Coast and Kafirlands. There is art in this apparently simple process. Some women find gold when others cannot discover a particle; and as quicksilver is not used, at least one-third must be wasted, or rather, I may say, it is preserved for a better day.

"The gold dust is stored in quills, stopped with cotton, and the washers are fond of wearing a number of these trophies in their hair. The average of an industrious individual's annual collection may be two slaves. The price of these varies from nine to twelve mankali,[36] each of 12_s._ 6_d._, or its equivalent in goods, viz. eighteen gun-flints, forty-eight leaves of tobacco, twenty charges of gunpowder, a cutlass, and a musket. Part of the gold is converted into massive and cumbrous ornaments, necklaces, and earrings, and when a lady of consequence is in full dress, she bears from £50 to £80. A proportion is put by to defray expenses of travelling to and from the coast, and the greater part is then invested in goods, or exchanged with the Moors for salt and merchandise.

"The gold is weighed in small balances, which the people always carry about with them, and they make, like the Hindus, but little difference between gold dust and wrought gold. The purchaser always uses his own tilikissi, beans, probably, of the Abrus, which are sometimes soaked in Shea butter, to increase their weight, or are imitated with ground-down pebbles. In smelting gold, the smith uses an alkaline salt, obtained from a ley of burnt corn-stalks. He is capable, as even the wildest African tribes are, of drawing fine wire. When rings--the favourite form in which the precious metal is carried coastward--are to be made, the gold is run without any flux in a crucible of sun-dried red clay, which is covered over with charcoal or braize. The smith pours the fluid into a furrow traced in the ground, by way of mould. When it has cooled, he reheats it, and hammers it into a little square ingot or bar of the size required. After a third exposure to fire he twists with his pincers the bar into a screw shape, lengthens out the ends, and turns them up to form a circle.

"It must now be abundantly evident to the reader, that the great centre of West African gold, the source which supplies Manding to the north and Ashanti to the south, is the equatorial range called the Kong. What the mineral wealth must be there, it is impossible to estimate, when nearly three millions and a half of pounds sterling have usually been drawn from a small parallelogram, between its southern slopes and the ocean, whilst the other three-quarters of the land--without alluding to the equally rich declivities of the northern versant--have remained as yet unexplored. Even in northern Liberia, colonists have occasionally come upon a pocket of $50, and the natives bring gold in from the banks of streams.

"Mr. Wilson[37] remarks upon this subject, 'It is best for whites and blacks that these mines should be worked just as they are. The world is not suffering for the want of gold, and the comparative small quantities that are brought to the sea-coast keep the people in continual intercourse with civilized men, and ultimately, no doubt, will be the means of introducing civilization and Christianity among them.'

"I differ from the reverend author, toto cœlo. For such vain hope as that of improving Africans by European intercourse, and for all considerations of an 'ultimately' vaguer than the sweet singer of Israel's 'soon,' it is regrettable that active measures for exploitation are not substituted. And if the world, including the reverend gentleman and Lord John Russell, are not suffering for the want of gold, there are those, myself for instance, and many a better man, who would be happy at times to see and to feel a little more of that 'vile yellow clay.'"

[1] This is pure chaff--they are woefully defective in all these points; but being ignorant they dress so as to show off what an Englishman would improve or conceal.--I. B.

[2] "Of late it has become the fashion for the Missionary and the Lecturer to deny, in the presence of Exeter Hall, the African's recognition of the European's superiority. 'The white man,' writes Mr. Robert Campbell, a mulatto, 'who supposes himself respected in Africa because he is white, is grievously mistaken.' I distinctly assert the reverse, and every one who has studied the natural history of man must have the same opinion. The same egregious nonsense was once propounded before the Ethnological Society--where with some ethnology there is no anthropology--by another 'African.' And yet the propounder, the late Mr. Consular Agent Hansen, whose death, by-the-by, was an honour, and the only honour, to his life, had shaved his wool, and at the time was wearing a wig of coal-black hair like a Cherokee's. Is imitation no sign of deference?"

[3] "And not only the missionary, but also the sex which, I am told, has a Mission. I was at Florence in 1850, when our fair countrywomen added not a little to its troubles by dividing into two factions, the Italian and the Austrian. Some wore Rational colours, others went so far as to refuse waltzes proposed to them by partisans of the hostile nation."

[4] "Such cant I hold to be in their mouths who talk of the 'sin and crime' of slavery. As the author of 'Six Years in the West Indies' (a brave book, considering the date of its publication, 1825) truly says, that the spirit of Christianity tends to abolish servitude is clear, that it admits of servitude is even still clearer. The Authorized Version of the Bible, like the Constitution of the United States, very prudently shirks the word 'slave,' and translates by 'servants' the δοῡλοι [Greek: douloi], or bondsmen, whom St. Paul enjoins to be subject to their κυρίοι [Greek: kourioi], or masters, and elsewhere δοῡλος [Greek: doulos], a chattel, is opposed to ἐλεύθερος [Greek: eleutheros], a freeman. How astonished St. Athanasius and St. Augustine would have been, had the idea of an 'underground railway' been presented to them! What fulminations they would have showered upon the inventor of the idea!"

[5] "I quote the above memoriter. If correct, the limits of the Nigrotic delta thus given are totally incorrect. The Rio del Rey is wholly unconnected with the Niger; even the nearer Calabar and Cross rivers do not flow from it. The same is the case with the Benin river; its source was placed by Mr. Beecroft in the highlands to the westward of the Niger."

[6] "A similar imperfect generalization is the old theory that gold pertains not to islands. Malachi wore a collar of Irish gold, probably from Wicklow. It has been found in Cornwall and other parts of England, and in Scotland; and there are few Californians who do not believe that Queen Charlotte's Island will form rich diggings.

"Another remark has lately been made, which pretends to no more than to discover a curious coincidence. The Oural chain lies 90° west of the Australian diggings, and the Californian Sierra Nevada 90° west of the Oural. But, on the other hand, the fourth quadrantal division falls into the Atlantic between Western Africa and the Brazil; and Eastern Africa, a highly prolific metallic region, is 20° west of the Oural, and 120° east of California."

[7] "I allude to the Hammæum littus of Pliny, which appears to coincide with the modern Hazramaut. Perhaps, however, the gold of Arabia is not wholly exhausted: it is difficult to believe that the rude appliances of savages and barbarians can extract anything but the coarsest particles from the dirt.

"Some years ago an English traveller, who had seen gold dust brought to Cairo from the coast of Western Arabia, north of Yambu, applied to Dr. Walne, then her Majesty's Consul, for facilities of exploring the place. The sage reply of that official was that gold appeared to be becoming too common. Other officials, equally sage, have since made the same remark."

[He alludes to Lord John Russell, who, when he offered to send a million a year home if he were made Governor of the Gold Coast, said, "Gold was getting too common."--I. B.]

[8] "In Eastern, as in parts of Western Africa, the natives have a curious superstition, or, rather, a distorted idea of a physical fact. They always return to the earth whatever nuggets are found, under the idea that they are the seed, or mother of gold, and that, if removed, the washing would be unprofitable. They refuse to dig deeper than the chin, for fear of the earth 'caving in;' and quartz-crushing and the use of quicksilver being unknown, they will not wash, unless the gold appears to the naked eye. As late as Mohammed Ali Pasha's day an Egyptian expedition was sent up through Fayzoghlu in search of the precious metal, brought down by the eastern tributaries of the Nile; it failed, because the ignorant Turks expected to pick up ounces where they found only grains. There are many traditions still extant in Egypt, of mysterious travellers floating down the Nile in craft of antique build, accompanied by women of blackest colour, but with Grecian or Abyssinian features, and adorned with rings, collars, and bracelets of pure gold, in shape resembling those found in the tombs of ancient Egypt."

[9] "Dom Sebastian, grandson of Don João III., was born July 20th, 1554, and at three years of age ascended the throne of Portugal. His subsequent romantic history is well known."

[10] Mr. Cooley ('Geography of N'yassi,' p. 16) has confounded the 'Mucaranga' with the 'Monomoezi.' Captain Burton ('Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa,' pp. 228, 289) found the Wakaranga, a people wholly distinct from the Wanpamwezi; the former being a small tribe living near the Tanganyika Lake, south of the Wajiji. Mr. Cooley still, I believe, keeps his own opinion, and persists in writing these tribal names with an initial, M or Mu, which, being an abbreviation of mtu, a man, signifies only the individual."

[11] "In the 'Periplus,' attributed to Arrian (A.D. 64-210), chap. xvi., we are told that Rhapta, probably Kilwa (Quiloa), and the adjacent regions were held by colonists from Muza, i.e. Bandar Musa, near Aden. Gold is not mentioned amongst the exports, which are confined to ivory, rhinoceros' horns, and tortoiseshell."

[12] "Dos Santos, 'History of the Ethiopians,' book ii. chap. i.-iii."

[13] "The reader will remark that at all times, and in all places, gold has been washed or procured in the same way--a fair instance, like the general similarity of rude stone implements from England to Australia, of the instinctive faculty in mankind."

[14] "The same was the practice of the Indian Rajahs. Whenever a ryot discovered either treasure or gold in situ he was most cruelly treated, to compel him to confess and to give up what he had secreted. As, of course, he had secreted a part of his trouvaille it was a hard struggle between his cupidity and the ruler's bastinado. About 1840, some peasants near Baroda, in Guzerat, found lumps of gold, which they carried before his Highness the Gaikwar, and received in return a terrible flogging. The Hindú, with that secretiveness which has ever been his shield against the tyranny of rulers and conquerors, resolved for the future to keep his good fortune to himself. The quality of gold which from time to time has appeared amongst these people, made the shrewder sort of European suspect. But the inertness, or, rather, the terror of new things, that possessed the then rulers of the land; 'threw cold water' upon all attempts to trace the diggings, which, accordingly, were worked by the people till the present year. This is the simple history of 'gold mining in the Deccan.'"

[15] "Barros, describing the ruins of Zimbo, mentions an inscription over the gateway of a fort built with well-cut stones and no lime, whose surface was twenty-five palms long and a little less in height. Around this building, which, like the Ka'abah, might have been a pagan Arab temple, are bastions--also of uncemented lime--and the remainder of a tower, seventy feet high. The inscription was probably in the Himyaritic character, as 'Moors well versed in Arabic' could not decipher it. This was repeated to Mr. Lyons M. M'Leod ('Travels in Eastern Africa,' vol. i. chap. x.) at Mozambique. Dr. Livingstone ('Travels in South Africa,' chap. xxix.) discovered Zumbo in lat. 15° 37' 22" S., long. 30° 32' E., about 8° W.N.W. of Kilimani. At the confluence of the Loangwe and Zambeze, he found the remains of a church, a cross, and a bell, but no date and no inscription. The people of Rios de Sena also state that there are remains of large edifices in the interior; unfortunately they place them at a distance of five hundred leagues, which would lead them nearly to the equator north, and to the Cape of Good Hope south.

"Dr. Livingstone ('Travels in South Africa,' chap. xxx.) explains the word Monomotapa successfully, I think, to mean the 'Lord' (mone, muene, mona, mana, or morena, are all dialectic varieties, synonymous with the Kisarahili muinyi, which means master, sir, kyrios, etc.), and 'Mtapa,' the proper name of the chief. The ancient Portuguese assigned to the Monomotapa the extensive regions between the Zambeze and the Limpopo rivers, 7° from north to south. The African traveller, however, is not so successful in explaining the corrupted term, Monomoizes, Monemuiges, and Monomaizes--for which see Journal of Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxix. pp. 166 et seq.

"Dr. Beke ('On the Mountains forming the Eastern Side of the Basin of the Nile,' p. 14) defends, against Mr. Cooley and Captain Burton, M. Malte Brun's 'Mono-emugi, ou selons un orthographie plus authentique Mou-mimigi.' The defence is operated by enclosing after the latter, in italics, another version in parenthesis, and with an interrogation, thus (Nimougi?); and the French geographer's orthography 'being fortunately based on the theoretic root,' is pronounced 'more authentic than any hitherto proposed in its stead.' How often will it be necessary to repeat, that Mono-emugi and Mou-mimigi are merely corruptions of M'nyamwezi, a man or individual of the land Unyamwezi?"

[16] "A French adventurer tried a similar trick upon the Imam Sayyid Said, father of the present Prince of Zanzibar. He melted a few dollars and ran the fluid upon bits of stone, which were duly shown to his Highness. But the old Imam, whose cupidity was equalled only by his cunning, took them to his friend, Colonel Hamerton, her Majesty's Consul, who, finding the matrix to be coralline, had no difficulty in detecting the fraud."

[17] "Dr. Livingstone places the Botonga people west of Zumbo, and 4° to 5° north-west of Matuka or Maniça."

[18] "These elevations are on the western frontier of the great Marave people; see the 'Lands of Cazembe.'"

[19] "In Kisawahili they have but one word for gold, zahábú, which is palpably derived from the Arabic. None of the people living in the interior, or even the tribes beyond the coast-line of Zanzibar, are acquainted with the precious metal; they would prefer to it brass or copper. The appreciation of gold on the part of the so-called 'Kafir' race, points to an extensive intercourse with Arabia, if not to a considerable admixture of Arab and Asiatic blood."

[20] "Dr. Livingstone gives six well-known washing-places, east and north-east of Tete, viz. Mashinga, Shindúndo, Missála, Kapéta, Máno, and Jáwa."

[21] "Mr. Cooley ('Geography of N'yassi') questions whether there be such a kingdom as Abutua, or Butwa. He derives it from batúa, plural of motúa (in Kisawahili wátu, plural of m'tu) signifying men. The Amazulu, when they attacked Delagoa Bay, were called by the same name; but the Portuguese throwing back the accent changed the word to Vátur, of which Captain Owen made Fetwah. So, in 1822, the tribe that fell upon the Bachwáná (Bechuana) were, we were told, called Batúa, but the missionaries recognized the meaning of the word. Though it is 'now unknown,' Dr. Livingstone has inserted it into his map."

[22] "This is absolutely the present practice on the Gold Coast, and perfectly agrees with Mungo Park's descriptions."

[23] "I cannot, however, understand the final flourish of Dr. Beke's paper, above alluded to. He declares that the discovery of gold in his 'Mountains of the Moon' will occasion a complete and rapid revolution, and ends thus: 'We shall then, too, doubtless see in Eastern Africa, as in California and in Australia, the formation of another new race of mankind.' We have seen nothing of the kind in Western Africa, where for four centuries the richest diggings have been known. In fact, they have rather tended to drive away Europeans. Why then expect this marvel from Eastern Africa?"

[24] "Similarly, the king of 'Buncatoo' had a solid gold stool, which caused his destruction at the hands of his neighbours of Ashantee."

[25] "Akim still supplies gold, and will be alluded to later on."

[26] "The old traveller, however, is wrong, when he says, 'I take it (Awine) to be the first on the Gold Coast, and to be far above Axim.' Aowin is the region to the west of the Assini river, whereas Axim is to the east of the Ancobra river; thus the two are separated by the territory of Apolonia. He apologizes, however, in the same page for any possible errors. 'I cannot inform you better, because the negroes cannot give any certain account of them (the various diggings), nor do any of our people go so far; wherefore I must beg of you, my good friend, to be contented.' Despite which, however, he may yet be right, and his critic wrong."

[27] "So, 'in Coquimbo of Chili,' says Sir Richard Hawkins, 'it raineth seldom, but every shower of rain is a shower of gold unto them, for with the violence of the water falling from the mountains it bringeth from them the gold.'"

[28] "We are also informed that the same fetishes were cut by the negroes into small bits, worth one, two, or three farthings, and the people could tell their value at sight. These kakeraa, as they were called, formed the small change of the country, as our threepenny and fourpenny bits do now. They were current all over the coast, and seemed to pass backwards and forwards without any diminution. The reason for this was, that they sold in Europe for only forty the ounce: the native mixing them with better gold tried to palm them upon the purchasers, but the clerks were ordered to pick them out. A similar custom down the coast, was to cut dollars into halves and quarters, which thus easily became florins and shillings."

[29] Marks. "The Dutch West Indian Company exported 1500 The English African Company 1200 The Zealand interlopers as much as the Dutch, viz. 1500 The English interlopers about 1000 usually, which they have doubted 1000 The Brandenburghers and Danes together, in time of peace 1000 The Portuguese and French, together 800

Which makes 7000

"For several years before Bosman's time, the Dutch export had been reduced by one-half (750 marks). Mr. Wilson, however ('Western Africa,' ch. iv.), is evidently in error, when he makes Bosman to estimate the 'amount of gold exported from the Gold Coast at 800 marks per annum.'"

[30] "Dr. Clarke ('Remarks,' &c.) gives 100,000 ounces. This was the calculation of Mr. Swanzy before a Parliamentary committee in 1816. Of course it is impossible to arrive at any clear estimate. Allowing the African Steam Ship Company a maximum of 4000 ounces per month, we obtain from that source 48,000 ounces. But considerable quantities are exported in merchant ships, more especially for the American market. Whilst, therefore, some reduce the total to 60,000 ounces, others raise it to half a million of money."

[31] "Wásá has been worked both by Dutch and English; they chose, however, sickly situations, brought out useless implements, and died. The province is divided into eastern and western, and is said to be governed by female chiefs--Amazons?"

[32] "Some years ago the late Consul Campbell, of Lagos, forwarded to her Majesty's Foreign Office bits of broken pottery, in which he detected gold. When submitted to the School of Mines, the glittering particles proved to be mica."

[33] "Silver is also said to be found near the Niger, but of this I have no reliable notices."

[34] "This may be the 'Runga' of our maps, with whose position Rúmá corresponds. My informant wrote down the name from the mouth of a Waday man at Lagos."

[35] "This would be 1/3500 (avoirdupois), whereas the cascalho, or alluvium, of the Brazil is 1/15000, and remarkably rich and pyritical ores in Europe give 1/20000. Yet M. d'Aubrie estimates the gold in the bed of Father Rhine at six or seven millions, of pounds sterling."

[36] "May not this word be an old corruption of the well-known Arabic weight, miskál?"

[37] "'Western Africa,' chap. x."

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVII. HIS FIRST LEAVE

"Oh, when wilt thou return, my love? For as the moments glide, They leave me wishing still for thee, My husband, by my side; And ever at the evening hour My hopes more fondly burn, And still they linger on that word, 'Oh, when wilt thou return?'" ----To a Husband during a Long Absence.

Richard left me plenty of occupation during this awfully long absence of sixteen months. Firstly, all kinds of official fights about India, and then for a gunboat and other privileges for Fernando Po. I lived with my father, mother, and family, and then I had a great deal to do for his book, "The City of the Saints," and every letter brought its own work and commissions, people to see and to write to, and things to be done for him, so that I was never idle for a minute. I began to feel, what I have always felt since, that he was the glorious, stately ship in full sail, commanding all attention and admiration; and sometimes, if the wind drops, she still sails gallantly, and no one sees the humble little steam-tug hidden at the other side, with her strong heart and faithful arms working forth, and glorying in her proud and stately ship.

I think a true woman, who is married to her proper mate, recognizes the fully performed mission, whether prosperous or not, and that no one can ever take his place for her, as an interpreter of that which is betwixt her and her Creator, to her as the shadow of God's protection here on earth.

In winter he made me go to Paris with the Napoleon ring and sketch, mentioned in the little story called "The Last Hours of Napoleon;" and, through want of experience and proper friends and protection, my little mission of courtesy failed. The failure drew down upon me some annoyances, which appeared very disagreeable and important to me at the time; they are not worth mentioning, nor, indeed, had I been older and more experienced, should I have thought them worth fretting about.

The rest of the time of those dreary sixteen months was wearing to a degree, and diversified by ten weeks of diphtheria and its results. One day I betook myself to the Foreign Office, and I cried my heart out to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Henry Layard. He seemed very sorry for me, and he asked me to wait awhile whilst he went upstairs; and, when he came back, he told me that he had got four months' leave home for my husband, and had ordered the despatch to be sent off that very afternoon. I could have thrown my arms round his neck and kissed him, but I did not; he might have been rather surprised. I had to go and sit out in the Green Park till the excitement wore off; it was more to me than if he had given me a large fortune.

At last the happy day came to go and meet Richard at Liverpool, and I shall never forget the joy of our meeting. It was December, 1863, and we had some happy weeks in England--a pleasant Christmas with my people at Wardour, and at Lord Gerard's at Garswood, where the family parties mustered strong, and at Fryston (Lord Houghton's), and several other country-houses; and he brought out two books--"Wanderings in West Africa" (2 vols., 1863), also "Abeokuta and the Cameroons" (2 vols., 1863), which he dedicated to me, with a lovely inscription and motto, of which I am very proud. And then came round the time again to leave. But I told him I could not possibly go on living as I was living; it was too miserable, one's husband in a place where one was not allowed to go, and I living with my mother like a girl--I was neither wife, nor maid, nor widow; so he took me with him. Excepting yachting, it was my first experience of real sea-going.

[Sidenote: We sail for West Africa.]

The African steamships were established in January, 1852, by the late Mr. MacGregor Laird, who was the second pioneer of the Niger Exploration, and an enthusiastic improver of Africa. These steamers were seven in number, and went once a month; four of them were of 978 tons. They went out to the West Coast, Fernando Po being their furthest station save one, and the whole round from England and back again caused them to visit twenty-two ports, and cover ten thousand nautical miles at eight knots an hour; but they were built for cargo, not for passengers. There was no doctor, no bath; the conveniences were difficult, and the stewardess only went as far as Madeira, the first port. We sometimes had seven or eight human beings stuffed into a cabin, which had four berths. I speak of 1861-2-3-4; it may be all changed since then. We now started in the worst circumstances. It was the big storm of January, 1863, one of the worst that has ever been known. My mother, who was a very bad sailor, insisted on coming on board to see us off. It was terribly rough, and an ironclad just shaved us going out, as we lay to in the river. There were even wrecks in the Mersey. Our Captain frankly said that he had an accident every January, but he would almost rather sink than have a mark put against his name for not going out on his right day. Mother behaved most pluckily. She went back in the tug, and she just reached Uncle Gerard's, which was three-quarters of an hour from Liverpool, got up to her bedroom, took up the poker to poke the fire, which fell out of her hand--she had the strength to crawl to the bell--and when they came up she was on the floor in that attack of paralysis with which she had been so long threatened, and to stave off which, we had hid my marriage from her just two years before.

Long before we had got past the Skerries, we were in serious trouble, and the passengers implored the Captain to alter his course, and take refuge in some harbour; but he explained to them that it would be awfully dangerous to turn the ship's head round, as the going round might sink her. I had forgotten in my ignorance to secure a berth, and the Captain gallantly gave up his own cabin to me, till Madeira. It was just on the break of the poop, and every wave broke over that before it reached the saloon. The ship appeared quite unmanageable; she bucked and plunged without stopping. There were seven feet of water in the hold, and all hands and available passengers were called on to man the pumps. The under berths were full of water, the bird-cages and kittens and parcels were all floating about, most of the women were screaming, many of the men-passengers were drunk, the lights went out, the furniture came unshipped and rolled about at its own sweet will. The cook was thrown on the galley fire, so there could be nothing to eat. Fortunately the sea put the fire out. It was very difficult for men to get along the deck.

A rich lady gave the stewardess £5 to hold her hand all night, so the rest of us poorer ones had to do without consolation. One most painful scene occurred. There were seven women, missionaries' wives, going out either with or to join their husbands. One, a poor child of sixteen, just married, missed her husband, and she called out in the dark for him. A naval officer who was going out to join his ship, and was tipsy the whole way, called out, "Oh, he has tumbled overboard, and is hanging on outside; you will never see him any more." The poor child believed it, and fell down in an epileptic fit, to which she remained subject as long as I ever heard of her. Her husband and mine were working at the pumps. I crawled to my bunk in the Captain's cabin, sick and terrified, and I thought that the terrible seas breaking against its side were loosening the nails, and that the sea would come in and wash me out. I was far away from any help and quite alone, and I hung on to the door, calling, "Carpenter! carpenter!" He came to my assistance, but a huge wave covered us; it carried him overboard and left me--he was never seen again. We lost two men that night.

As I lay there trembling, and terribly sea-sick, something tumbled against my door, and rolled in and sank down on the floor. It was the tipsy naval officer. I could not rise, I could not shut the door, I could not lug him out, so I lay there. When Richard had finished his work, he crawled along the decks till he got to the cabin, where the sea had swamped through the open door pretty considerably. "Hullo! what's that?" he said. I managed faintly to ejaculate, "The tipsy naval officer." He picked him up by the scruff of his neck, and, regardless of consequences, he propelled him, with a good kick behind, all down the deck, and shut the door. He said, "The Captain says we can't live more than two hours in such a sea as this." At first I was frightened that I should die, but now I was only frightened that I shouldn't, and I uttered feebly, "Oh, thank God it will be over so soon." I shall never forget how angry he was with me, because I was not frightened, and gave me quite a sermon. We were like that mostly three days and nights, and then it got better, and I saw the steward passing with some boiled mutton and caper sauce, and called out, "Oh, stop and give me some." He cut me some slices, and I ate them like a starved dog. I got up and dressed and went on deck, and have never been sea-sick since to speak of. I do not speak of Richard, because he never was sea-sick in his life; he never knew what it was; and I believe if it had not been for spilling the ink, he would have been writing his manuscripts, even if the ship had been going round like a squirrel's cage, as he always did all his life, no matter what the weather, and ate and slept enough for three.

[Sidenote: We land at Madeira.]

The temperature changed by magic. There was a tropical calm at night; the usual rough north-easterly breeze of the outside subsided into a luxurious, sensual calm, with occasional puffs of soft, exciting westerly zephyrs, or viento de las mugeres, formed by the land wind of the night. We arrived in thirteen days at Madeira, having been longer than usual on account of the three days' storm. We could smell the land strong of clover hay long before we reached it. I shall never forget my astonishment and delight when I looked out of the port-hole one morning and found myself at Madeira. We had left a frightful English winter, we had suffered much on the sea journey; here was summer--luxuriant and varied foliage, warmth and splendour, the profusion and magnificence of the tropics, a bright blue sky and sun, a deep blue sea, mountains, hills covered with vines, white villas covered with glorious creepers, and picturesque churches and convents. Here we passed a most delightful six weeks. At that time, for about £200 a year, one could have all the luxuries that one could desire--ponies to ride, a hammock to carry you, boats to sail in, and every comfort and luxury; and as for hospitality, there was hardly a chance of breakfasting, lunching, or dining at home. We found here our best and never-to-be-forgotten friend, Lady Marian Alford, with the first Lord Brownlow, Dr. Frank, and a large party whose society we daily enjoyed immensely. After some weeks we went on to Teneriffe in another West African boat.

[Sidenote: Yellow Fever.]

When we arrived at Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe, I did not think much of it; it is not only far less pretty than Madeira, but there were no comforts and luxuries. En revanche, it was far healthier, because Madeira, like Davosplatz, had been quite used up by consumptives, and was full of germs; but then we had arrived at a wrong moment, as we found that the yellow fever was raging at Santa Cruz, and whilst we were there it carried off three thousand people in as many weeks. There was such a panic, that the moment a person was ill, the coffin was brought in and put under the bed, by way of reassuring the patient, and the moment they got into the state of coma, in which they either die or recover, they were clapped into their coffins, but not locked down, and the key was handed to the nearest relative, and the coffin was put into the ground with only a small quantity of mould over it, so that when the patient came to, and was strong enough, he or she would struggle out and come home.

One woman came back in her graveclothes, and tapped at her cottage door, which, in those parts, opens into what serves as a sitting-room. Her daughter was sitting at the table, by moonlight, weeping for her mother's death, when the tap came; she got up and opened the door, and saw her mother standing in her graveclothes! Believing it to be her ghost, she fell down insensible. The mother lived for many years, and had more children, but the daughter never recovered her reason. One gentlemen, whom we knew, took it at nine in the morning. We went to inquire after him, and was told he was convalescent, and at eleven, two hours later, we saw his funeral going down the street! English people born at Teneriffe have such an emaciated appearance that I was always condoling with them on having had the yellow fever; and then, to my horror, I found it was their natural appearance. Richard and I thought it better to move, and not waiting for our baggage, things being at the worst, and transport difficult, we set off with knapsacks to walk across the island, twenty-one miles, to Oratava, where we heard that not a single case had made its appearance. There was a halfway house, a very poor little inn. We slept there. Our room was shaped like a claret-case, white-washed, with a tiny grating near the roof for air. There was no furniture of any kind, but they put a mattress on the floor, and gave us a rug. We lay down in our clothes, taking off our weapons and laying them between us. When we woke in the morning, and got up, intending to breakfast and continue our tramp, we found that although we had closed the door, and stuck something up against it, so that any one coming in would knock it down and make a noise, that some one had stolen our best knife, from between us, and we were both remarkably light sleepers. A Spaniard cannot resist a knife, and as everything remained exactly as we had left it, it showed that there was some trap-door, or panel in the wall for ingress, which was not perceptible.

It was not comfortable, so we were not sorry to be once more upon the road. We arrived at Oratava, and found it delightful. In our days (1863) there were no hotels; but we were able to hire a room, the size of a riding-school, in a private house on the Square. One side was our bedroom, one corner our dressing-room, one our drawing-room and dining-room, and the middle our study.

[Sidenote: The Peak of Teneriffe.]

Whilst here (March, 1863) we made a delightful excursion up the Peak of Teneriffe. We were out two days and one night. The Peak is 12,198 feet above sea-level. We bivouacked in the snow at 9600 feet, and slept well. Temp., 16°. Around us were no end of little spirts of steam; we counted thirty-five on the final cone. The view from the top, as the dawn broke, was glorious. The horses slept lower down, further ascent being too steep, and the most distressing thing was that they could have no water. The mules could eat snow, but they could not; and coming into the town, they flew at everybody with water-jars on their heads. At last they heard the trickling of the stream near the little town, and they bolted at full gallop. We drew rein, jumped down, and loosened their girths, and let them drink. The only peculiarity of our journey was that it was the first performed in winter, and therefore people were anxious about us.

The women of Teneriffe were the most beautiful I have ever seen--a cross between Spanish and Irish, who were shipwrecked here in old times. I used to stop and stare at them until they used to say, "What are you staring at?" and I would answer, "At you, because you are so pretty;" and they used to laugh with delight, and show the most lovely teeth. I allude to the peasant women, whose Spanish is very pretty, but not quite Castilian. Here I wrote my first book on Madeira and Teneriffe; but my husband would not let me print it, because he did not think it was up to the mark. He thought I must study and copy many more years before I tried authorship. And he was right, both in this and not letting me share with him the climate of West Africa. But I thought both very hard at the time.

[Sidenote: I return Home.]

The time came when he had to go back to his post, but I was not allowed to sleep at Fernando Po. I thought it dreadfully hard, and cried and begged, but he was immovable; and he was right. So I turned back again with a heavy heart, and had a passage back, if not quite as bad, very nearly as bad, viâ Teneriffe and Madeira. Being alone, I had gone into the ladies' cabin--a very small hole with four berths, and what is called by courtesy a sofa; but there were eight of us packed in it. It was pitch dark; the porthole being closed on account of the weather, the effluvia was disgusting. I got on a dressing-gown, and crawled out to a stack of arms, which I fondly embraced, to keep myself from rolling overboard, where I was found by one of the officers, who ran off to the Captain; he found there was an empty deck cabin, which they immediately put me into, and in a few hours, having got rid of the noxious vapours, I quite recovered. I again passed a long and dreary time, during which he kept me either with my parents well at work, or at sea coming out and going back, with visits to Madeira and Teneriffe. I had one very anxious time, inasmuch as he was sent as her Majesty's Commissioner to the King of Dahomè, in those days by no means a safe or easy thing.

DAHOMÈ.

"Beautiful feet are those that go On kindly ministry to and fro-- Down lowliest ways if God wills so.

"Beautiful life is that whose span Is spent in duty to God and man, Forgetting 'self' in all that it can.

"Beautiful calm when the course is run, Beautiful twilight at set of sun-- Beautiful death with a life well done."

[Sidenote: Richard sent as H.M.'s Commissioner to Dahomè.]

Richard, being British Consul for Fernando Po, went to visit Agbome, the capital of the kingdom of Dahomè. Lord Russell, hearing of this, gave him instructions to proceed as her Majesty's Commissioner, on a friendly mission to King Gelele, to impress upon the King the importance the British Government attached to the cessation of the slave-trade, and to endeavour by every possible means to induce him to cease to continue the Dahoman customs. Now the Dahoman customs, as all know, meant the cutting of the throats of prisoners of war, and, in old days, making a little lake of blood on which to sail a boat. Not only this, cruelty was the rule of every day. Throats cut, to send a message to the king's father in the other world; women cut open alive in a state of pregnancy to see what it was like; animals tied up in every sort of horrible position. He writes--

"There is apparently in this people a physical delight in cruelty to beasts as well as to men. The sight of suffering seems to bring them 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--all the passions are sisters--in the look of blood, and in the inspection of mortal agonies. I can see no other explanation of the phenomena which meets my eye in Africa. In almost all the towns on the Oil Rivers, you see dead or dying animals fastened in some agonizing position. Poultry is most common, because cheapest--eggs and milk are juju to slaves here--they are tied by the legs, head downwards, or lashed round the body to a stake or a tree, where they remain till they fall in fragments. If a man be unwell he hangs a live chicken round his throat, expecting that its pain will abstract from his sufferings. Goats are lashed head downwards tightly to wooden pillars, and are allowed to die a lingering death. Even the harmless tortoise cannot escape impalement. Blood seems to be the favourite ornament for a man's face, as pattern-painting with some dark colour, like indigo, is the proper decoration for a woman. At funerals, numbers of goats and poultry are sacrificed for the benefit of the deceased, and the corpse is sprinkled with the warm blood. The headless trunks are laid upon the body, and if the fowls flap their wings, which they will do for some seconds after decapitation, it is a good omen for the dead man.

"When male prisoners of war are taken they are brought home for sacrifice and food, whilst their infants and children are sometimes supported by the middle, from poles planted in the canoe. The priest decapitates the men--for ordinary executions each Chief has his own headsman--and no one doubts that the bodies are eaten. Mr. Smith and Dr. Hutchinson both aver that they witnessed actual cases. The former declares that, when old Pepple, father of the present King, took captive King Amakree, of New Calabar, he gave a large feast to the European slave-traders on the river. All was on a grand scale. But the reader might perhaps find some difficulty in guessing the name of the dish placed before his Majesty at the head of the table. It was the bloody heart of the King of Calabar, just as it had been torn from the body. He took it in his hand and devoured it with the greatest apparent gusto, remarking, 'This is the way I serve my enemies!'

"Shortly after my first visit, five prisoners of war were brought in from the eastern country. I saw in the juju-house their skulls, which were suspiciously white and clean, as if boiled, and not a white man doubted that they had been eaten. The fact is, that they cannot afford to reject any kind of provisions."

Richard was the bearer of presents from Her Majesty to the King--one forty-feet circular crimson silk damask tent, with pole complete; a richly embossed silver pipe with amber mouthpiece; two richly embossed silver belts, with lion and crane in raised relief; two silver waiters; one coat of mail and gauntlets. This is not the place to introduce the subject very largely into this book, as I hope to do in "The Labours and Wisdom of Richard Burton" (two further volumes that I am preparing). But I may say that, with regard to his Mission, the King said that if he renounced the customs of his forefathers his people would kill him; that the slaves represented his fortune, but if the Queen would allow him £50,000 a year, that he would be able to do without it. With regard to the tent, it was exceedingly handsome, but it was too small to sit under in that climate, and the only thing he cared for was the gingerbread lion on the top of the pole. He liked his old red-clay and wooden-stem pipe better than the silver one; he liked the silver waiters very much, but he thought they were too small to use as shields; he could not get his hand into the gauntlet; the coat of mail he hung up and made into a target; and then he explained that the only thing he really did want, and would be much obliged to her Majesty for, was a carriage and horses, and a white woman!

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.

[Sidenote: Dahomè and Richard's Travels.]

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."

[Sidenote: His Travels, Business, etc. on the West Coast.]

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.

[1] A month ago a black missionary from the Cameroons, with his white wife and her two sisters, paid me a most feeling visit at Mortlake, and visited Richard in his mausoleum, where they showed deep emotion and affection. He had stayed with them on the Cameroons nearly thirty years ago.--I. B.

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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."

[Sidenote: Speke's Death.]

The first great event was the British Association Meeting at Bath, September, 1864. Laurence Oliphant conveyed to Richard that Speke had said that "if Burton appeared on the platform at Bath" (which was, as it were, Speke's native town) "he would kick him." I remember Richard's answer--"Well, that settles it! By God, he shall kick me;" and so to Bath we went. There was to be no speaking on Africa the first day, but the next day was fixed for the "great discussion between Burton and Speke." The first day we went on the platform close to Speke. He looked at Richard, and at me, and we at him. I shall never forget his face. It was full of sorrow, of yearning, and perplexity. Then he seemed to turn to stone. After a while he began to fidget a great deal, and exclaimed half aloud, "Oh, I cannot stand this any longer." He got up to go out. The man nearest him said, "Shall you want your chair again, Sir? May I have it? Shall you come back?" and he answered, "I hope not," and left the Hall. The next day a large crowd was assembled for this famous discussion. All the distinguished people were with the Council; Richard alone was excluded, and stood on the platform, we two alone, he with his notes in his hand. There was a delay of about twenty-five minutes, and then the Council and speakers filed in and announced the terrible accident out shooting that had befallen poor Speke shortly after his leaving the Hall the day before. Richard sank into a chair, and I saw by the workings of his face the terrible emotion he was controlling, and the shock he had received. When called upon to speak, in a voice that trembled, he spoke of other things and as briefly as he could. When we got home he wept long and bitterly, and I was for many a day trying to comfort him.

I reprint a few lines that rushed to my mind in winter, 1864:--

Reprinted from Fraser's Magazine, February, 1869.

"'WHO LAST WINS.'

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Richard's "Stone Talk."]

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.

[Sidenote: Gaiety.]

Apart from the sad circumstance of Speke's death, we had a very delightful winter. We went to Uncle Gerard's at Garswood, to Lady Egerton of Tatton's, to Lady Stanley of Alderley's (in the present dowager's time), when the now Dowager Lady Airlie and Lady Amberly and all the family were then at home, where we met an immense quantity of distinguished people, and notably Professor Jowett. Then we went to Lady Margaret Beaumont's at Bretton Park, and to Lord Fitzwilliam's; and all these had large house-parties.

[Sidenote: Winwoode Reade--We go to Ireland.]

This year we became very intimate with Winwood Reade. We went over to Ireland, where we spent a delightful two months. We took an Irish car, and drove by degrees over all the most interesting and prettiest parts of Ireland, at the rate of so many miles a day, stopping where it was most interesting. I had an Irish maid with me, whose chief delight was to see Richard and me clinging on to the car as it flew round the corners, while she sat as cool and calm as possible, with her hands in her muff. "Ye devil," Richard said to her, "I believe you were born on a car; I will pay you out for laughing at me." Some days afterwards, she dropped her muff. There was a great deal of snow on the ground, so Richard said to her very kindly, "Don't get down, Kiernan; I will get your muff for you." He stopped the car, got down, pretended to be very busy with his boot, but in reality he was filling her muff with snow. When he gave it back to her she gave a little screech. "Ah," he said, with glistening eyes, "you'll laugh at me for clinging on the car like a monkey on a scraper again."

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.

[Sidenote: Richard and Sir Bernard Burke.]

Talking of the Bourbon blood and his gaminerie, during this visit to Ireland we were in Dublin, where we had the pleasure of knowing Sir Bernard and Lady Burke, and Richard and he were talking in his study over his genealogy and this Louis XIV. descent. He said, "I want this to be made quite clear." Sir Bernard said, "I wonder, Captain Burton, that you, who have such good Northern and Scottish blood in your veins, and are connected with so many of the best families, should trouble about what can only be a morganatic descent at best." I can see him now, carelessly leaning against the bookcase with his hands in his pockets, with his amused face on, looking at the earnest countenance of Sir Bernard and saying, "Why! I would rather be the bastard of a King, than the son of an honest man," and his hearty laugh at the shocked expression and "Oh! Captain Burton," which he had been waiting for.

[Sidenote: Bianconi.]

One of the amusing things, and interesting as well, was going to Gerald's Cross by rail, and when we arrived, there was only one car. There was another gentleman and ourselves, and as we had telegraphed for the car, it was ours. Still we did not like to leave him without anything. So we asked him if we could give him a lift. He asked us where we were going, and we told him. So he said, "Well, you pass my house, so I shall be grateful." As we drove along for about half an hour between Gerald's Cross and Cashel, he told us that he was Bianconi, the first inventor of outside Irish cars, that his house was called Longfield, and the whole of his most interesting history. His house was a nice little residence in a garden with a lawn and trees in front, and he insisted upon taking us into it, and giving us afternoon tea, after which we drove on.

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.

[Sidenote: 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.]

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: He speaks his Mind about the Nile.]

Richard's speech alluded to the following. I take it from his private, not his published writings:--

"I have five main objections to Jack's theory about the Nile:--

"1. There is a difference of levels in the upper and in the lower part of the so-called lake. This point is important only when taken in connection with the following:--

"2. The native report that the Mwerango river rises from the hills in the centre of the so-called lake.

"3. The general belief that there is a road through the so-called lake.

"4. The fact that the southern part of the so-called lake floods the country for thirteen miles, whereas the low and marshy northern shore is not inundated.

"5. The phenomena that the so-called lake swells during the dry period of the Nile, and vice versâ.

"It would of course have been far more congenial to my feelings to have met Jack upon the platform, and to have argued out this affair, openly, before the Association of Science. I went down fairly to seek this contest on September 13th, 1864. The first day was devoted to other subjects, and the second day our grand exposition of our separate views was to come off, and the rooms of the Section E were crowded to suffocation.

"All the great people were with the Council, I alone was uninvited; so I remained on the platform with my wife, notes in hand, longing for the fray, but when they filed in twenty minutes later, the melancholy announcement was made of his death. I had seen him between one and three p.m., and at four p.m. he was a corpse! I was so shocked, so pained, I could not speak, and remained so for a long while. His death sealed my lips, but I am not bound to bury my opinions in his grave; and when I at last dared to speak, I addressed a public already horribly prejudiced by the partisans of Jack, who know nothing about chivalry, and have spoken of me in terms which I never used towards my dead friend. In short, all my achievements were ignored and forgotten. Everybody is mentioned with honour, but the Pioneer of discovery in these wild regions is carefully ignored. I am now about to leave Europe for some years, and I cannot allow errors which are generally received, to remain as they are, but I do not stand forth as an enemy of the departed. No man better than I, can appreciate the noble qualities of energy, courage, and perseverance which he so eminently possessed, who knew him for so many years, who travelled with him as a brother, till the unfortunate rivalry respecting the Nile sources arose like a ghost between us, and was fanned to a flame by the enmity and ambition of so-called friends. I do not wish to depreciate the services of Jack, nor Captain Grant--they brought us back a new three hundred and fifty geographical miles; but as to the Nile sources, I consider the problem wholly unsolved. Jack and Captain Grant seemed to forget that the more my expedition did, the better for them, as well as for me. The result of Jack's expedition is a blank space on the maps, covering nearly twenty-nine thousand miles and containing possibly half a dozen waters. Had Jack and Captain Grant really seen--which they did not--three sides of the Nyanza, they would have left unexplored fifty thousand square geographical miles, a space somewhat larger than England and Wales.

"Knowing Jack as I do, I cannot understand why he sent Captain Grant, without valid apparent reason, on July 19th, 1862, to the head-quarters of King Kamrasi of Unyoro, right away from the Lakes, unless Jack was determined alone to do the work, and to have no one to contradict him. The Westminster Review remarks of that: 'Grant will have little to regret, and Burton will be more than revenged should Tanganyika, and not the Nyanza, prove to be the head of the Nile.'

"From Alexandria Jack telegraphed in April, 1863, to the F.O. these big words:--'Inform Sir Roderick Murchison that all is well, that we are in latitude 14° 30' upon the Nile, and that the Nile is settled.' The startling assertion caused a prodigious sensation at the main meeting, May 11th, 1863. Jack was fêted in Egypt by his Highness the Khedive and by his Majesty of Piedmont, and was presented with a medal bearing the gratifying inscription, 'Honor est a Nilo.' At Southampton he was received by the civic authorities and sundry supporters, including Colonel Rigby of Zanzibar, who, for purely private reasons, had supported Jack against me. On June 22nd, 1863, Jack received an ovation in the shape of a special meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, when the windows were broken in by the eager crowd. By-and-by people began to cool their enthusiasm. Despite all that Jack had done to me, I was the first to give flattering opinions of the exploration, until the personal account Jack gave, told me how little had been done. It was something to have passed over three hundred and fifty untrodden miles, but it would take a great deal more than that to settle the Nile problem. Jack tried to crush all expressions of thought. A welcome to Jack was put forth in 1863 by Blackwood's Magazine, a periodical from which, for reasons best known to myself, I never expected, nor wanted to receive justice. The author of 'The Welcome,' who sought advertisement, wrote: 'We were the first to satisfy ourselves with Captain Speke's geographical views.'

"In January, 1864, Jack's book appeared, 'The Discovery of the Sources of the Nile.' It sold like wildfire at first, and then suddenly dropped, like the stick of the firework. Then Messrs. Blackwood brought out 'What led to the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile,' and people were saying that 'non-discovery would be the fitting term;' and the second stick fell from the rocket. I understood then the danger to which I had exposed myself by not travelling alone, when I perceived that a lake, seen only for twenty miles, at the southern edge, was prolonged by mere guesswork to two hundred and forty miles to the north--enough to stultify the whole Expedition. Had we met at Bath, the discussion which must have resulted would have brought forth a searching scrutiny upon both our Expeditions, and mine would have been found to have been a genuine article; as it is, I am obliged to remain dumb upon many points upon which, if Jack had been alive, I should certainly have spoken. After so long a silence upon the subject, I am justified in drawing public attention as to what was effected by my Expedition, in which I was not only unaided, but I may say hindered. I went into the country ignorant of it, its language, trade, manners, and customs, preceded only by a French naval officer, who was murdered almost directly he landed. My friend Hamerton, the Consul at Zanzibar, was dying. Without money, or support, or influence, lacking in the necessaries of life, I led the most disorderly caravan that ever man could gather together, into the heart of Eastern Africa, and discovered the Tanganyika and the Nyanza Lakes. I brought home sufficient information to smooth the path of all who chose to follow me. They had but to read 'The Lake Regions of Central Africa' (2 vols., 1860), and the whole of Vol. XXXIII. of the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (Clowes and Sons, 1860), to know all about it. Dr. Beke called mine emphatically 'a memorable expedition;' but, except for a few esteemed friends, my work has been ignored and forgotten. My labours rendered the road easy for Jack and Captain Grant. I opened the line to Englishmen, and they had but to follow me.

"I bring no charge against Jack of asserting what he does not believe. In his Taunton speech he declared that, 'as the real discoverer, he had in 1857 hit the Nile on the head, and in 1863 drove it down to the Mediterranean,' and he believed these words as firmly and as unreasoningly as he did in his Victoria Nyanza Lake or his 'Mountains of the Moon.' His peculiar habit of long brooding over thoughts and memories, secreting them until some sudden impulse brought them forth, may explain this great improbability. He could not grasp a fact; hence his partial eclipse of the moon on the 5th and 6th of January, 1863, which did not occur. A 'luxurious village' was a mass of dirty huts, a 'king of kings' is a petty chief, a 'splendid port' is a display of savagery. The French of those parts are barbarians, with little more knowledge than their neighbours.

"Captain Grant also has never acknowledged the vast benefits which the second Expedition derived from mine. I therefore mean to produce a small volume, called 'The Nile Basin,'[2] in which I shall distinctly deny that any 'misleading, by my instructions from the Royal Geographical Society as to the position of the White Nile,' left me unconscious of the vast importance of ascertaining the Rusizi river's direction. The fact is Jack was deaf and almost blind, I was paralytic, we were both helpless, and I may add penniless; we did our best to reach it, and we failed.

"I must also again allude to Jack's 'Mountains of the Moon.' He published a sketch-map in Blackwood's Magazine, September and October, 1859, which showed a huge range estimated to rise six or eight thousand feet high. At first the segment of a circle, it gradually shaped itself into a colt's foot, and effectually cut off all access from the Tanganyika to the Nile; then he owns in his book, p. 263, to having built up these mountains on solely geographical reasonings, deriving from the same source the Nile, the Congo, and the Zambesi. Now, Captain Grant afterwards said that the mountains were the work of the engraver, and that Jack was amused by them; but if he had looked into the map-room of the Royal Geographical Society, he would have found Jack's own map, showing the lunar horseshoe in all its hideousness. Now, in the map done by Stanford, the Mountains of the Moon are placed in the northern extremity of the Lake Tanganyika; but in his own map, published in his journal, he altered their position, and inserted them round the western north-sides of the more northern Lake Rusizi, which was manifestly a widening of the river; and again he said, p. 324, 'It was a pity I did not change the course I gave to the Maraungu river, i.e. making it an effluent, and not an influent; I forgot my lesson, and omitted to do so;' and when he inquires of the natives whether this river runs into or out of the lake, he says, 'Because they all say it runs into the lake, I am quite convinced that it runs out of the lake,' which, to say the least of it, is an extraordinary train of reasoning.

"Mr. Macqueen, an old and scientific geographer, was told by an Arab who had been to Unyamwezi, 'It is well known by all the people there, that the river which goes through Egypt takes its source and origin from the Lake Tanganyika.' Dr. Beke, an old and scientific traveller, quotes De Barros: 'The Nile has its origin in a great lake, the Tanganyika, and after traversing many miles northwards, it enters a very large lake which lies under the equator.' This would, I believe, be the Bahr el Ghazal, or the Luta Nzigé. With regard to the levels, the Tanganyika is allowed but 1844 feet, but during our exploration the state of our vision would, I am sure, explain a greater difference than the fraction of a degree. At Conduci, a harbour on the East African coast, a common wooden bath instrument boiled at 2˙14° Fahr.: this would give a difference of about 1000 feet. The Nyanza was made 3550 feet high by my expedition, that of Jack raised it to 3745 feet.

"Mr. Macqueen, F.R.G.S., author of the 'Geographical Survey of Africa,' wrote a very able review on Jack's expedition with Captain Grant, and I shall reprint it in the 'Nile Basin' from the Morning Advertiser. In it he speaks in unmeasured terms about the cruelty of the manner in which he crushed Consul Petherick with his ill-temper, vanity, and jealousy, having used him in his own service all he could. Petherick wrote: 'To add insult to injury, flesh and blood cannot bear it, and, whilst not wishing to depreciate the labours of others, I am determined to maintain my own;' and Mrs. Petherick wrote an account of Jack's dining with them. They had a tremendously large ham, which they had brought from England, cooked. They were to wait with boats, well armed and provisioned, until Jack should appear at Gondokoro. They waited long beyond their time, they spent their money, they lost their health, they sacrificed their own trade, and Jack, having helped himself to what he wanted, treated them de haut en bas. Mrs. Petherick writes: 'We always meant to open this ham when we met Speke. During dinner I endeavoured to prevail on Speke to accept our aid, but he drawlingly replied, "I do not wish to recognize the 'succour-dodge.'"' She adds, 'The rest of the conversation I am not well enough to repeat. I grow heartsick thinking of it after all our toil. Never mind, his heartlessness will recoil upon him yet. I soon left the table, and would never dine with them again.'

"But when Jack got home, and was in the full fling of his triumph, his unfounded charges influenced the Government, who had employed Petherick to convey assistance and advice to Jack, whose flippant conduct caused this man and his wife to be thrown overboard without pity, his private fortune wasted, his character as a merchant and a public servant blasted, being also deprived of his Consulship. Mr. Macqueen, in his paper, said that Speke left England on a great and noble enterprise. He was patronised and supported by the British Government, by the Royal Geographical Society, and the good wish and sanguine hopes of the public. He says it is incredible that any man, but especially a man who had gone a thousand miles to see the position of the outlet of the Nile supposed to be in that spot, should have remained five months within eight miles of it, without hearing or seeing something certain about the great object of his search, or have found some means to see it. He says, 'All that he brought back was the sacrifice and ruin of zealous associates, first Burton, then Petherick, Grant treated as a cipher, and a mass of intelligence, if such it can be called, so muddled and confused that we do not believe he understands it himself. We regret the miserable termination which the second great African exploration has had; we lament the time that has been lost, and the money that has been spent; but the only person to blame for its poor results is Captain Speke himself.'"

The following five maps, brought up to 1867, are inserted with the kind permission of the Royal Geographical Society, whose property they are.

[1] "Träume sind Schäume."

[2] Which he did in 1864.--I. B.

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