V. SPIRITUALISM…

V. SPIRITUALISM

"Prosaic after death, our spirits then Invent machinery to talk with men;

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And Shakespeare's spirit visits earth to tell How he and Washington are very well; And Lindley Murray, from the body free, Can't make his verbs and nominatives agree; Ben Franklin raps an idiotic dream, And Webster scrawls vile twaddle by the ream; That splendid knave, Lord Bacon, has turned fool, And Penn's great soul is busy keeping school. Well may the living poet heave a sigh To think his spirit, stooping from the sky When he is dead, can rap at mortal call, Bad rhymes and wretched metre on a wall! Well may the hero shudder in despair, Whose soul can choose to animate a chair; And the great statesman, sinking in the tomb, To rise, and wheel a table round a room!"

[Sidenote: Spiritualism--A Memorable Meeting on the Subject.]

One night we had a most amusing spiritualistic meeting at the rooms where the Society usually met, somewhere near the British Museum. It was a night appointed for a very great gathering to hear Richard speak on Spiritualism. The Spiritualists in 1878 were as anxious to claim him as one of their Chiefs, as the Agnostics were in 1891-2, after his death. Richard was the honestest, most truthful man I ever knew; whatever he said he believed, but he believed a great deal more than he said. He was such a many-sided man, that one individual could not understand him; they could only see the one light presented to their eye, and could not imagine the others. He was so anxious to get to the highest of the high, that he studied everything, and amongst others every religion, and when he thought he knew it he took the good out of that religion, and practised it. Now, he thought that if several manifestations which we had witnessed could be pushed further, and especially one of which he was one of seven, that we should have a closer connection with the other world, and for I cannot tell how many years we pursued this phantom, and the more we saw the more puzzled we got; for it never came up either to a Roman Catholic miracle, nor the Sufi's mysticism, which he had practised so long in the East. And in practical England, where there was generally so much money in the case, there was three-quarters of a pound of humbug or jugglery to one ounce of spiritual matter; and Richard at last became convinced that we were on the verge of a new science, which any one who had time and power to grasp this will-o'-the-wisp could turn to good practical account, just as in old days with steam, railways, telegraph, telephones, and electricity in all its branches. At times he and I together got very near something, he being the power, and I the medium (this he called the sixth sense), and then we lost all trace and gave it up. I was not sorry, because I was always in hot water with my Church every time we had a séance. I think, or rather, I should say, he thought, that people should not make a religion of it, and only use it for scientific experiments. He did not believe in the "communion with the dead" through that medium--if for no other reason, that, as a spirit is supposed to know all things, the spirits that came were always just as illiterate as their invokers. They dropped their h's in exactly the same place where he or she did, and used exactly the same expression, and were just or rather more vulgar, especially the joking spirits. We had an excellent example of that, when a doctor, whom I will not name, provided us with a splendid specimen for clairvoyant treatment, and the soul of an Italian doctor presented himself and spoke through the medium, who was evidently unaware that Richard and I could speak anything else but English; and upon being asked certain questions, he spoke a little broken English, with two or three words of very bad Portuguese. We looked at each other, and we talked to him in Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish; but he knew none of the three, which an Italian spirit certainly would have done. His coming to was a splendid bit of acting, and we had to pay our guinea for the medical advice therein. This night, of which I write, Richard made the following speech:--

From The Spiritualist, December 13, 1878.

"THE BRITISH NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SPIRITUALISTS.

"The Debate on Captain Burton's Paper.

"The usual fortnightly meeting of the British National Association of Spiritualists was held at 38, Great Russell Street, on Monday evening, the 2nd instant. The chair was taken by Mr. Desmond Fitz-Gerald, M.S.Tel.E., and the rooms were crowded to excess, the paper to be read being by the renowned traveller, Captain R. F. Burton.

"The Chairman--Ladies and gentleman, I have to go through a work of supererogation in introducing to you a gentleman with whose reputation at least you are already well acquainted. I have to introduce you to a gentleman who of old did great service to Spiritualism by defending the Davenport Brothers when they were unjustly attacked. I have to introduce you to a gentleman who, if he believed that Spiritualism or any part of it were a great truth, would, without any doubt, unhesitatingly and fearlessly stand up and support his convictions; I have to introduce you, in fact, to the modern Bayard, our English chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. After paying to him a devoir which sounds like a compliment, but which is not one, I have to say that I stand here rather anxiously awaiting what Captain Burton has to say in relation to Spiritualism. I know he is not quite one of ourselves; I know he is a very hard hitter, and if there are any flaws in our armour, I know he will make it ring again; but I feel certain we shall take every observation he may make in good part, being certain of the honesty and good intent of the speaker. (Applause.) I feel that I cannot sit down without mentioning the name of Mrs. Burton. (Applause.) Captain Burton is in my eyes, and I believe I represent the feeling of all those who know him, or even only know his reputation, one of the finest specimens of manhood I have ever had the honour to stand beside, and I must say of Mrs. Burton that I consider her the finest specimen of womanhood I have ever met. She is a lady of high birth, but she is something more, something higher than that. She is a true woman, who has over and over again stood beside her husband in times of trouble and imminent danger, and it is a great honour to me to be in the position of introducing you to our distinguished visitors this evening. With this little preamble, I will at once call upon Captain Burton to read his paper. (Applause.)

"SPIRITUALISM IN EASTERN LANDS.

[Sidenote: Richard's Lecture.]

"I felt highly honoured when your energetic secretary, Miss Kislingbury, proposed to me a lecture in these rooms. It is, indeed a privilege; for here we Students may speak out what we honestly believe to be the truth, without fear of those brother-foes, the Theologian and the Scientist--the Black Terror and the Red Terror.

"The subject allotted to me for this evening is 'Spiritualism' (or rather Magnetism, Occultism, and similar matters) 'in Eastern Lands,' and I would obtain your leave to enter into a personal matter which may interest Spiritualists. As regards standpoint, it can matter little to an audience what may be the opinions, spiritual or unspiritual, psychological or unpsychological, of one whose humble duty is to collect and narrate a few facts. But it would hardly be fair to enter upon such a subject without briefly laying down the standpoint from which it is viewed. Of course the point de vue is that of the individual who pretends to be right individually, but who has no pretension to be right either absolutely or relatively to others.

"The standpoint is intelligent enough. Seen from it, life is nothing but the innate condition of man's material and sensuous organization; as the old Materialist said, 'it is the swabhám (nature of things) which thinketh in man.' Consciousness, concerning which battle still rages, is not a 'quality of the sentient principle, or, in other words, the soul;' but a condition of life inexplicable to us at present--a life itself. The supernatural is the natural misunderstood or improperly understood--we cannot say where nature either begins or ends. The superhuman is the superlative of human; we know what our senses and their 'interpenetration' teach us, but no man--positively, absolutely, no man--neither deity nor devil--angel nor spirit--ghost nor goblin--has ever wandered beyond the narrow limits of this world--has ever brought us a single idea or notion which belongs to another and a different world--has ever eluded the simple cognizance of man's five wits. 'I refuse,' says Verax, 'to doff my hat and go on my knees and strip myself of all that is deemed spiritual in my being, in deference to an arbitrary negation, which they who propound it profess their inability to maintain.' Let him keep his hat on, and point out one single spiritual entity which is not subject to our animal senses, or rather to the brain which directs them. With such belief, or absence of belief, I must be contented to remain, as a facetious friend said, 'a Spiritualist without the Spirits.'

"An Agnostic, who can have no knowledge save that which his senses bring to him, is necessarily a materialist. By 'matter,' or molecular structure, or concourse of atoms, or whatever you please to call it, the Common Sense of mankind, our supreme arbiter of physics and metaphysics, understands that which is perceptible to, or cognizable by, the senses. When Berkeley proves logically that spirit only exists, we admire the ingenuity with which he shows that white is black and black is white. Like the Hindú philosopher he inverts the normal mode of definition by calling the invisible prototypes the only reality. Similarly, when Schopenhauer, the Buddhist of modern Europe, assures us that 'in reality there is neither matter nor spirit,' we note that he has adopted the Hindú idea of Mâyâ, or universal illusion; and that he reduces all existence to will and manifestation--will in motion being force, and force producing matter. When it is proved to us that matter does not 'exist,' we recognize a quirk or conceit in the use of the verb 'to exist.' Meanwhile, this chair, this table, these walls, and all with them are of matter, material. And that suffices for everyday use.

"We avoid asserting that spirits do not exist; we fear being called upon to prove a negative; and we students are addicted to 'suspension of judgment'--a mental operation apparently distasteful to the multitude. But we affirm that if they do exist, they are material. As you see upon these walls they allow themselves to be photographed; therefore, they have substance, shape, and size; upstairs a simple instrument shows you their connection with weight. We, therefore, conclude that there are ample grounds for holding these spirits to be, like ourselves, of the world, mundane, of the earth, earthy. And when Spiritualists speak of a 'materialized spirit,' I can think only of a form of speech whose genus is Taurus, species Hibernicus. Similarly Lucretius makes Epicurus argue that the soul is material because all its belongings are of the material world. And Paracelsus, the mighty adept, declared 'the imagination of man is a seed which is material.'

"We, a goodly company, thus place ourselves in direct opposition with immaterial animisers. We regret the term 'psychic force' applied to zoo-electricity, because it asserts a soul-theory. We claim to know the genesis of the soul, the place and almost the date of its birth. The beautiful conception of a refined body-form, denoted by the golden heart of the mummy, was familiar to the ancient Egyptian who, as Mr. Bonwick lately told you, had a soul's soul, as well as a body's soul. And, note, that your modern belief in perispirits and spirit-forms is that of the heathenry on the banks of the Nile who disbelieved in Moses. The Hebrews, Moses included, agreed to banish from their system a Soul-land, a Spirit-land, a Ghost-land, a Kutome, or Dead-man's-land, as Dáhome calls it; in other words, a future world, a state of rewards and punishments. Contented with Ruach (Arabic Ruh), the 'breath,' that is, the sign and symbol of life, these sturdy materialists wanted no Gentile 'Atma' (soul) in addition to 'Mátrá' (matter). In Asia the fair vision may be traced to the Guebres, who taught it to the Jews during the captivity at Babylon: their subsequent teaching, Manicheism, or Dulism, the antagonism of light and darkness, good and bad, god and devil, positive and negative electricity is, still, and long will be, a power in the world of faith. In Europe it arose amongst the fair humanities of pagan Greece and Rome; as Cupid and Psyche prove, it did noble service to the poets; while prosaic Pliny declared that 'to seek for other beings external to him, is not only useless to man, but beyond his power.' St. Paul introduced into Christendom the threefold idea of a natural body, which could become a glorified body, of a soul, and of a spirit; while the moderns remark, 'Our ideas of the soul are not what they were a century ago; a century hence they will not be what they are now.' Personally, I ignore the existence of soul and spirit, feeling no want of a self within a self, an I within an I. If it be a question of words, and my ego, or subject, as opposed to the non-ego, or object; or my individuality, the concourse of conditions which differentiates me from others, be called a soul, then I have a soul, but not a soul proper. For some years, however, I have managed to live without what is popularly called a soul; and it would be hard to find one violently thrust into the recusant body.

"But why do the Spiritualists so violently rage against us? Why these wails concerning the 'awful spread of materialism'? The Church hates the admirable Epicurus above all other heathen sceptic-sages, simply because he would abolish Churchmen. Is this the standpoint of the psychologist? Can there be anything less rational than the phrase which has of late grown popular, 'The dark and debasing doctrines of materialism'? Listen to the latest words of the learned Serjeant Cox: 'The pursuit of psychology ("Psyche," my pretty maid) is certainly as elevating as that of materialism is degrading. The eyes of the materialists are fixed upon the earth. Psychology at least looks up to the heavens (blank sky and air). The regards of materialism are only for the present; psychology has a future'--let me add, a very unpleasant future, if Spiritualists say true. Hear, again, the words of one who was called in his day l'austère intrigant--'Belief in the supernatural is a fact, natural, primitive, universal, and consistent in the life and history of the human race. Unbelief in the supernatural begets materialism; materialism, sensuality; sensuality, social convulsions, amid whose storms men again learn to believe and pray' (Guizot). Granted to thee, O theologian! a personal Demiourgos, an anthropomorphic creator, by what right canst thou limit his power, his omnipotence? Surely the baser the material, the greater the feat which works it out into the noblest of forms. Far more wisely speaks an Eastern poet--

'Is not the highest honour His who from the worst can draw the best? May not your Maker make the world from matter, at His own behest? Nay, more; the sordider the stuff, the cunninger the workman's hand-- Cease, then, your own Almighty Power to bind, to bound, to understand!'

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But man--made, we are told, in the image of God--has returned the good office by modelling his God after his own very human fashion. This is the anthropomorphism, the 'theanthropism' of Mr. Gladstone, concerning which the great master, Aristotle, wrote, 'Men create the gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life.' Meanwhile, I hold it to be one of the brightest features of our times--this gospel derisively called 'of Doubt and Denial.' It shows the firm resolve of mankind no longer to be fooled with the fallacies of many faiths; his longing to supplant the fatuous fires of belief by the pure daylight of present reason, and his determination to shed the lively ray of science upon the dark deceits and delusions, the frauds, the follies, and the failures of the past.

"And yet another objection. The scientist, in his turn, is addicted to laying down terms and bounds to the immeasurable field of human knowledge in the ages to come. He assures us, for instance, that we shall never know the connection between the body and the soul--for there are scientists who still have souls. I would ask--By what manner of authority can man lay down such a ne plus ultra? We hold, under certain limitations, the law of development--of progress--to be the normal order of the world. What, then, will be the result when the coming races shall have surpassed the present as far as the present has surpassed the man of the Quaternary and, possibly, the Tertiary ages? Meanwhile the antidevelopists, theological and scientific, who cling to the obsolete and immoral doctrine of degradation, are bound to find, sunk deep below earth's surface, vestiges and remains of ancient civilization in an ever-ascending scale; they must show us, in fact, water running up to its source. They are bound to produce, amongst the old stone folk, a cave-man who, by his noble and symmetrical skull, his delicate jaw, his short forearm, his straight shin, and, possibly, his 'hyacinthine locks,' shall receive the fading honours of Father Adam and Mother Eve. Lord Beaconsfield is 'all on the side of the Angels.' I cannot but hold to the apes. And if he be a fallen angel, I, at least, am a Simiad that has done something to develop itself.

"Before entering upon magnetism and occultism in Eastern lands, will you kindly allow me a few words of personal explanation? In 1876 I addressed to the Times the following note upon extra-sensuous perception in the mesmeric state, suggesting the universality of the so-called 'spirit' phenomena:--

"'Sir,--Seeing my name quoted in your columns (October 30, 1876) as one of those who have "certified to the genuineness of spirit phenomena," I venture to request the briefest of hearings. The experience of twenty years has convinced me that (1) perception is possible without the ordinary channels of the senses; and (2) that I have been in presence of a force or a power, call it what you will, evidently and palpably material if, at least, man be made of matter; but I know nothing of what is absurdly called Spiritualism, and I must be contented to be at best a Spiritualist without the Spirits.

"'Some such force or power the traveller is compelled to postulate, even in the absence of proof. He finds traces of it among all peoples, savage as well as civilized; and it is evidently not a "traditional supernaturalism." This all but absolute universality claims for it the right to rank in the "suprahuman category" of the late Lord Amberley, who did not hold, as I do, the superhuman and the supermundane to be the human and the mundane imperfectly understood. Even mere barbarians, as "the Earl" tells us in his last pleasant book, have learnt to juggle with it; and I fear that many a professional "medium" has, at times, when the legitimate agent failed him, learnt to supplement it by sleight-of-hand, pure and simple. In 1835 the late Mr. Lane startled the public with his account of the Cairo magician and the drop of ink in the boy's hand; and "Eothen" vainly attempted to explain the phenomenon as a "tentative miracle." Had the public read the "Qanoon-i-Islam" by Dr. Herklots, instead of passing over it as a cookery-book, they would have found the very same process everywhere utilized in India. Colonel Churchill's 'Mount Lebanon' (1853) again describes a notable feat performed by a Druze medium, which distinctly comes under the head of "Materialized Spiritualism," to use the "Irish bull" now in vogue,--I am, sir,' etc., etc.

"That 'perception is possible without the ordinary channels of sensation' is a hard saying. The Press took it up; and, I am told, the small boys at Norwood amused themselves by shouting to one another, 'Take care where yer going! yer havn't got Captain Burton's six senses!' But I meant simply to state my conviction that the senses--which, little known to us as the 'Laws of Nature,' after the study of twenty-four centuries, still conceal so many secrets--sometimes are, and often may be made, independent of their organs. Who amongst you cannot quote cases of men being strangely affected by the presence of some animal? You have all heard of Henri III. and of the Duke of Schomberg, who could not sit in a room where there was a cat. A notable instance of this occurred in my own family--a brave soldier who had fought through many a campaign, and yet who turned pale and faint in the feline presence. He neither saw, smelt, heard, felt, nor tasted the cat; the fact of its being there was enough.

"Again, why should not the brain, or the nervous system, or whatever controls the sensuous processes of man, be able, when artificially excited, stimulated, exalted--as by mesmerism or somnambulism--to see, hear, and feel for itself; see, without eyes; hear, without ears; feel, without fingers? In other words--Why should it not be capable of clairvoyance and clairaudience? I assert that it does, and many in this room will support my assertion. A learned physician and devout Catholic--Dr. F. Lefebre, Professor of Pathology at highly orthodox Louvain--goes so far as to affirm 'it is possible that the somnambulists' power of foresight may be raised to a degree far above the ordinary level, and that they can sometimes penetrate into the future so far as to excite our utmost astonishment.' In fact, this honest and courageous scientist confesses his belief in 'second sight.' Thus the heterodoxies of yesterday become the orthodoxies of to-day. That sturdy incarnation of common sense, Dr. Johnson, the Philistine Colossus of English literature, would certainly, had Spiritualism been developed in his day, have become a thorough-paced Spiritualist. The theory of extra-sensuous perception of things sensuous is to be proved or disproved, not by hard words, not by mere logic, but by experiment and facts. Meanwhile I hold myself justified in believing it to be true, and others equally justified in believing it to be false. As the wise man said, 'Different people have different opinions.' And in our present transitional empirical state of knowledge unanimity appears hopeless. Half the world of Christendom believes that 'miracles' still take place; the other half denies their taking place: and who shall decide between them?

"When my note appeared in the Times, that picturesque paper, the Daily Telegraph--whose peculiar gifts are not what it claims, 'logic' and 'common sense'--took up arms. With a war-whoop à la jingo, and a flourish of the tomahawk, which on this occasion assumed the guise of that weapon so deadly in the hands of a certain Hebrew Hercules, he proceeded to demolish me (November 14, 1876). 'How,' he asks, 'can a man perceive a cat in the room without the sensation of sight?' I am not bound to answer his 'how;' I affirm that man can do it, that he has done it, and that he still does it. Again, 'How can he perceive a clap of thunder without the sense of hearing?' Let me ask, in return, how many there are--some perhaps in this room--whose nervous systems infallibly tell them, without the intervention of the 'Five Deluders,' that 'thunder is in the air'? After fixing upon me the term 'Suprahuman,' which I quoted from the late Lord Amberley's last book, he lectures me upon Eastern jugglery, as if I had never been out of Fleet Street. He asks, with that mock-humility so well known of old, in what the medium's 'legitimate agent' may consist? I, on my side, would inquire what he understands by sanative mesmerism or somnambulism--is it lawful or unlawful? He would shed a Saurian tear over my lapse from grace: 'It is melancholy to find a man of strong common sense indulging in such nonsense as this.' Finally, because I hold to 'nervous perception,' which may be called a sixth sense, after the fashion of one proposed by John Stuart Mill, he threatens me with hysteria, which again is not sound physiology, and (horrible to say!) with 'confirmed insanity.'

"The 'Cairo magician,' whose ink-mirror in the boy's hand startled the public through Lane's 'Modern Egyptians '(chap. xii. vol. ii. p. 99, edit. 1846), is probably familiar to all in this room. Not so the account of the same phenomenon, given by Dr. Rossi (Gazette Médicale de Paris, February, 1860). This physician, established at Cairo, has supplied ample details concerning the methods employed by the Egyptian sorcerers to produce sleep accompanied by insensibility.

"'In this land of tradition,' writes Dr. Rossi, 'in this country where what was done forty centuries ago is still done at the present day, there exists a class of persons who gain their living by the profession of Mandieb.' [The latter is a mistake for Darb el Mandal,[1] as the Arabs call the process.]

"'The effects produced by them, hitherto spoken of with contempt as charlatanism, are the same as those lately published by Dr. John Braid (1843). Still further, as you had foreseen by scientific induction, hypnotism in their hands is merely the first link of the chain which ends by the phenomena of "magnetic somnambulism," discovered by the Marquis de Puységur in 1784. They proceed in the following manner. They generally make use of a perfectly white platter of earthenware. This is the luminous object of Braidism. In the centre of this plate they draw, with pen and ink, two triangles crossing each other,[2] and fill up the space occupied by this geometrical figure with cabalistic words, the probable object being to concentrate the sight upon a limited point. Finally, to increase the brightness of its surface, they pour a little oil upon it.

"'Generally speaking, they choose a young subject[3] for their experiments, and make him fix his eyes on the centre of the double triangle. Four or five minutes after[4] the following effects are produced. The patient begins to see a black spot in the middle of the plate; some minutes later, this black spot grows larger, changes its shape, and transforms itself into different apparitions, which float (or rather pass in procession) before the subject. Having reached this point of hallucination, the patient often acquires a somnambulistic lucidity as extraordinary as that of those who are magnetized.

"'There are, however, some of these Shaykhs who, more simple in their preparations, without having recourse to geometrical figures or cabalistic words, cause the simple hypnotism and somnambulism of Dr. Braid, by making the subject fix his eyes upon one of those glass balls which contain oil, and serve for lamps.'

"Before these lines had been written, a Member of the Institute, Count Léon de Laborde, bought from an 'Arab magician' at Cairo, of the confraternity of Lane's Shaykh Abd-el-Kadir, the secret of apparitions in the hollow of the hand. Children taken at hazard see with as much ease as through a lucarne (skylight) men moving, appearing and disappearing (Revue des Deux Mondes, August, 1840).

"Had the learned public been a little better read, they would have known what Dr. Herklots wrote some three years before Lane's account caused so much excitement, 'fluttering the doves' that began at once to shriek 'Necromancy.'[5] In the 'Qanoon-i-Islam' (chap. xxxiii. pp. 376-378. London: Parbury and Allen, 1837), translated by Dr. G. A. Herklots, we find Section I. devoted to the 'viewing of Unjun (anjan), or the magic mirror.'[6] The author says, 'For the purpose of ascertaining where stolen goods are concealed, or the condition of the sick whenever possessed by the Devil, or where treasure has been buried, they apply Unjun to the palm of a child or an adult, and desire him to stare well at it.' This art is practised by Jogis,[7] Sányasis, and other Hindú devotees, who use it to ascertain the exact position of buried treasure. The 'Dafínah,' in India, emits fire-sparks at night, and rolls about like a ball of flame. Our author continues: 'The person to the palm of whose hand Unjun is applied, occasionally mutters a great deal of ridiculous nonsense. For example, that "at such and such a place there is a lota degchah, or kurrahee, full of rupees, etc., buried."'[8]

"Unjun, we are told, is of five kinds, viz.:--

"1. Urth (arth) Unjun, used to discover stolen goods. This is prepared by triturating various roots, for instance, that of the Abrus precatorius, or carat tree, in water. It is thus applied to the inside of a piece of earthen pot which must be new and pure, and placed inverted over a lamp lighted with (fresh) castor oil. The lamp-black is collected, mixed with oil, and applied to the hand of a footing child, who, we are told, 'particularly details everything regarding what is wanted.'

"2. Bhoot (bhut) Unjun is similar, but used chiefly for ascertaining what regards devils, evil spirits, and spirits, and the condition of the sick.

"3. D'hunna (dhanná) Unjun is composed of a lot of white cloth dipped in the blood of a cat, an owl, or a 'king-crow;' the eyes, liver, and gall-bladder are rolled up in it, and it is used as a wick in a lamp of castor oil. The lamp procured is also mixed with oil and applied to the hand; hidden treasure is thereby discovered.

"4. Alop Unjun, which, if applied to a person's eyes or forehead, makes him, wherever he be, invisible to others, while they remain visible to him.

"5. Saurwa Unjun is prepared with the suds of the Dolichos lablab. After staring for two or three ghurees (each of twenty-four minutes) the subject will say something to this effect: 'First I saw the Farrásh (sweeper) coming; he swept the ground and departed. Then came the Bihishti (water-carrier), who sprinkled water on the flower and went away. The Farrásh reappeared and spread the carpet. Next came a whole army of fierce demons, fairies, etc., to whom succeeded their commander, who was seated on a throne. This was, in fact, the king of the Jinns, into whose presence the culprit was borne and forced to make confession.

"The Hindi Moslem, from whose manuscript Dr. Herklots' translation was made, concludes the Unjun section as follows: 'I myself place no faith in such unjuns and hazeeruts (spirit-summonings). Although born in this very country (Hindostan), bred and educated among this race (Moslems); yet, through the blessing of God, and the friendship of the great, by the study of good books, and by the hearing of sane counsel, the credibility of the existence of such things has been entirely effaced from my breast.'

"This conclusion is evidently ad captandum. It must be remembered that the author wrote before 1832, when even European travellers who feared to be called 'credulous' were compelled to make an apology for recounting any phenomenon that savoured of the so-called 'preternatural.' Spiritualistic societies have, at least, taught them a little more boldness in dealing with facts, and courage in affronting the vulgus.

"I need hardly enlarge upon the antiquity and the almost universal use of the Magic Mirror: Cornelius Agrippa's crystal and Dr. Dee's bit of cannel coal are doubtless well known to you. But I would draw your attention to the curious fact that everywhere, and in all ages, the vision follows nearly the same ceremonial--the floor sweeping, the procession, the throne, the ruler, and the person summoned. This is the phenomenon which deserves investigation. Is it traditional--that is, taught by one 'magician' to another? Or is it spontaneous--the mesmerizer's thought reflected by the medium?

"The following description of treasure-raising by magic, given in the words of a Tunisian notary, shows the popular idea of the process in Western lands, as opposed to that mentioned by Herklots:--

"'On the evening appointed, the Moroccan and three others, besides myself, left the city as the gates were closed, and reached the appointed place when only two hours were wanting to midnight.

"'After a short rest our guide took us to a fragment of ruin on the southern slope of a hill, where he desired us to remain perfectly silent, and instructed us not to be intimidated by anything we might see or hear. He could not tell precisely what would happen; but "whatever may transpire," he said, "give no utterance to your feelings, whether of fear or of joy; for if you do, our labour will not only be in vain, but the treasure itself will have to continue in the bowels of the earth for another century."

"'He then lit a small lamp, and began his incantations. He stood in the centre, and we at the four cardinal points of the compass, only about four or five arms' length from him. Then he blew into a small flame the coals he had brought in an earthen cruse, and threw a variety of incense into it. No sooner did the smoke commence to ascend than he made a last imploring sign to us neither to move nor to utter a sound, and threw himself flat on the ground.

"'In a few seconds we felt the ground beneath us heave like the waves of the sea, so that we had the greatest difficulty to stand erect; tremendous noises, like the sound of thunder, at the same time assailed our ears. By the dim moon we could discern hosts of cavalry, in the plain below, galloping up to us, with their guns and lances aimed at us. They rushed upon us in the most furious and threatening attitudes; but no sound--not even that of hoofs--could we hear, and horses and riders seemed to vanish when only within a few yards of us. But this strange army thickened; the fierceness of their countenances and their threatening position increased, while at the same time we distinctly heard the clangour of chains and other extraordinary noises underground. Although trembling from fright, we stuck to our posts, and obeyed to the very letter the Moroccan's instructions. But now huge masses of rock above us began to stagger; and, as if hurled by some supernatural and invisible force, commenced rolling down with the utmost velocity in the direction of the spot where we stood, threatening us with instantaneous destruction. The fear of death overcame our love for treasure. We fled with the speed of lightning, and called for mercy at the top of our voice, never stopping nor looking back till we found ourselves in safety.

"'The Moroccan joined us soon afterwards, giving utterance to the greatest rage and fury as soon as he could make himself audible; and, had we not been four to one, he would, I believe, have committed murder that night. "The work," he said, "was on the eve of being completed, and the stones opened the gap for us to possess ourselves of vast treasures. Your cowardice has frustrated all. You might have been wealthy by this time; but beggars you were when you came here, and, through your own folly, beggars you return."'

"Dr. N. Davis, who relates what was told to him (pp. 399, 400, 'Carthage.' London: Bentley, 1861), notices other events of this kind. As an eye-witness he describes (p. 425) the charming of a dangerous serpent by one Haji Ibrahim, and owns that the fat little Darwaysh 'had a certain influence over venomous reptiles--mesmeric, or of some other kind.' Elsewhere (p. 404) he tells of a dancing drinking-cup, that skipped merrily into the middle of the room; the same kind of manifestation as that produced by Colonel Churchill's Druze mediums. Tales of this nature may be found scattered through the pages of a host of travellers: they offer, in fact, no embarras de richesses.

"The following is the modern European form of the magic mirror. I find in a well-known Masonic journal (the Rosicrucian, No. 4, April 1, 1877) an article--'Evenings with the Indwellers of the World of Spirits'--by my friend, Mr. Frederick Hockley:--

"'The pendant of a crystal chandelier destroyed in the palace of the Tuileries during the Revolution under Charles the Tenth (29th July, 1830), had this evening arrived, and been laid upon the table, and had not been charged. My seeress, Miss Emma Leigh, taking it up, said--

"'"It is thick; there is a vision in it.

"'"There's a pair of compasses and a square. Now the compasses are opening; now there is a point on each end of the square, which has turned sideways. There's a book come underneath--a thick book, bound in rough calf, with thick bands up the back; now there's a man's face, very thin, dark, straight hair, quite black, come inside the compasses, and a thin, very thin hand placed upon the book.

"'"Now the face has come from the inside of the compasses to a small space outside. The hand has opened the book; the book is very beautiful inside, it looks like a picture. There are two figures with wings on each side of a little oval; in the middle of the oval there appear words or figures beautifully coloured."

"'This remained some time, and as the hour for using the C. A. mirror was at hand, I tried to dismiss the vision, but it remained. I then placed the crystal in my cabinet.

"'At eight p.m. I invoked, as usual, the C. A. in his mirror, and the action lasted till a few minutes to ten, when the C. A. left.

"'Ten p.m.--Immediately Emma took up Mr. Dresser's crystal she observed: "It is still clouded. The book is there open, and the man's face and shoulders. He has held his hand up, and the book has opened just in the same place. It looks very richly illuminated in gold and colours; there is an arch at the top, and one angel is standing upon a crushed ball. Now there are clouds of different colours coming up under the other figure at the bottom--white, like smoke, then purple, blue, pink, and golden-coloured, which covers all up to their wings.

"'"In the oval the reading is not in English or like letters; it is large enough to be read. Two or three of the letters look like ducks with their heads under water."

"'Emma then copied the contents of the oval, and when finished she said: "Now there's a little slip of paper come underneath the title-page with words on it."'

"[For the rest of the article the reader must consult the Masonic journal.]

"In Dr. Herklots we find the word 'Jogi' properly applied to a Hindú devotee. Some of our modern Spiritualistic writers ('Isis Unveiled') speak of a 'Hindú Fakir,' which sounds much like a 'Protestant Franciscan,' or 'Trappist.' These Jogis are familiar, by sight at least, to every Anglo-Indian, who includes them all under the comprehensive term, 'holy beggars.' They maintain the possibility of acquiring, even during life, entire command of our elementary matter, and all worldly substances. The means are certain ascetic practices, such as (1) long-continued suppressing of breath, and inhaling and exhaling in particular ways; some of them are said to retain respiration for an incredible time; (2) sitting in different attitudes, of which the Ayin Akbari (ii. 445) records eighty-four different asans, the eyes being generally fixed so as to produce hypnotism, or Braidism, upon the nose-tip. These austerities affect the yoga (union) between the particle of vital spirit residing in the body and that which, being the source and essence of creation, pervades all nature--in fact, the Anima mundi, or soul of the world. Thus the Jogi, being liberated from his too coarse flesh, can make himself lighter than the lightest substances, and heavier than the heaviest. He can become as big or as small as he pleases. He can practise attrobacy, or levitation, and traverse all space. He can render himself invisible, and animate a dead body, by transferring his 'spirit'[9] into it. He can attain all objects, and become equally familiar with the Past, the Present, and the Future. Finally, he can be united with the sources of life, the archæal soul of the world, the 'Universal Soul' of Plato, and the Astral Light of the cabbalists. He now consequently escapes the pains and penalties of metempsychosis.

"The Jogis are mostly strong in the Zoo-electric force, which Mr. Crooke's instrument has proved to be material as any other form of electricity. Its application evidently dates from the earliest ages, and is by no means confined to the nobly born and civilized races of man. My cousin, Edward Burton, when serving, about 1840, in the now abolished Royal African Corps at St. Mary's, Bathurst, Gambia River, found a self-taught negro magnetizer. 'Tom Tom Jack' wisely refused to meddle with 'whites' (Europeans), but boasted that he could hypnotize any black man. My cousin offered five dollars, a large inducement, to his orderly, 'Charley Ross,' if he could resist the force; but the magnetizer was successful. I may also state that in my own case the practice began naturally, long before I had the benefit of books and teachers.

"Amongst those who have recorded 'Spiritualism' in Eastern lands, we must include Colonel Churchill.[10] He resided long upon the Lebanon, and he gained much mediumistic experience, especially from one of his friends, Bashír Talhúk. The following lines deserve quotation concerning the Shaykh, who, we are told, 'has devoted his time, singular as it may appear, to the cultivation of magic; and the stories he relates of his interviews with immaterial beings are novel and startling.'

"'At times he will place a jug between the hands of two persons sitting opposite to each other; when, after the recital of certain passages taken indiscriminately from the Korán and the Psalms of David,[11] it will move spontaneously round. A stick, at his bidding, will proceed unaided from one end of the room to the other. A New Testament suspended by a piece of string to a key will, in the same way, turn violently round of itself.[12] On two earthenware jars being placed in opposite corners of a room, one being empty, the other filled with water, the empty jar will, on the recital of certain passages, move across the room; the jar full of water will rise of itself on the approach of its companion and empty its contents into it, the latter returning to its place in the same manner that it came. An egg boiling in the saucepan will be seen to spring suddenly out of the water, and be carried to a considerable distance.[13] A double-locked door will unlock itself. There cannot be a doubt that an unseen influence of some kind is called into operation, but of what nature those may conjecture who like to speculate upon such matters.[14]

"'But it is in the more serious cases of disease or lunacy that the supernaturally derived powers are called into play. Previous to undertaking a cure, he shuts himself up in a darkened room, and devotes his time to prayer and fasting. Fifteen and sometimes thirty days are passed in this state of abstinence and self-denial. At last one of the genii (Jinn), described by him to be much of the same appearance as human beings, will suddenly appear before him and demand his bidding. He then states his position, and requires assistance in the case he is about to undertake. The genii replies at once that his request is granted, and encourages him to proceed.

"'The wife of Shaykh Ahmed Talhúk had been for more than two years afflicted with a swelling, which had been mistaken for pregnancy. Shaykh Bushír, after the usual preparatory discipline, passed his hand over her person, and in five minutes she arose perfectly cured. Shaykh Yúsuf Talhúk was brought before him a confirmed lunatic; in two days he returned to his home perfectly restored in health and reason.' [You see how shrewd was the apostle of Allah when he disclaimed the gift of miracle-mongering.]

"'That the Shaykh stoutly maintained his intercourse with spiritual agents to be real and effective is unquestionable; and, indeed, the belief in magic, and in the interposition of an order of unseen creatures in worldly affairs, at the bidding of those who chose to devote themselves earnestly to such intercourse, is universal throughout the entire population of every religion and sect.... Instances could be multiplied in which the most extraordinary and unaccountable results have been brought about, by the introduction of individuals who made this communion the subject of their study and contemplation. But as the ears of Europeans would only be shocked by assertions and statements which they would not fail of holding to be utterly fabulous and ridiculous, the subject is merely alluded to in these pages to indicate the existence of a very prominent and prevalent belief in the Lebanon.' [Again I place in italics those words which supply a Spiritualistic Society with such an admirable raison d'être.]

"The notes on Spiritualism which you have this evening favoured with your hearing are, to use a Persian phrase, only a handful which proves what the heap is. My friend Dr. Charnock especially recommends 'Le Spiritualisme Oriental,' by another friend, A. de Kremer (Journal Asiatique, 6 série, tom. 13, p. 105). Also he refers to index tom. 20, in connection with 'Le Sougisme' (Reading-room, British Museum, 2098D). In my 'History of Sindh' (London: Allen, 1851) I have given a chapter (No. viii.) and its notes to the same subject, Sufi-ism. And, lastly, in 'Vikram and the Vampire' (London: Longmans, 1870), I have related, under a facetious form of narrative, many of the so-called supernaturalisms and preternaturalisms familiar to the Hindús. These studies will show the terrible 'training,' the ascetic tortures, whereby men either lose their senses, or attain the highest powers of magic (proper), that is, of commanding nature by mastering the force, whatever it be, here called Zoo-electric, which conquers and controls every modification of matter.

"Nothing remains but to thank you for the patience with which you have listened to a long ramble, and to hope that the debate will be more interesting than the discourse. According to the Arabs, 'The lesson is one; the talk (that follows the lesson) is one thousand.'"

After Richard's speech was over, and the President had duly thanked him, he asked if any lady or gentleman would like to make a remark. I had sat below my husband against the platform, and had been taking notes of his speech all the time. I then got up and said, very modestly and shyly, that if being the wife of the lecturer was no obstacle, I should also like to be allowed to make a remark. Then I made my little speech.

"The Chairman--I have now to call upon Mrs. Burton.

"Mrs. Burton--It appears to me that Spiritualism, as practised in England, is quite a different matter to that practised in the East, as spoken of by Captain Burton. Easterns are organized for such manifestations, especially the Arabs. It causes them no surprise; they take it as a natural thing, as a matter of course; in short, it is no religion to them. Easterns of this organization exhale the force; it seems to be an atmosphere surrounding the individual, and I have frequently in common conversation had so strong a perception of it, as to withdraw to a distance on any pretext, allowing a current of air to pass from door or window between them and myself. There is no doubt that some strange force or power is at work, trying to thrust itself up in the world, and is well worthy of attention. When I say 'new,' I mean in our hemisphere. I believe it to be as old as time in Eastern countries. I think we are receiving it wrongly. When handled by science, and when it shall become stronger and clearer, it will rank very high. Hailed in our matter-of-fact England as a new religion by people who are not organized for it, by people who are wildly, earnestly, seeking for the truth, when they have it at home--some on their domestic hearth, and others next-door waiting for them--it can only act as a decoy to a crowd of sensation-seekers who yearn to see a ghost as they would go to a pantomime, and this can only weaken and degrade it, and distract attention from its possibly true object, science. Used vulgarly, as we have all sometimes seen it used, after misleading and crazing a small portion of sensitive persons, it must fall to the ground. I think Captain Burton has selected an admirable title for it--I allude to Zoo-electricity--until a better name discloses itself, but I regret to say that I cannot to-night join in the general applause which greets his lecture. It appears to me to suit all parties. He gives the Spiritualists a raison d'être, whilst he knows that he does not believe in spirits from the other world being subject to our uses, calls, and caprices. On the other hand, he has not exactly offended the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to which it is my glory to belong. The greatest anti-Spiritualist cannot accuse him of violating his own common sense, because he has expressed no belief, but simply recounted what is practised in the East. I am sure that I am the only person in this room, perhaps in London, possibly in the world, to whom the construction that the public may put upon the lecture of to-night is a thing of vital importance. I am, therefore, unwilling to leave Captain Burton's real sentiments on the subject quite so much to your imagination as I think he has done. He is certainly not a Spiritualist. Like other scientific men and materialists, he believes in a natural force which has no name, which he calls Zoo-electricity, but he does not mean the ghosts that real believers are said to see. I feel he has not done justice to himself, and this is why I have ventured to add this postscript to his address, in the fewest and plainest words that I can find. I need not tell you that he little thought to-night to find his wife amongst his opponents. I now thank you all exceedingly for having listened to me.

"The Chairman--When Captain Burton sat down, he made an observation to me to the effect that now he was going to 'catch it.' I told him he would have to wait some time, but I think he has 'caught it' already. (Laughter.) Now I think it is high time that somebody should say a word for Spiritualism as we understand it. I believe there is no very vital point of difference between us after all. We understand each other thoroughly. If the Spiritualist would only say--and it is a question of terms--that the spirits are formed of some kind of invisible matter which is not composed of any of the elements known to the chemists, and which has various, very wonderful properties and qualities, I think a great many of the difficulties and differences between ourselves and Captain Burton and other honest materialists might be got over."

[Sidenote: Some Very Amusing and Instructive Speeches.]

Then followed all sorts of fun. There were many speeches and interesting questions, but I annex the most amusing.

"Mrs. Hallock--As no one has touched upon one or two points, I wish to do so, though I shall not do it very well, I am afraid. I have been extremely interested in the paper, but do not at all agree with my friend Dr. Wyld, that because there are so many volumes containing accounts of these phenomena, we therefore do not need to hear about them from a person who has read, perhaps, more than we have. It is much more agreeable to listen to a person who has read and digested these things than to read them for ourselves; at least, it is in my case. I am very much afraid that this form of 'Spiritualism without spirits' is on the increase. I hope no one present will catch Captain Burton's disease, for I think it is almost a disease. I think that many of us are getting afraid that we shall believe in spirits. We think it is so much more fashionable to say there is a sixth or seventh sense. I do not accuse Captain Burton of not being courageous. Of course, that would be a very stupid thing for me to say, but everybody has a wee bit of cowardice--(laughter)--and perhaps Captain Burton was afraid to say it, and has had to let Mrs. Burton say it for him.[15] (Laughter.) I know it is getting very late, and I must not say much; but my quarrel is much more with Mrs. Burton than with her husband, because she complains of people who think it is a new religion. It is true there are such people, and I wish there were a great many more. I think it is not only a new religion, but a renewal of old things which were laid aside, perhaps, with too little consideration. I say it is as a religion that Spiritualism is going to stand. If it is not a religion, it will be remitted to the position that it held in the East; and if anybody here has any respect for the state of things in the East, that is more than I have. (Laughter.) I care nothing for all those phenomena. I consider that they are trash, although Mr. Massey, who is very much more learned than I am, thinks them worthy of consideration. I think we have heard quite as much about them from Captain Burton to-night as they are worth. (Laughter.) But it is this religion that I want to say one more word about. It is not only a religion, but it is a science, and it is because it is a religious science and a scientific religion that we are going to make it do what it has begun to do--that is, to leaven the whole world. The future of Spiritualism will be greater than anything else in the past history of mankind. We are told that history repeats itself. I think it has repeated itself quite enough in some respects; and now we are going to have a new future for the world, if Spiritualists are true to the great mission that is presented to them from the spirit-world--which is full of spirits, in my estimation.

"The Chairman--It is getting so late that I shall not take up much of your time. Electricity is a science with a very broad back, and anything that has been difficult to understand has often been ascribed to electrical agency. Therefore I am not at all surprised that Captain Burton has given a new name to what was formerly called the psychic force. I have never been able to find any evidence whatever that there is any electricity whatever produced by the human body. If there is, the quantity is so insignificant in comparison with the great chemical changes continually taking place, that we must presume that in psychic phenomena there is an additional agency at play. In regard to the raison d'être of Spiritualistic societies, I really think we must claim some other reasons for our existence than that which has been adduced. We claim, and Captain Burton supports our claim to a very great extent, I think, that there are very great new truths before us which are by no means perfectly understood, and that every facility that can be given for their study is a direct benefit, and one of the most important benefits that could be conferred upon humanity. Before asking Captain Burton to reply to what we have said in relation to his paper, I have only to say that I think if he and Mrs. Burton would discuss the matter thoroughly together, and arrive at a mean between their present conclusions, it would be very much the same conclusion as that which is so popular here. I gather from what Mrs. Burton said that she is a Spiritualist par excellence, only she believes in old Spiritualism, and does not exactly believe in the new. I feel that her Spiritualism would be carried a great deal further even than ours; and if she would neutralize her notions by those of her husband, and if on the other hand her husband would sink a little of his materialism in her spirituality, they would then strike out a very valuable average. (Laughter.) I have now to ask Captain Burton to reply. (Applause.)

[Sidenote: Interesting Discussions.]

"Captain Burton--If you will allow me, I will take the objectors in the order of their coming. Mrs. Burton has informed you that in this last paper I have been 'trimming.' I think you will own that it is the first time I have ever trimmed, and I can certainly promise you never to trim again. A man's wife knows, perhaps, too much about him. I think it scarcely fair to have his character drawn by his wife. I do not think gentlemen would go to their wives, or that wives would go to their husbands, in order to know exactly what they are. (Laughter.) The chairman first remarked that there is very little difference between my notions and those of the generality of Spiritualists; but he also alluded to an 'invisible matter, a substance not known to chemists.' Now, how is the existence of this substance proven? By spectrum analysis, or by the human mind, or out of the depth of your self-consciousness?

"The Chairman--By the sight.

"Captain Burton--Then it is not invisible?

"The Chairman--It is always visible to certain persons.

"Captain Burton--Therefore it is not invisible. But I object to your phrase 'invisible matter, a substance not known to chemists.' Mr. Wallace has been extremely kind in setting the ball going, and he also found for the first time how very much I do believe. I believe that the great difference is that the Spiritualist proper--the complete Spiritualist--believes that he is conversing with the spirits of departed beings. That is one of those canons laid down by Mr. Crookes.

"Mr. Crookes--I believe that is one of them.

"Captain Burton--You called that Spiritualism proper; whereas the belief that it is the work of the Devil you called the voice of the Church, did you not? (Laughter.) Mr. Wallace was kind enough to suggest that I should give you some personal experiences, and I believe the same thing was also mentioned by other gentlemen; but the fact is, at this hour it would be almost impossible. Moreover, at the end of this paper I referred you to a number of things I have written, in which there are my own personal experiences. For instance, alluding to the practice of Sufi-ism, in my 'History of Sindh,' I gave an account of a very long training I went through. But I shall be happy to prepare, as one of the speakers suggested, another paper if you choose to hear it. (Applause.) Mr. Crookes, in his extremely kind notice of my lecture, alluded to 'psychic force,' for which I have chosen to use another word. Psychic force is, I believe, getting out of fashion, and, if I am not somewhat mistaken, my learned friend Serjeant Cox proposed to abolish the use of the term altogether, and to adopt another expression--pneuma. With respect to Dr. Wyld, he has come to the conclusion, chiefly, I am told, by the experiments with Dr. Slade, that it is possible for a man not knowing Greek to write Greek. He also mentions five other languages similarly written, without telling us, however, whether any one of those languages was absolutely unknown to every person present.

"Dr. Wyld--Yes, in my own case: not in all cases.

"Captain Burton--That is the most important point of all, because believing in this Zoo-electricity and the force of will, and believing also in thought-reading, it is to me perfectly evident that if a medium is able to read thoughts, it is simply the action of himself and of those around him. The grand point in question is to know whether those languages were entirely unknown to any one present, and also if the latter had never learned those languages, because if any of them had ever learned the language the knowledge might return. I am sorry Dr. Wyld alluded to a book called the 'Isis Unveiled,' because that book is the production of a person who evidently knows nothing of the subject. (Messrs. Blake and Massey: 'No! No!') It is a collection of stones, put together without the slightest discrimination between Mussulman and Hindú, and, in fact, it is one of those repositories which may be useful to take up occasionally, but which is not to be quoted as an authority. Mr. Massey very correctly interpreted me, and I hope with him that the truth will prevail in this room and everywhere else. Dr. Blake regretted that he could not agree with me. Now, my friend of many years' standing says that I go too far, while Dr. Wyld says I do not go far enough. Dr. Blake quoted some great German names on the subject of idealism versus sensationalism, and very great English names too. In my remarks I was merely speaking of the matter individually. I warned you, I did not pretend to any form of truth except what is truth to myself--that it might be true individually, and at the same time not true either collectively or relatively. My old friend Mr. Spencer has told us a long story about a table, and he is right in what he says about the danger of adhering to Spiritualism. It was only the other day that I was treated with some disdain by a lady who heard that I was going to lecture upon Spiritualism. She thought it horrible that I should enter a room where Spiritualists were. (Laughter.) I understand perfectly that if there be such a thing as electric force or Zoo-electricity, it might cause a table to rise without difficulty. We know nothing whatever of the power. Mrs. Hallock has been kind enough, with that peculiar frankness which characterizes the sex, to lecture me upon my 'wee bit of cowardice.' She also seems to have fearful ideas of 'Spiritualists without the spirits,' and she also finds that this abominable heresy is on the increase. It must be painful to her, as she evidently looks forward to converting the whole world--not in the East, because she disdains the East, and I presume that the West will appreciate her perhaps more than the East. Mr. Harrison has objected that Zoo-electric force does not exist; that, in fact, the human body does not contain any electricity. He qualified the assertion, however, by saying that there might be a little, but not enough to have much effect. That is a matter of dispute, and a number of French and American magnetists and mesmerists still assert that it does. Every one here present understands what 'mesmerism' and 'magnetism' mean. As a rule, men use the words without attaching any particular theory to them. I do not think we need to be afraid of going too far upon those points. I did not venture to include so well-known a scientist as Mr. Crookes among the red or black terrors. The chairman very properly remarked, 'electricity has a very broad back,' and wants it. We all know how electricity has been brought to explain every mysterious thing. He objects that I have no stronger raison d'être for a Spiritualistic society than that of giving greater boldness to men in expressing their belief, whether true or false, especially when their beliefs are unpopular. I consider such a raison d'être as this amply sufficient. The chairman tells us that the true raison d'être are the 'new truths' that he finds in it. Without quoting the old saying about what is true not being new, and what is new not being true, I very much doubt whether the 'new truths' are so valuable as the new fact of encouraging men to tell the truth about all things. He also advises me to discuss the matter with Mrs. Burton, and to settle our little domestic quarrel at home; in fact, he wants to make me a kind of primal Adam--'male and female created He him.' Ladies and gentlemen, I am exceedingly obliged to you for the kindness with which you have received me.

"The Chairman--I think it is hardly necessary to ask for a show of hands. Captain Burton hits hard, but open-handed, and we should like to have some more hits from him. I am sure we should like to reply to what he says, and in endeavouring to meet him on his own ground, we shall assuredly strengthen ourselves. Pro forma I will ask for a show of hands, according him a cordial vote of thanks.

"The proposal was unanimously responded to."

There never was such a meeting as that. The room was crowded, and even the stairs and the street. We all enjoyed it enormously, and nobody more than Richard, who often referred to it after.

[Sidenote: Interesting Letters.]

Then somebody wrote as follows:--

"That great and intelligent traveller, Captain Burton, a man who will not flinch from telling the truth because it is unpopular, wrote to the Times a letter which disturbed the equanimity of that susceptible organ greatly some time back. In his letter Captain Burton said: 'An experience of twenty years has convinced me that perception is possible without the ordinary channels of sensation.' In a leader of the Times of the date November 14th, 1876, Captain Burton was answered, and that Journal seemed to imagine it had flung its last shaft of scorn, when, in reply to the above assertion of Captain Burton, it cynically, but in all-unconscious sapience, remarked: 'Captain Burton deserves a reward of merit for discovering for us the sixth sense of perception, which is neither seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, nor tasting, but something superior to all five.' That is just what Captain Burton does deserve, but I am sure the Times will be the last to give it to him. And, really, the Times in its scornful exaltment also a second time spoke above its knowledge; for this is just what the sixth sense is--it is superior to all the five senses, because it is less gross; it is psychical and they are only corporeal; but both categories, I believe, are equally perceived and real. 'Tell us,' said the Times, apostrophizing Captain Burton, 'how investigators could, for themselves, "perceive" this mysterious entity without recourse to the ordinary channels of sensation.' I fear that even Captain Burton would have been forced to answer thus: You must first get the power of a perception before you can make use of it; and if you do not possess it, or understand about it, you must, in order to obtain a conception of it, be treated as you would treat blind men when you try to explain to them the beautiful mystery, to them, of ocular demonstration. And you must take us on trust, just as you expect men to take you on trust when you explain to them honestly and to the best of your ability that which you see. And what would you think of the blind man who should answer you, as you, in that article, answered Captain Burton, and said, as you did to him, 'This, of course, is mere fancy, and if indulged in, develops itself into hysteria, and finally, as Dr. Forbes Winslow can tell you, into confirmed insanity'? Why, you would think the blind man very ungrateful and very impertinent. But I will, in pity, spare you that last impeachment, and will only call you ignorant, because this perception spoken of by Captain Burton is not a perception that can be said to be indulged in; it is like the wind, it cometh when and where it listeth; and, moreover, can no more appropriately be said to be a thing indulged in than our natural sight; both have to put the term indulgence aside and to see that which they come across. Both eyesight and physical perception are a gift of God, only one is more common than the other."

* * * * *

"Lowther Lodge, Barnes, S.W., December 3, 1878.

"DEAR CAPTAIN BURTON,

"Your interesting lecture on Spiritualism explains what no one has yet been able to explain, the verse in the 'Persæ' of Æschylus, on the conjuring up of the ghost of Darius, v. 683; (Dind.)--

στένει, κέκοπται, καὶ χαράσσεται πέδον.

The effects are exactly what your Tunisian describes, and the inference is that this Eastern magic is a very old and real power. One is utterly perplexed, and can only fall back on what seems the doubtfulness of almost all evidence.

"Believe me, very faithfully yours,

"F. A. PALEY."

* * * * *

"SPIRIT GUARDIANSHIP.

"A Spiritualist was sent to me yesterday, bearing the date 19th of December, 1879, containing an article signed 'Scrutator.' It contained a description of two incidents in my Syrian life, in which I was moved by some power to do things against my will, which had a useful object in the end. 'Scrutator,' however, says that my husband's farewell note to me reached me at our house, a mile out of Damascus. If that had been so, there would have been nothing extraordinary, but quite natural that I should have joined my husband at Beyrout, as there was only a quarter of an hour's ride between the Consulate and the house. But I was thirty miles away, at the top of a mountain in the Anti-Lebanon, five thousand feet above sea-level, and quite out of reach of news or communication, save the three lines I received by a mounted messenger; and my difficulty was to descend the mountain in the dark, cross the country at dawn, to the probable spot where I could catch the diligence on the road. The power that moved me was therefore so much the stronger, and I think it very well accounted for by 'Scrutator.' However, as I am a Catholic, Catholicism is the highest order of Spiritualism; what to 'Scrutator' is a force of spirit, is to me simply my angel guardian, who is to me an actual presence, to whom I constantly refer during the day, and who directs everything I ask him to. When I sit with other Spiritualists they say they can see him. I can't; I only feel the power. However, I am quite sure of one thing, that nothing happens by luck or chance; but that we are moved by our good and bad angels, and that those who are in the habit of meditating or reflecting a good deal arrive at a proficiency in knowing and understanding their calls.

"ISABEL BURTON.

"Trieste, December 26th, 1879."

* * * * *

"An answer--not that you long for, But diviner--will come one day: Your eyes are too blind to see it, But strive, and wait, and pray." ----E. M. HEWITT.

[1] "'Mandal' is, properly speaking, a Persian word, and means the magic circle in which the necromantist sits when summoning the demons and spirits of the dead."

[2] "The well-known cabalistic figure known to Moslems as Khátim-Sulaymán---Solomon's Seal."

[3] "A negro, a boy, or a woman with child, say the Arabs."

[4] "This is not time enough; in India half an hour would be the minimum."

[5] "It reminded them of the Island of Glubdubdrib, 'where the Governor, by his skill in necromancy, had the power of calling whom he pleased from the dead' (Gulliver, chap. vii.)."

[6] "Lamp-black prepared in a peculiar way."

[7] "Of these men more hereafter."

[8] "Various kinds of brass pots and pipkins."

[9] "Read 'Zoo-electric force.'"

[10] "Churchill's 'Mount Lebanon' (London, 1853), vol. i. pp. 146-167."

[11] "This process, like the words of the vulgar 'spell,' was probably used to concentrate the will."

[12] "The Korán-gardán, or Korán-turning of the Persians. Usually the key is made fast to the book, and its handle rests upon the finger-tips of the patients, whose nervous agitation and muscular action, unknown to them, cause the movement. At Goa the Portuguese thus discover thieves, etc. The gypsies of Spain also practise the rite, the accuser and the accused singing the Song of Solomon."

[13] "A favourite gypsy trick in Northern Africa."

[14] "The italics are not the author's."

[15] Mrs. Hallock amused him very much.

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

VI. ON LEAVE IN LONDON

[Sidenote: A Remarkable Visit.]

Then Richard gave a lecture at the Architects', and we made up a party to go. We had a very curious visit one night from a gentleman who had occupied a position in one of the Government offices. He was very well known, and had had some malady of the brain, so I shall not name him for fear that I should hurt any of his relatives or friends. We had not met before, but he said he came on business, and appeared to be a Spiritualist of high degree. We were just going down to an eight o'clock dinner--rather a large family party--and as the butler showed him into the dining-room, I could not do otherwise than say, "We are just going to sit down to dinner; will you take some?" He accepted very readily. When my father, who was a very old man, came down, I introduced him, and said, "Father, Mr. So-and-so has kindly consented to stay and dine with us." "Oh, I am very happy," said my father. The family all flocked down and fell into their seats, and dinner went on very well till about the second course, and then, looking round the table and seeing nearly all of us had aquiline noses, he said, "What a treat it is to me to be with Rosicrucians once more!" My father nudged Richard, and whispered, "What does he mean?" "I don't know," said Richard, with an amused smile.

Presently Mr. ---- pointed at me, and said, "You have been a Queen countless times, and an Empress seven times, and you will be again; and also your sister" (pointing to Blanche Pigott, who was exactly like me, and is now dead) "has been very often a Queen, and will be an Empress." There was a little pause after this. Father began to look rather frightened. Mr. ---- went on to say that he hated people with snub noses, and described how he fell amongst a party of that common ilk, and how they had treated him--how they had put him under a pump till he was nearly dead, and had tied him down, and several other acts with which we are all familiar from reading. After dinner he asked Richard for a map of Midian, and taking it, he marked all the spots where the best gold existed, and the different spots which contained anything valuable, and what they were, and said that was what he came for (I have it now).

He then said he would like to brew a bowl of Rosicrucian punch, and requested us to order a bottle of brandy, two bottles of rum, and several other things to be brought to him, and he did brew the punch; and when he gave us each some, we all put it down and said, "I cannot drink that, for I feel it to the very tips of my fingers." He said, "That is just what you ought to feel; it is how the Rosicrucians always felt." He prescribed for all of us, and I remember one gentleman, who had rather a red nose, was directed to rub the tip of it with cantharides. We could not ask him to go, but at eleven o'clock my father retired, and we stayed up with him till two o'clock; but in spite of having drunk all the punch himself, as we found it impossible, he was perfectly sober, agreeable, and gentlemanly, and took his leave and went away.

My father was very angry with me for asking a lunatic to dinner, which of course I had done quite unconsciously, but it was worse for me when, next morning, he arrived for half-past one lunch, quite naturally "delighted to find again his new Rosicrucian family." He told us that he lived at Primrose Hill, that the last night he had been borne there on air in a few minutes, and that his feet had never touched the ground the whole way. But what did touch us immensely was, that he said that "last night he had not known where to look for a dinner, and the spirits had directed him to our house, and had urged him to come back on the present occasion." We were all very nice and kind to him; but it had such effect on my father's nerves, he being very aged, that we had to tell the butler to say, when he called again, that Richard and I had gone into the country--as it was us he had come ostensibly to see. I have still about twenty very clever letters that he wrote us.

[Sidenote: On Leave in London.]

All this time--the end of 1878, early 1879--the minerals were being assayed. Richard had not packed his own minerals; there were cases for France, and cases for England. Frenchmen had the selection of them, and Richard's cases did not give such good results as were expected. We could not understand it, but he knew that the mineral was in the ground, and he determined on the following Expedition to choose and send his own specimens, and prove a very different tale. In early January Richard got an attack of pleurodynia, from which he very speedily recovered. Dr. George Bird attended him. Amongst other friends, we saw a good deal of Hepworth Dixon. We also went down to Hatfield; Lady Salisbury had a house party. Richard gave lectures at 9, Conduit Street. On the 22nd of January he gave his lecture to the Anthropological.

On Sundays we used to visit the studios; oftenest to Mr. Val Prinsep's and Sir Frederick Leighton's.

We spent a delightful day with Richard's old friend, Mr. John Larking, "The Firs," Lee, Kent, and his family, who lived in half-Oriental style, so that it seemed like a day back at Damascus. We also saw a great deal of Dr. Percy Badger, who was always delighted (and his wife too) to get hold of Richard. Dr. Badger turned an old kitchen into a comfortable studio, and there we used to find him, working hard at his Dictionary. Mr. Henry Irving gave us a delightful supper at 15A, Grafton Street. We went to Bethnal Green to look at the Free Library, and saw the Museum. We frequently had many pleasant dinners and evenings at my father's, where people would come accidentally as a pleasant surprise. One night came Lord Houghton, Lord Arundell, Mr. F. F. Arbuthnot, and Uncle Gerard; it is noted because it was a very amusing evening.

On the 21st of February my book, "A.E.I.," came out. My publisher, Mr. Mullan, was so pleased with it that he gave a large party in its honour. We were seventeen invited. Mr. Mullan, being an Irishman, ordered that everything on the table should be an Irish dish. A pyramid of my books was in the middle of the table, one to be given to each guest, which was a very pretty thought. The notables were my husband, Lord Houghton, Mr. Irving, and Arthur Sketchley. There were a great many short, friendly speeches made; the gaieties began at eleven and terminated at five. We had a very pleasant dinner at General and Mrs. Paget's, and a visit from Mr. Joyner, C.E., our old friend from Poonah, and from the Montalbas, whom we had known in Venice. We came in also for three of Lady Salisbury's Foreign Office parties, one at Lady Derby's, and several parties at Lady Margaret Beaumont's.

On the 23rd of March, 1879, we drove down to Mortlake, where I now live, to see the graves of my mother, and the uncle and brother who had died in 1877. We called on Canon Wenham, who afterwards buried Richard in 1891, and we went to look over the old house where my two aunts had lived so many years and died.

On the 27th I went to the Drawing-room. We resumed writing and reading part of Richard's memoirs. He also commenced writing letters to the papers as Mirza Ali of London to his brother, Mirza Hasan of Shiraz, describing what he saw in England; but, to his disappointment, they did not take. He also wrote and published "A Visit to Lissa and Pelagosa;" "Sosivizha, the Bandit of Dalmatia," translated from the Slav; two papers on Midian, "Stones and Bones from Egypt and Midian;" "Flints from Egypt;" Reports on two Expeditions to Midian; "The Itineraries of the Second Khedivial Expedition;" "Report upon the Minerals of Midian."

One evening we had a masquerade dinner-party; everybody was to come in some fancy dress, which was to be a surprise, and it was a great amusement. Richard appeared as an Australian miner, I as Carmen; there were huntsmen and Highlanders, and all sorts of funny people. There seemed to be great astonishment in the street as the cabs in April kept discharging their visitors at half-past seven.

We went to see Lord Archibald Douglas's (the English Don Bosco) Home for Boys in Harrow Road.

In our early married life Richard had amongst his papers the following, which was written between whiles in Somali-land and the Crimea, but he never put them forward, nor should I do so, though perhaps it will serve as a good map to his thoughts. But this year, in 1879, he gave a copy of the Agnostic side only to a mutual woman-friend who is of that persuasion, and she now says, that to be perfectly fair, I ought to bring it out--and I am nothing if not fair--nor do I see any reason or object in being otherwise. She kindly lent me her copy, but after much search in his private papers I have found his original, which I used to chaff him unmercifully about, as his "Double Ten Commandments."

"EGO." mapped out

The Frontiers

closed down upon open to the higher air

1. The so-called bad 1. The so-called good

2. The material part of me 2. The spiritualistic part of me

3. Body 3. Soul

4. Nature 4. Grace

5. Reason 5. Heart

6. The outside of me 6. Inside of me

7. Mind and Matter 7. Faith

8. The World I live on 8. Home

I. I.

Intellectual Truth is one; Moral A Supreme Being. or sentimental Truth varies with the individual.

II. II.

Revealed religions consist of three The Trinity, Father, Son, parts, all more or less untrue. (1) A and Holy Ghost. Cosmogony more or less absurd. (2) An Historical sketch, more or less falsified. (3) A System of morality more or less pure.

III. III.

The Higher Law of Humanity bids Jesus Christ, born of the us cast off the slough of old creeds, Virgin Mary. especially the obsolete and the debasing doctrine of degradation; the Fall of Man, Original Sin, Redemption, Salvation, and so forth.

IV. IV.

Reason, while suggesting the idea Salvation and Hope. of a First Cause, a God, forbids us, in the present stage of humanity, to inquire further into the subject.

V. V.

The description of the Devil and Good and bad deeds and his Angels, of Hell, Heaven, and expiation. Purgatory given by "Revealed Religions" are equally dishonouring to the Creator, and debasing to the Creature, if at least the latter be the work of the former.

VI. VI.

Death, physically considered, is not The Catholic Church and annihilation, but change. Sacraments.

VII. VII.

Man's individuality, his Ego, survives Resurrection of body and the death of the body. Soul.

VIII. VIII.

To most races of men, the idea of Communion with the Saints annihilation is painful, whilst that of and the Dead. eternal parting is too heavy to be borne.

IX. IX.

A next world, a continuation of Passing over al-Sirat, the this world, is against our Reason, but bridge as fine as a hair, to it is supported by sentiment, and by El Mathar, or Purgatory--to the later traditions of both the Aryan Heaven. and the Semitic races.

X. X.

The only idea of continuation acceptable Hell--Eternity.[1] to man, is that the future world is a copy of this world, whilst the law of Progress suggests that it is somewhat less material and not subject to death or change.

[Sidenote: We leave London--I get a Bad Fall.]

Richard now, intending to make a little tour, and to meet me at Trieste in two or three weeks, went to Hamburg, to Berlin, and to Leipzig to see Tauchnitz, and to Dresden. I packed up and started on my journey Triestewards. As I was about to get into the cab at my father's door a beggar woman asked me for charity, and I gave her a shilling, and she said, "God bless you, and may you reach your home without an accident!" These words made an impression on me afterwards. I slept in Boulogne that night, and went on to Paris the following day. The day after, the 30th of April, I ordered a voiture de place, and was going out to do a variety of visits and commissions. They had been waxing the stairs till they were as slippery as ice. I had heels to my boots, and I took one long slide from the top of the stairs to the bottom, with my leg doubled under me, striking my head and my back on every stair. When I arrived at the bottom I was unconscious, picked up, and taken back to bed. When I came to I said, "I have no time to lose. Don't send the carriage away; I must get my work done and go on;" but, when I attempted to get out of bed, I fell on the floor and fainted again. A doctor was fetched, I was undressed, my boot and stocking had to be cut away; the whole of my leg was as black as ink, and so swollen that at first the doctor thought it was broken. However, it proved to be only a bad sprain and a twisted ankle.

Instead of stopping there six weeks, as the doctor said I must, I had myself bound up and conveyed to the Gare de Lyons on the fourth day, where, with a wagon-lit, I arrived at Turin in twenty-four hours. There I had to be conveyed to the hotel, being too bad to go on; but next day I insisted on being packed up again, and having another coupé-lit in the train to Mestre. I suffered immensely from the heat, for the first time since leaving England. At Mestre I had to wait four hours in the wretched station, sitting on a chair with my leg hanging down, which gave me intense pain, and then to embark in the Post-Zug, a slow train, where there were no coupé-lits to be had, arriving at half-past eight in the morning, where I found Richard waiting to receive me on the platform, and I was carried home and put into my own bed. In spite of pain I was as charmed as ever with the run down from Nabresina to dear old Trieste.

I cannot say how thankful I was to be safe and sound in my own home at Trieste with Richard, and how sweet were the welcomes, and the flowers, and the friends' visits. I was a very long time before I could leave my bed. It was found that I had injured my back and my ankle very badly, and I went through a long course of shampooing and soap baths, but I never got permanently quite well. Strong health and nerves I had hitherto looked upon as a sort of right of nature, and supposed everybody had them, and had never felt grateful for them as a blessing; but I began to learn what suffering was from this date. Richard took me up to Opçina for a great part of the summer, and used to invite large parties of friends up to dinner. We used to dine out in the lit-up gardens in the evening, overlooking the sea, which was very pleasant; and often itinerant Hungarian gypsy bands would come in and play. This summer we had the usual annual fête for the cause of humanity, and speeches and giving of prizes.

"GOLD IN MIDIAN.

"To the Editor of the Globe.

"Sir,--The Globe of the 25th of May has printed from the Sheffield Telegraph a very serious misstatement on the subject of the twenty-five tons of mineral brought by Captain Burton from Midian, and I beg you to allow me a little space to refute it. The moment a lion leaves a place the jackals generally set up a bark; we left Egypt only on the 12th of May. There is a Spanish proverb which says, 'No one ever pelts a tree unless there is fruit upon it;' if this discovery were worth so little as its enemies assert, no one would take the trouble to attack it. We are only too glad to court discussion, but we want truth. Captain Burton will have to suffer for Midian what M. de Lesseps had to go through for his canal. There are plenty of drowning men in Cairo, who are only too happy to catch at any straw. Let me note the two principal blunders in the Sheffield Telegraph. Firstly, Captain Burton reported to his Highness the Khedive, and to the public, only what the Egyptian Government's own geologist and engineer, appointed by them to the Expedition, reported (of course, officially) to Captain Burton, and to the Government in whose employ he (M. George Marie) is. Secondly, close examinations and analysis show none of the evil results mentioned in the Sheffield Telegraph. On arriving in Trieste, Captain Burton was careful to have his own little private collection analyzed by Dr. L. Karl Moser, an able professor of geology, who declares that the turquoises are not malachites, but pure crystals of turquoise. Moreover, he has found metals in three several rocks where, till now, they were not known to exist--dendritic gold in chalcedony; silver lead in a peculiar copper-bearing quartz, and possibly in the red veins traversing the gypsum; and, lastly, worked coppers in obsidian slag. In fact, the collection has only gained, and will gain, by being scientifically examined. The Khedive has sent a quantity of each sort of mineral to London for analysis, and as soon as Captain Burton receives a telegram from his secretary, in whose charge it is, to say that it has arrived, he will, if permitted, hasten home to superintend the operation personally, and forward the official report to his Highness the Khedive. Meanwhile we only ask every one to suspend judgment till the results are known, instead of publishing and believing every gossiping bit of jealousy and intrigue that may issue from Cairo, thereby injuring the interest of future companies, of his Highness, and of Egypt, and lastly, but not least, casting a slight upon the noble and arduous work of my husband.

"I have the honour to be, sir, yours obediently,

"ISABEL BURTON.

"Her Britannic Majesty's Consulate, Trieste, May 30."

[Sidenote: The Austrian Scientific Congress.]

From Opçina we went to Sessana, a village about half an hour's drive in the interior, which is very good for the nerves, and from there back to Adelsberg, and thence to Laibach. There was a scientific Congress (like our British Association) at the Redouten Sala, and lectures on the Pfalbauten, tumuli, etc., a public dinner, a country excursion, and then a concert and supper, which exhausted me considerably, and these things went on for two or three days.

We visited the Pfalbauten, the excavated villages built upon piles in a peat country, and all the treasures excavated therefrom. Richard was received with great honour, surrounded by all the Austrian scientists. The Pfalbauten, or Pine villages, yielded excavations, which illustrated the whole age of Horn that preceded the age of Stone, and weapons made of Uchatius metal, which is wrongly called bronze-steel. It is compressed bronze and easily cuts metal. This settles the old dispute of how the Egyptians did such work with copper and bronze.

Richard then took me on to Graz, where we saw a good deal of Brugsch Bey. Then we went to Baden, near Vienna, where I had twenty-one days' bathing and drinking, which we varied with excursions to Vienna, sometimes to breakfast with Colonel Everard Primrose, to see people, and to hunt up swords in the Museum for Richard's "Sword" book. We went to Professor Benedict, nerve specialist, where Richard had his back electrified for lumbago. Mr. Egerton and Everard Primrose accompanied us to a place we were very fond of making an excursion to, Vöslau, and then back to Baden with us.

On the 31st of May I find in Richard's journal, "Poor Tommy Short dead, ninety years old;" he was his master at Oxford. After Richard's death I found one of the Rev. Thomas Short's cards kept amongst his treasures.

One day we had a delightful journey over the Semmering to Fröhnleiten. The Badhaus was on a terrace, with the running river under it in front, a plain and grand mountains all around. The night air was perfectly delightful, with a beautiful starlight. We had gone there to see the family of Mr. Brock, our dear old Vice-Consul. We then went to Römerbad. The Pension Sophien Schloss was beautifully situated, and we were well lodged. The baths there are like a gentle electric battery for nerves--the water turns a magnet a hundred and thirty-five degrees; the woods are lovely; the forestfull of squirrels come and play about you. We had delightful walks, and visits from several friends in the neighbourhood, Prince and Princess Wrede and others.

We had a most charming family of neighbours, who were some of our best friends in Trieste; they had a lovely property, an old castle called Weixelstein, near Steinbrück (Monsieur and Madame Gutmansthal de Benvenuti). He was a Trieste-Italian gentleman, and she was the daughter of a Russian, by an American wife, and is far away the most charming woman I know, and so clever. Their place is to be got at through a mountain gorge, and a river which you cross by ferry-boats. It is an old-fashioned-monastery-like-looking house in a gorge, with the river Save running through its park, and here we paid frequent visits. We had a pleasant excursion also to Mark Tüffer; a delightful moonlight drive back.

[Sidenote: A Ghost Story.]

After we had been there about a fortnight, the avant courier of the Crown Princess of Germany, now Empress Frederick, came to engage rooms. Seeing that her Imperial Highness wished to be incog., that I was the only Englishwoman there, and had been presented to her, that I had got the only rooms in the place that were very nice, that I had the only bath, we thought it would be good taste to vanish, which we did next morning, and we went to our friends at Weixelstein. They received so perfectly, making us at home, like part of the family, and they let us do exactly what we liked without any effort at entertaining. Here Madame Gutmansthal, who is a first-rate artist amongst many other talents, began to paint Richard's picture, which was a great success, and which is now on view at the Grosvenor Gallery, in the little room to the left, with a pretty bronze medallion by Henry Page. Meantime he translated the Weixelstein ghost story from Old German to English, as he was very much taken with it. He writes--

"VERITABLE AND SINGULAR ACCOUNT OF AN APPARITION, AND THE SAVING OF A SOUL, IN CASTLE WEIXELSTEIN, IN KRAIN.

"I send you one of the best ghost-stories, and one which your readers have certainly never seen. We were lately paying a visit to the Castle of Weixelstein, near Steinbrück, Krain (Carniola), the country-house of our hospitable friends Monsieur and Madame Gutmansthal de Benvenuti. My attention was drawn to two old and portly folios, entitled 'Die Ehre des Herzogthum's Krain'('The Honour of the Dutchy of Carniola'). An awful title-page of forty-six lines declares that it was written by Johann Weichard, Freiherr (Baron) Valvásor, or Walvásor, Lord of Wazemberg, and printed at Laibach in M.DC.LXXXIX.

"The author, a Fellow R. Soc. London, who was Governor of the Duchy and Captain of the Frontier, then an important post, is portrayed with long hair, à la Milton, shaven face, and laced cravat (Croatian) falling over his breastplate. The book is full of curious episodes, and above I give you the 'tune' it recommends for catching crabs. Amongst other things it gives a valuable disquisition on the bell (lib. xi.), which it dates from the days of Saint Jerome (A.D. 400). Volume I., which is historical, contains 836 pages (lib. i.-viii.); Volume II., 1007 (lib. ix.-xv.), besides the register (appendix, index, etc.). It is profusely illustrated by the author's hand with maps and plans, genealogies and coats of arms, scenery and castles, costumes and portraits; and, lastly, with representations of battles, sieges, hangings, roastings, and hurlings headlong from rocks. The tailpiece is a duello between a Christian man-at-arms and a 'turban'd Turk.' The plates are on metal, and remarkably good. A new edition of this notable old historic-topographical monograph is now being issued from Laibach (Labacus). 'Carniola antiqua et nova,' is happy in her 'Memoirs;' Valvásor has a rival in Johann Ludovicus Schönleben, whose folio appeared Labaci M.DC.LXXXI., Œmoniæ Labaci Conditæ, MM.DCCC.IV. Of the latter, however, only the Tomus Primus, ending about A.D. 1000, appeared: the Secundus was not printed, and the fate of the manuscript is unknown.

"Valvásor gives a view of Castle Weixelstein, 'Cherry-tree Rock,' which the Slavs call Novi Dvor (New Court). There is some change in the building since 1689. The square towers at the angles appear lower, from the body of the house having been raised. The hof, or hollow court to the south, has been surrounded by a second story; and the fine linden-tree in the centre is a stump, bearing a large flower-pot. The scene of the apparition is a low room with barred windows and single-arched ceiling, which is entered by the kitchen, the first door to the right of the main gate. The old families mentioned in the story have mostly disappeared. Enough of preliminary.

"The following is a literal translation of Valvásor's Old German:

"'Veritable and Singular Account of an Apparition, and the Saving of a Soul, in Castle Weixelstein, in Krain.

"'At the castle above-named, strange noises (rumor) were heard during the night for several years; but the origin of the same was a subject of (vain) research and speculation. After a time a new servant-wench (mensch), engaged in the house, whose name was Ankha (i.e. Anna) Wnikhlaukha, had the courage, on hearing these mysterious sounds, to address the ghost in the following manner:--

"'The 15th of January, A.D. 1684.--Firstly, at night a noise arose in the servant-wenches' room, as though some one were walking about clad in iron armour and clanking chains. The women being sorely frightened, some stable-hands were brought to sleep with them. They were struck upon the head, and one was like to die of terror.

"'The 16th January.--In the evening, as the lights still burnt, a rapping was heard at the room door, but when they went to see what caused it, nothing was found. Presently those inside put out the lamps, and lay down to rest. Thereupon began a loud clatter; the two servant-wenches, Marinkha (Marian) Samanoukha and Miza (Mitza, Mary) Sayeschankha, were seized by the head, but they could distinguish no one near them.'

"The whole account is strictly 'spiritualistic.' Ankha is the chosen medium, and nothing is done till she appears on the scene. The ghost will hardly answer the officious and garrulous steward; and has apparently scant respect for the reverend men who were called in. One of the latter somewhat justified the ghost's disdain by telling a decided 'fib.' The steps by which the apparition changes from hot to cold, from weariness to energy, from dark to white robes, and from loud noises to mild, are decidedly artistic.

"'On the 17th of January nothing happened.

"'On the 18th, the servant-wenches being in great fear, five others joined them. One, Hansche Juritschkno Suppan, put out the light when all lay down, locked the door, and endeavoured to sleep. Thereupon arose a dreadful noise. After it had ended, Ankha, by the advice of those present, thus bespake the ghost:

"'"All good spirits, praise the Lord."

"'(This is the recognized formula throughout Germany for addressing apparitions.)

"'The ghost answered, "I also; so help me God, and Our Blessed Lady, and the holy Saint Anthony of Padua!"

"'Anna resumed, "What wantest thou, O good spirit?"

"'The ghost replied, "I want thirty Masses." It added, "This castle was once mine," and it disappeared.

"'On the 19th of January the ghost was present, but nothing unusual occurred.

"'On the evening of the 20th, the servant-wenches being still affrighted, the steward (Schreiber), one Antoni Glanitschinigg, and the man Hansche, before mentioned, with six other persons, were in the chamber. When all lay down to rest, the steward locked the door and put out the lamp. The ghost at once came and violently dragged a chair backwards. Whereupon quoth Antoni: "I confess that I am a great sinner; nevertheless, I dare address thee, and ask thee, in God's name, what more dost thou want?"

"'To this question no answer was vouchsafed by the ghost, although the steward repeated it a second time and a third time. He then rose up and advanced towards the apparition, which was seen standing near the window, thinking to discover whether it was a true ghost, or some person playing a trick. It vanished, however, before he could lay hand upon it. The steward went out with one of the servant-wenches to fetch a light; and, whilst so doing, he heard the ghost speaking in the room he had left. When the lamp came nothing was found. Then all those present knelt down and prayed. After their devotions the light was extinguished, and the ghost reappeared, crying out, with weeping and wailing, "Ankha! Ankha! Ankha! help me." The wench asked, "How can I help thee, O good spirit?" Whereupon the ghost rejoined, "With thirty Masses, which must be said at the altar of St. Anthony, in the church of Jagnenz," which church is in the parish of Schäffenberg.'

"Jagnenz is a church in the valley of the Sapotka, a small stream which falls into the Save river, about half a mile west of Weixelstein. Schäffenberg is the hereditary castle of the well-known county of that name. Wrunikh is another little church, remarkably pretty, near Weixelstein. Apparently the ghost served to 'run' Jagnenz against all its rivals.

"'Hearing these words from the ghost, the steward again inquired, "O thou good spirit, would it not be better to get the Masses said sooner by dividing them, part at Jagnenz, the other at the altar of Saint Anthony in Wrunikh?" Whereto the ghost made an answer, "No! Ankha! Ankha! only at Jagnenz, and not at Wrunikh!" The steward continued, "As this ghost refuseth to answer me, do thou, Ankha, ask it what and why it suffers, etc." Then Ankha addressed it: "My good spirit! tell me wherefore dost thou suffer?" It replied, "For that I unrighteously used sixty gulden (florins); so I, a poor widow body, must endure this penalty." Ankha further said, "Who shall pay for these thirty Masses?" The ghost rejoined, "The noble master" (of the castle), and continued, "Ankha! Ankha! I am so weary, and dead-beat, and martyred, that I can hardly speak."

"'Then cried the steward, "My good spirit! when the thirty Masses shall have been said, come back and give us a sign that they have helped thee." The ghost rejoined, "Ankha, to thee I will give a sign upon thy head." Ankha replied, "God have mercy upon me, that must endure such fright and pain!" But the ghost thus comforted her: "Fear not, Ankha. The sign which I will show to thee shall not be visible upon thy head, nor shall it be painful." It added, "Ankha! Ankha! I pray thee, when thou enterest into any house, tell the inmates that one unjust kreutzer (farthing) eats up twenty just kreutzers." Then the ghost began to scratch the wench's cap, or coif; and she, in her terror, took to praying for help. The ghost comforted her, bade her feel no fear or anxiety, took leave (sic), and was seen no more that night.

"'Late on the 21st of January the ghost reappeared, and made a terrible noise with a chair in presence of the lord of the castle, Sigmund Wilhelm Freiherr, (Baron) von Zetschekher, and of two ecclesiastics, Georg André Schlebnikh and Lorenz Tsichitsch. Several others, men and women, were present, and nothing took place till the candles were put out. Whereupon the said Schlebnikh began to exorcise the apparition, beginning with the usual formula, "All good spirits, praise the Lord." The ghost replied, "I also." It would not, however, answer any questions put by the ghostly man, but began to speak with Ankha, saying, "Ankha, help me!" She rejoined, "My dear good spirit, all that lies in my power will I do for thee; only tell me, my spirit, if the two Masses already said have in any way lessened thy pain." The ghost answered, "Yea, verily" (freilich). Ankha continued, "How many more Masses must thou still have?" and the reply was, "Thirty, less two." Then Ankha resumed, "Oh, my good spirit, tell me thy family name." Quoth the ghost, "My name is Gallenbergerinn." The wench further asked for a sign of salvation when all the thirty Masses should have been said; the ghost promised to do so, and disappeared.

"'On the night of the 22nd of January, when the lights were put out, the ghost reappeared, passing through the shut and tied door. This was in presence of Wollf Engelbrecht, Baron Gallen, of the lord of the castle, and of three priests, namely, Georg Schiffrer, curate of Laagkh, Georg André Schlebnikh, and Lorenz. There were several others. This time the ghost did not make a frightful noise as before, the reason being that eight Masses had been said. So at least it appeared from its address, "Ankha, Ankha, I thank thee; I shall soon be released." The wench rejoined, "O my good spirit, dost thou feel any comfort after the eight Masses?" The apparition replied, "Yea, verily, my Ankha;" and, when asked how many were wanted, answered, "Twenty-two." As it had declared its family name, it was now prayed to disclose its Christian name, in order that the latter might be introduced into the Masses by the four reverends. It said, "My name is Mary Elizabeth Gallenbergerinn." Further it was asked whether, being a Gallenberg, the thirty Masses should be paid by the Lord of Gallenberg or by "Zetschkher" of Weixelstein. It ejaculated, "Zetschkher" (without giving the title); and added, "A thousand, thousand, and a thousand thanks to thee, dear Ankha." The latter said, "O my good spirit, tell me what wrong didst thou do with the sixty gulden, that we may make restoration to the rightful owner." The ghost replied, "Ankha, this must I tell thee in secret." The wench begged that the matter might be disclosed in public, so that men might believe it; but the ghost answered, "No, Ankha; in private." It then took leave and disappeared, promising to come back for three more evenings.

"'On the 23rd of January the lord of the castle, with three priests, prayed at the altar of Saint Anthony of Jagnenz, and five more Masses were said. They all lodged that night with Georg André, of Altenhoff, not far from the church. When the lamps were put out Ankha was placed sitting upon a chest, or box, between two ecclesiastics, Georg Schiffrer, of Laagkh, and André Navadnikh. Then after three raps, the ghost came in, and pulled the hair of one of these reverends. He stood up from the chest, whereupon it struck Ankha so violent a box on the ear (ohrfeige) that it sounded like a sharp clapping of hands, and could be heard over all the dwelling-place (Läben). Lights were brought, and showed the print of a left hand burnt in the coif on the right side of the wench's head; she was not hurt, but the cap remained heated for some time. Nothing else occurred that night.

"'On the evening of the 24th of January, after prayers by the priests, and the lamps being extinguished, the ghost rapped once and came in. As the wench again sat on the same chest between the priests, the curate of Laagkh felt his hair tugged, and he rose up. Ankha at the same time exclaimed, "Oh dear! oh dear! whose cold hand is that?" The priest, who was sitting near, said, "Don't be afraid, the hand is mine;" but this was not true. He wished to do away with her fright, and with the impression caused by the touch.

"'On the 25th of January, when all the required Masses had been said at the altar of Saint Anthony of Jagnenz, the Lord of Weixelstein and the priests engaged in the ceremony returned to pass the night at the castle, and to receive the thanksgiving of the Saved Soul. While they were supping the housemaid, carrying the children's food, was crossing the hall to the dining-room, when the ghost seized her arm. She started back, and saw behind her the form of a woman robed in white. As the family were retiring to rest, the lord of the castle ordered two of his dependents, Christop Wollf and Mathew Wreschek, to pass the night with the servant-wenches in the haunted room. As the lamps were put out the ghost entered and struck a loud rap upon the table, and said, "Ankha, now I am saved, and I am going to heaven." The wench rejoined, "O blessed soul, pray to Heaven for me, for the noble master, the noble mistress, and all the noble family, and for all those who helped thee to (attain) thine eternal salvation," whereto the ghost answered, "Amen, amen, amen." It then went towards Ankha, and privily told her the promised secret, strictly forbidding her to divulge it.

"'Finally, it should be noted that before all these events Ankha had confessed and communicated.'

"Trieste, September 8, 1879."

The walks in the woods were delightful, and when the picture was sufficiently advanced we went to Trieste to meet Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Evans. We also went with a large party to meet the Prince of Montenegro, who arrived at Trieste, who was one of the handsomest men I ever saw, of the dark mountaineer type. This September we had a great blow. Our favourite Governor, Baron Pino, was transferred to Linz, and he and his wife were so very popular that the whole town was in mental mourning. We all went to see them off, and it was a very heart-breaking scene. We all cried. I have seen such departures three times. One was for the Spanish Consuless Madame Zamitt, a lovely and popular woman, who a year or two later died of cancer in the tongue, and the third was my own departure (though I say it who should not), on the 27th of January, 1891.

Richard went for a little trip on the 29th of September to Fiume, and afterwards we went to Albona.

I also induced the podestá, the Mayor, and several of the authorities of the town to go round with me to become eye-witnesses of the cruelties and the places where people kept their animals, and the Mayor told me that, though he had been born and lived all his life in Trieste, he was quite unaware that it contained such holes and slums as I was able to show him.

We had the pleasure of being asked by one of our great friends, Baronne Emilio de Morpurgo, to meet the great painter from Paris, Monsieur d'Hébert, and I note a pleasant dinner with Monsieur and Madame Dorn, editor of the Triester Zeitung, to meet Faccio the maestro; and Signor Serravallo introduced to us Professor Giglioli, of Florence. Then we went on again to Opçina, and from there we got a letter from Uncle Gerard, to say that he and my aunt and cousins were coming to Venice for ten days, and that we were to go and join them; which summons we obeyed joyfully, and had a most happy time. After they left, we went off to Chioggia, the fishing village near Venice, and we had the pleasure of unearthing Mr. Jemmy Whistler and Dr. George Bird. Mr. Whistler was a great find for us.

Dr. George Bird had appointed to meet me in Venice on his way to India, as I was not well and wanted to see an English doctor (I had never got over my fall); but I forgot to ask him what hotel he would stay at, he forgot to tell me, and Venice is a place you might be months in, and never meet a person you wanted to see. Consequently, when I got there, I did not know how to meet him; so I went to the police, told them my difficulty, gave them his photograph, and told them he did not know a word of anything but English. The consequence was that the moment he arrived the police brought him straight off to me; all the way he kept wondering what law he had transgressed, and what they were going to do with him. When he saw me, he gave what we, his intimate friends, call one of his "smiles." He has a habit of roaring with laughter, so loud that the whole street stops and looks, and he then says gently, "Oh, excuse my smiling." He said, "Have you done this?" "Why," I said, "of course; how else could I get at you?" The police spoke a few words to me, and then, to his astonishment, I turned to him and said, "You travelled with a young lady; you parted with her at such a station; you came on alone, and you lost your luggage." "But how, in the name of goodness, do you know all this?" "Ah," I said mysteriously, "secret police!" We went off and immediately looked after the luggage, and recovered it before he had to go on board his Indian steamer, and I had my consultation.

[Sidenote: Excursions.]

It was now November, and very cold weather, with frequent Boras, but we nevertheless managed a quantity of excursions in search for castellieri and inscriptions. One we took in a frightful Bora--I don't know how we did it. We had a little country cart about the size of a tea-cart, and two rattling good horses, and we drove for two hours, passing four villages and reaching San Daniell, a fortified village on a hill with an old castle under the big mountains. It was owned by a primitive learned old man of seventy-four, and active as a boy, a queer old housekeeper of a wife, sons who shoot, and daughters, and three old brothers, who played cards with him in the evening. It is a large landed property in the Karso, of no use because it is all stones; the castle is draughty, all the windows and doors are open and half unused; there is no idea of comfort. It has two heavy gateways for entrance, an old wall for defence, and a Roman inscription. We got a shelter with them, lunched in a primitive way in an old chimney in an inn with the villagers; then we got another country cart and had twenty minutes' more drive, and half an hour's rough climbing over stones to get at the object of our search, which was a Troglodyte cave fifty metres deep, the entrance in a side field, and said to have been inhabited by ancients. There we stood for forty minutes in a Bora that made us hold on, taking squeezes of the inscriptions. Once finished, we tumbled back over the stones till we reached our cart, had twenty minutes' drive back, were glad to get near the fire and the chimney, and have some hot coffee. There was a struggling quarter-moon, and we drove back at a rattling pace to Opçina, encountering two snowstorms on our way. When we arrived, after eight hours out, we were frozen and had to be assisted out of the cart; there was a large china stove in the dining-room, and we sat down, one on each side of it, on the floor with our backs to it, and the landlord gave us some hot brandy-and-water with spice in it. We were a great many hours before we got any feeling at all, far less warm.

I have known a weak horse and man die on such a night on that road in the Bora. We had fearful weather that year, something like the present one (1892-3), but with our Bora added on to it. We dined out one night in Trieste, and forbid our coachman to go on to the Quai, for fear of being blown into the sea; but he disobeyed us, and, to our horror, we saw by degrees our cab got nearer and nearer the edge. When it was about a yard or two from the edge, we opened the door and jumped out on the other side, and the man had to jump down and lead his horse into the back streets.

Richard now wrote a letter on the subject of the Indo-Mediterranean railway, and he objected to the route of his friend Captain Cameron; the object was to give the Indian mails seven days instead of three weeks for letters to reach. Richard stood out stoutly for a line which should start from Tyre in Syria, tap the very richest lands in Syria, pass Ba'albak, and the once glorious valley plain of the Orontes, reaching Aleppo.

During some part of this year (I cannot exactly say what day, as the letter bears only the date Thursday) Richard was invited to come to some place to meet the King of the Belgians, who had asked repeatedly for him, calling him "the Pioneer of all these African travels," and saying, "Where did you disappear to? nobody could find you;" which was just like Richard's extreme modesty, going out of the way when any honour or notice was going on.

I was very unhappy at Richard's determination to go once more to Egypt to try his luck about the mines; still, as there were such great hopes depending on it, and there was not enough money for both of us, he had to go and I had to stay. There was nothing for it but to go and see him off.

He desired me to give our usual Christmas-parties, so the poor children had their feast at one o'clock on one day, the servants inviting all their friends--had a supper and a dance; then I gave my English party, which we all enjoyed very much, and passed my usual San Silvester night (in English, seeing the old year out and the new year in) at Madame Gutmansthal's, which was a settled thing whenever they and we were in Trieste.

Whenever I was alone, I tried to introduce giving supper-parties only to my intimate women-friends in tea-gowns; but it did not succeed very well, as the husbands did not like not being asked.

On the 11th of January I gave a party to eighty-seven of our intimate Triestine friends. The English and foreigners never assimilated; they separated into different rooms, and they both spoilt each other's pleasure.

A very amusing practice, which lasted some time in the good Society of Trieste, was meeting to recite plays, French, German, and Italian, everybody taking a part, sitting round a table and each reading our part as if we were acting it. It was a very intellectual way of passing the evening, and it ended by supper. Each house took its turn. Then we used to have singing meetings on the same principle--sort of musical classes, where we went in for glees, choir music, and particular masters, such as Mendelssohn, Rubenstein, and so on.

[Sidenote: Richard sends me Home to a Bone-setter.]

I began to get ill again (I had never recovered my fall of nine months ago), and the doctors advised me to see a bone-setter. I wrote and told Richard, and he ordered me off by telegram; so I started on the 17th of February to meet a woman-friend who remained in Vienna, of whom more later. At last I went on to Linz to see our old friends Baron and Baroness Pino, where I had a delightful visit, and in a few days had been introduced to all the great Austrian Society there; went on to Paris, and reached London on the 1st of March. I was nearly three months under clever Dr. Maclagan, the father of salicin. I went as advised to Hutton, the bone-setter, who found something wrong with my ankle and my back and my arm, in consequence of the fall, and set me straight, and what he did to my back lasted me for a long time in the way of pain. I went through a long course of vapour-baths and shampooing. My chief pleasure was a spontaneous visit from dear old Martin Tupper, since dead, who gave me a copy of his "Proverbial Philosophy."

I also had several interesting visits from Gordon, who happened to be in London at this time. I remember on the 15th of April, 1880, he asked me if I knew the origin of the "Union Jack," and he sat down on my hearth-rug before the fire, cross-legged, with a bit of paper and a pair of scissors, and he made me three or four Union Jacks, of which I pasted one into my journal of that day; and I never saw him again--that is thirteen years ago. The flag foundation was azure; on the top of that comes St. George's cross gules, then St. Andrew's cross saltire blanc, St. Patrick's cross saltire gules.

[Sidenote: Richard meets with Foul Play.]

Since Richard's last visit, great changes had taken place in Egypt, for Ismail Pasha had abdicated, who believed in and needed these mines; and Tewfik Pasha had succeeded, and Tewfik did not consider himself bound by anything his father had done; and if the English Government gave a man a chance, it certainly would not have been given to Richard Burton. Hence he got no further than Egypt, and ate his heart out in impotent rage and disgust at his bad luck. On the 2nd or 3rd of May, as he was returning home from dining rather late in Alexandria, he was attacked by nine men, and hit over the head from behind with some sharp instrument. He fell to the ground, and on coming to, staggered to the hotel, and was all covered with blood. He turned round and struck out at them, as his knuckles were all raw. It was supposed to be foul play with a motive, as the only thing they stole was his "divining rod" for gold which he carried about his person, and the signet ring off his finger, but left his watch and chain and purse. He kept it a profound secret in order that it should be no hindrance to his going back to work the mines in Midian; but he came home in May, and never let me know that he was hurt until I came up to him. I was ill in London; the woman friend whom I had left at Vienna, now came over to London to bring me back, but stayed in London, and did not accompany me back at all. I quote this letter prematurely because it regards the subject of Midian.

"GOLD IN WESTERN ARABIA.

"Rohitsch-Sauerbrunn, August 5th, 1887.

"After an unconscionable delay, the following letter was received by me, dated Jeddah (Red Sea), from Mr. A. Levick, son of my old friend the ex-postmaster of Suez, whose name is known to a host of travellers. It will be shown that, even without action on the part of Europeans, the cause of discovery is thriving, and the public will presently ask why, in our present condition, when there is almost a famine of gold, England pays no attention to these new fields.

"'From inquiries I have made at Jeddah, I learn on good authority that gold quartz has been found in great quantities at Táif (the famous summering-place among the highlands to the east of Mecca), or rather on the mountain range between that place and Mecca. The person who gave me this information at the time of the discovery went to Constantinople and sundry other capitals, but the results obtained were not very encouraging. I was also told that Mr. Moel Betts (of the defunct company, Betts, Wylde, and Co.) has at Suez specimens of this quartz, which he took away with him from Jeddah when he went north. All this information is trustworthy, and you may thoroughly rely on its being correct, as I got it from a man in whom I can confide. An old Oriental traveller like yourself can understand how hard it always is to arrive at the truth in a place like this. However I am assured that the Government engineer of this district (Jeddah), a certain Sádik Bey, can also give me valuable details regarding the specimens found and the results obtained. Meanwhile you can confidently rely on the details which I have so far managed to obtain. I should also add that the person who so kindly gave me the news has further promised that he will do his utmost to provide me with specimens when he goes to Mecca. I have seen Mr. Consul Jago, and asked him if he could help me with anything. I shall be very glad to learn from you that the gold mines of Midian are likely to be coming on again, and I should think this a most favourable time to bring forward your most wonderful discoveries near Al-Muwaylah.'

"So far Mr. Levick. I am not astonished to hear that the results of the gold quartz were 'unsatisfactory.' These opinions were probably picked up from the surface, or broken off from some outcrop. But the fact of their being found is all-important; and the outcome of the work would be very different were it carried out by a scientific engineer, or, better still, by a practical miner from the gold diggings. I have heard now of auriferous discoveries extending from between the mountains of Northern Midian, along the line of the West Arabian Gháts, until they meet the volcanic region about Aden. They have been reported to me from behind Yambu, and Mecca, Mocha, and Hodaydah; and I have a thorough conviction that some day they will be found exceedingly valuable.

"RICHARD F. BURTON."

When Richard was leaving Egypt for good, Mr. Cookson, the brother of our Consul at Alexandria, Sir Charles Cookson, between whom and Richard there existed a great friendship, wrote his "Good-bye" in the following terms, which pleased Richard beyond everything:--

"Farewell to thee, Richard; we bid thee adieu. May Plutus and Crœsus their treasures lay bare; May their storehouse on earth be revealed unto you, So that wealth may be added to merits so rare!

"May nuggets as big as the hat on your head Be strewn in your path as you journey at will; And veins of rich gold 'neath the ground as you tread Lie hidden perdu, to be won by your skill.

"And when thou hast made a fabulous haul, And flooded the market with shares, On thy virtuous life may a blessing befall, To gild thy declining years."

Some time after this, some thoughtless youngsters played a practical joke on Mr. Cookson, and pretended to him that it came from Richard, who, on learning it a long time afterwards, felt sorely hurt and mortified that his old friend should have been left in error, and thought him capable of such a thing.

To my horror, I had found Richard with a secretly broken head, raw knuckles, and gout in his feet, but he soon got round under my care, and then I took him off to Opçina. He was afraid of meningitis, as they had wounded him just in the nuque. The doctor put him under a course of salicin, and at last he had an attack of healthy gout in the feet, which did him good. I got the best doctor, but he knew less about it than we did. Nubar Pasha came over about this time, and came up and stayed with us, and that did him good. He was soon able to breakfast down in the garden. He now began to walk about freely, and to take long drives, even to climb hills.

The first excursion that he made was to a foiba. This means one of the great pot-holes in the Karso, some of which are a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, or two thousand feet deep. Some of the most brutal amongst the peasant Slavs have the habit of throwing their animals down, when they want to get rid of them, and it was said that a dog was thrown down there, and we thought we could hear its moans, so we started off with a large party with endless ropes and grappling irons. He sounded the depths, and at last we seemed to get hold of something, at which all the men pulled and hoisted up a tree. This frightened all the owls who had taken refuge in this hole, and they flew out, and then we found that what we thought was the moaning of the dog was the hooting of these owls. Then our fencing-master, Herr Reich, came up to us frequently, and we had numberless drives over the Karso.

"IT."

"If all the harm that women have done Were put in a bundle and rolled into one, The earth could not hold it, the sky not enfold it, It could not be lighted nor warmed by the sun! Such masses of evil would puzzle the devil And keep him in fuel while Time's wheels run."

We had once to pass through a very uncanny trial, which may be said to have lasted from 1877 to the end of 1880, and somewhat (though in a less degree) to 1883. We suddenly began to be inundated with anonymous letters; then our private papers and writings would disappear; a great fuss of finding them was made, and when all fuss and hope of recovery was over, they would reappear. There was always some mystery hanging about, and once we found on the floor a copy-book with some very good imitations of my handwriting, or what my handwriting would be if I tried to disguise it a little backwards, and some very bad and easily recognizable attempts at my husband's very peculiar hand. The anonymous letters generally tried to set us against each other, if possible, and I was always finding love-letters thrust into his pockets, whenever I cleaned or brushed his clothes, which I generally did when he was ill, in order not to have the servants in the room. Fortunately we told each other everything, and he used to carry his letters to me, and I mine to him, but we could make nothing of it.

At last he said, in 1879 (when he was going away to Midian), "You must be quite sure not to make yourself uncomfortable about any of this sort of thing, and to tell me everything that occurs; because I am sure this is an intrigue, and a woman's intrigue, which has something to do with money. When we were poor everybody left us in peace, but ever since 1877 nothing has been talked about but the enormous riches that I am going to make in these mines, and you have been offering parures of turquoise to all your friends in my name. So somebody is working to try and separate us. You keep your 'weather eye' open, and believe nothing, nor shall I, and you will see that one day or another it is bound to ooze out." It did ooze out--after it did not matter.

Ever after these annoyances began, whenever we were going to make the smallest remark which might be unlucky, we always used to say, "Hush! 'IT' will hear you;" and then we used to laugh. This became so habitual with us, that everybody else thought we were alluding to Providence, or evil spirits, or such like; but we were really alluding to our uncanny, fleshly evil genius, who, though we did not know it, was nestling close to us and heard it all. It was, therefore, with a doubly heavy heart that I saw him depart on his third and last journey for Midian, and was thankful when it was over.

[Sidenote: Camoens.]

Richard and I now went to Opçina a great deal alone, and we were working together at his Camoens, beginning at the two volumes of the "Lusiads."

In early 1880, he brought out a little bit of the first canto of the "Lusiads," and the episode of "Ignez de Castro," his favourite bit, as samples. I can never remember to have had a more peaceful and happy time with Richard than in Opçina, where we led a Darby and Joan life, and principally 1879, 1880, 1881, and part of 1882. We did all the six volumes of Camoens, he translating, I helping him and correcting. I wrote the little sonnet for him, my preface, and the Glossary, and his "Reviewers Reviewed."

"TO MY MASTER CAMOENS. "(Tu se' lo mio maestro, è lo mio autore.)

"Great Pilgrim-poet of the Sea and Land; Thou life-long sport of Fortune's ficklest will; Doomed to all human and inhuman ill, Despite thy lover-heart, thy hero-hand; Enrollèd by the pen what marvellous band Of god-like Forms thy golden pages fill; Love, Honour, Justice, Valour, Glory thrill The Soul, obedient to thy strong command: Amid the Prophets highest sits the Bard, At once Revealer of the Heaven and Earth, To Heaven the guide, of Earth the noblest guard; And, 'mid the Poets, thine the peerless worth, Whose glorious song, thy Genius' sole reward, Bids all the Ages, Camoens, bless thy birth!" ----ISABEL BURTON.

He was quite upset about the Glossary. When he had used archaic words, which belonged to Chaucer and Spencer, he said, "Do you mean to say that they won't understand me?" When I produced my glossary of three hundred and fourteen words, he said, "You are never going to insult the English public with that?" I said, "But, indeed, I am; and I know very well that you have not fifteen readers that will know them without, but they will pretend they do, and be very much offended, whilst internally they will thank their God that they have got it, and are able to look grand on the strength of it." But he curtailed it, and in this he was encouraged by our old friend Bernard Quaritch.

Camoens is splendidly and literally translated. No one was so well fitted as Richard to bring out this epic and heroic life. He divided his work into six heads: Biographical, Bibliographical, Historical and Chronological, Geographical, and Annotative--it was the result of a daily act of devotion of more than twenty years, from a man of this age, who has taken the hero of a former age for his model, his master, as Dante did Virgil; and between whose two fates--master and disciple--exists a strange similarity. The two volumes of "Life and Commentary" show a profundity of learning and intelligence which would be quite enough to make the name of any other man, if he had never written anything else, but though Camoens has not taken hold of the public yet, he will. Richard lived to do six volumes; he would have done four more had he lived. His little letter of dedication to Swinburne, in vol. i of the "Lyrics," is a masterpiece.

"To

"The Prince of the Lyric Poets of his day,

"ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

"MY DEAR SWINBURNE,

"Accept the unequal exchange--my brass for your gold. Your 'Poems and Ballads' began to teach the Philister what might there is in the music of language, and what the marvel of lyric inspiration, far subtler and more ethereal than mere poetry, means to the mind of man.

"Without more ado, allow me to excuse this 'transaction' by a something which comes from the East--

"'A poor man, passing by one day when his King travelled, brought him a little water with both hands, saying, "Drink, my lord, for the heat is great." He accepted it gladly from him, not looking to the small quality of that service, but only to the good will with which it was offered.'

"Believe me ever,

"Your old friend and fellow-traveller,

"RICHARD F. BURTON.

"Desterro, Trieste,

"September 25th, 1884."

* * * * *

"The Pines, Putney Hill, S.W.,

"November 7th, 1884.

"MY DEAR BURTON,

"Your dedication makes me very proud, and the kindness of its terms gives me still a heartier pleasure than that of mere pride in your friendship. Thanks to you both, and notably to Frances H----" [me] "for her letter, or rather your joint one of the 10th, which has now been followed by the arrival of the two volumes. They are yet more interesting (naturally) to me than their precursors....

"The learning and research of your work are in many points beyond all praise of mine, but not more notable than the strength and skill that wield them. I am hungrily anticipating the 'Arabian Nights.' You both know how we look forward to our next meeting with you, when you shall not run away so soon as you did last time.

"Both of yours always,

"A. C. SWINBURNE."

* * * * *

"The Pines, Putney Hill, S.W.,

"April 13th, 1881.

"MY DEAR MRS. BURTON,

"I am horribly ashamed to find that my letter of thanks to you on the arrival of the 'Lusiads,' which I quite thought had been at once written and despatched (this is the real honest truth, and not a lying after-thought to excuse myself), never went or existed at all, but remained in the limbo of good intentions. I cannot tell how, for I distinctly remember the very words I meant to send, and thought I had sent, of congratulations to Burton on having in that translation, as I think, matched Byron on his own chosen ground as a translator, and beaten him at his own weapon. The version of Pulci's 'Morgante,' on which Byron prided himself so greatly as being, in his own words, the best translation that ever was or will be made, is an infinitely less important, and I should think less difficult attempt on exactly the same lines of work, and certainly, to say the least, not more successful, as far as one can judge, without knowledge of Camoens in the original language.

"With best remembrances to both of you.

"Ever faithfully yours,

"A. C. SWINBURNE."

I prefer the "Lusiads," but the Portuguese think that if Camoens had never written the "Lusiads," his sonnets would have immortalized him, and prefer his to Petrarch's.

Besides this, we used to fence a great deal during those years. We set up a tir au pistolet, and used to practise every morning after breakfast. When snow was deep we drove in a sledge. We attended the school feast annually, and sometimes we had village serenades. At Opçina, on the Eve of St. John's, the peasants light fires all over the country, and the superstition is that you must see eleven fires burning at the same time in order to have a lucky year. When we went up there, we lived absolutely alone, without any servants, and we used to take long walks and drives.

"GERALD MASSEY TO RICHARD F. BURTON.

"'Englished by Richard Burton.' And well done, As it was well worth doing; for this is one Of those old Poets, who are always new, That share eternity with all that's true, And of their own abounding spirit do give Substance to Earth's dead Shadows; and make men live Who in action merely did but flit and pass; Now fixed for ever in thought's reflecting-glass. This is the Poet of weary wanderers In perilous lands; and wide-sea Voyagers, And climbers fall'n and broken on the stairs. A man of men; a master of affairs, Whose own life-story is, in touching truth, Poem more potent than all feignèd truth. His Epic trails a story in the wake Of Gama, Raleigh, Frobisher, and Drake. The poem of Discovery! sacred to Discoverers, and their deeds of derring-do, Is fitly rendered in The Traveller's land, By one of the foremost of the fearless band." ----GERALD MASSEY.

"BURTON'S CAMOENS.

(A cutting from the Press.)

"In his wanderings afar from the world's highway, he made Camoens his companion, and discovered a peculiar sympathy of mind between himself and the noble Portuguese--an affinity which Mrs. Burton seems inclined to trace even in the fortunes of the two men (absit omen!)."

* * * * *

The Daily Telegraph, February 21, 1881.

"'Camoens,' he says, 'is the perfection of a traveller's study. A wayfarer and a voyager from his youth; a soldier, somewhat turbulent withal, wounded and blamed for his wounds; a doughty sword and yet doughtier pen; a type of the chivalrous age; a patriot of the purest water, so jealous of his country's good fame, that nothing would satisfy him but to see the world bow before her perfections; a genius, the first and foremost of his day, who died in the direst poverty and distress.' These are good titles to admiration in any case, and we cannot wonder that a great English traveller, himself too a poet, should have been captivated all these long years by the charms of that beautiful Portuguese tongue, and those noble and stirring sentiments which stand enshrined in Camoens' deathless pages. If it be true that Chapman's 'Iliad' is a great work because of the intense love and admiration which its author had for the blind old bard of Greece, then certainly Captain Burton's labour, which has taken up twenty years of a much-occupied life, ought, for the same reason, to be able to stand the test of time, inasmuch as it is the fruit of genuine and heartfelt devotion on the part of the translator to the author and his poetic masterpiece."

* * * * *

The Daily Telegraph, February 21, 1881.

"'My master, Camoens,' Captain Burton calls him, and goes on to pay his tribute of gratitude for the real solace which the much-loved volume has been to him in many wanderings. 'On board raft and canoe, sailing vessel and steamer, on the camel and the mule, under the tent and the jungle tree, on the fire-peak and the snow-peak,' writes the accomplished 'Hadji,' 'Camoens has been my companion, my consoler, my friend;' and we may remark that a study of Camoens, who is an ideal patriot, as well as a constant lover, whose fair one was snatched away by death at the age of twenty, would be useful in the present day as an antidote to schools of thought which banish both patriotism and romance, as far as they can, into the region of forbidden sentiments. Indeed, so intensely patriotic is the bard, that in the opening of his epic he bids Achilles, Alexander, and all other ancient warriors and travellers, cease to 'vaunt long voyages made in bygone day,' as if the 'better bravery' of the Lusitanian explorers fairly threw into the shade all attempts in the same line which had been made before. This may be going a little too far, but, at all events, it is a fault in the right direction, which deserved better treatment than King Ferdinand's annual dole of five golden sovereigns."

[Sidenote: A Little Anecdote about a Capuchin.]

One day, as we sat at our twelve o'clock breakfast at Opçina, on a very hot day, a poor barefooted Capuchin came in, looking hot, jaded, dusty, and travel-stained. He sat down in another part of the restaurant at a table, and humbly asked for a glass of water. We were waiting for our breakfast, and I slipped out of the room and said to the landlord, "Every time you bring us up a dish, put a third portion, with bread and vegetables, and in due course sweets and cheese, before the poor Capuchin who has just come in, and a bottle of the same wine you give us, and tell him to pray for the donors." I slipped back into my place, and I saw Richard kept staring at him, when he was not looking, with an amused smile, and finally he turned round to me and whispered, "There, just look! You say that those fellows starve, and I declare to you that he has eaten, mouthful for mouthful, everything we have eaten, and a good bottle of wine like ours." So I laughed and I said, "Yes; but with your money!" "Oh, you blackguard! am I paying for his dinner?" "Yes," I said, "you are; and he is going to pray for us." He was far from being vexed; he was too kind, and he enjoyed the joke very much. I said to him, "That man has been catering all over Istria for provisions for the convent, and the rule at table is that they eat whatever you put on their plates, but they must not ask. Seeing the state he is in, you would not like to have seen him go away with a glass of water." "No," he said, "that I should not; I am glad you did it."

[Sidenote: The Passion Play--Ober-Ammergau.]

We now determined, and fortunately, to see the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau. I say fortunately, because we could scarcely have done it in 1890, just before his death; the fatigue would have been too great for him. We had a delightful trip from Venice to Padua, to Vicenza, and thence to Verona. There the country is simply lovely, and the train begins to mount to Ala, which is the frontier of Italy and the Austrian Tyrol. It seems like getting out of a picturesque desert--so far are the Italians behind Austrian civilization. You pass Trento, and reach Botzen, which is really only nine hours and fifty-eight minutes' actual train from Venice if you do not stop on the road. From Botzen to Munich is nine hours and twenty-three minutes' delightful journey, breakfasting at Franzensfeste. You are examined at Kufstein, the frontier between the Austrian Tyrol and Bavaria. The scenery of the Brenner is simply glorious, and Brenner-Bad is a delightful little place to stay at. Munich is certainly a lovely city; its buildings are magnificent, but its art is very, very new. We saw everything in the City inside and out, and enjoyed the society of General and Mrs. Staunton, our Consul, and certainly we must own that the Hôtel des Quatres Saisons is the most delightful and comfortable in the world.

The next station for Ober-Ammergau is two hours and a half to Mürnau, where you go to the Pantelbraü Hotel. There is beautiful mountain scenery, and the hurry-scurry to get to Ober-Ammergau is quite like the Derby Day, with every sort of vehicle and horses. The village is otherwise peaceful, a rural inn, with a nice family containing at least one pretty girl, and the wine is very good, especially Zeller I. and Schwarzer Herr-Gott; the beds and the food are excellent. Being Sunday we went to Mass, and noticed a very curious picture in the church. A head was peeping out of the ground as if the body were buried in it; near it was a book with "Lehren" inscribed upon it; also near were dice, a money-bag, a serpent, and smoke. A new-comer advances towards the head; but his guardian angel is remonstrating with him, as if he were saying to him, "Let him be--it is none of your business," and a Madonna appears in the skies. After breakfast we started for Ober-Ammergau. The scenery was magnificent, the Ettalberg very steep, and two extra horses were obliged to be put on. Richard liked walking, and with only me in the carriage, they appeared to be almost crawling on their stomachs. Halfway was a rural inn, where the peasants were playing, dancing, and drinking beer. In four hours from leaving Mürnau we were deposited at a pretty cottage, where rooms were let by a Frau Haüser.

I understand that a great many improvements exist now; but at that time we had two whitewashed little rooms, no sheets, one spoon, one glass, no table, and a pint of water in a pie-dish; but our windows looked out on the church, which is surmounted by a spire and a plain iron cross, and the Kofel, a sugar-loaf peak, which seems to guard the mountain gorge.

We wandered about the village, and picked up some food as we could at a small eating-house called the "Stern," for Frau Haüser did not undertake to board us. We were up at dawn. At Ober-Ammergau the day begins with Mass and Communion. The play begins at eight in the morning, and lasts eight hours (eighteen acts), with an hour and a half interval for food and rest. The play over, Richard and I both sat down at once, and described minutely Ober-Ammergau, the Play, and our impressions. I think, perhaps, that there have been so many descriptions, that it would be a pity to load this book with them. We both sent them to the same man, and Richard was anxious that they should be produced together, under the heading, "Ober-Ammergau, as seen by Four Eyes." He wrote the cynical and I the religious side, but as the man who printed them was too poor to produce the two, he published Richard's; but I will now bring them out together in the "Uniform Library" of my husband's works, just as he wished it.

Suffice it to say, that the simplicity of a theatre in the open air was most realistic, and made one think of the old early Latin and Greek plays, and the miracle-plays of early Christianity. The men acted beautifully; the women were cold or shy, and therefore uninteresting. I can only say that I thanked God for having been allowed to see it, and as we sat together Richard watched me closely to see what affected me, and I did the same with him. What affected him immensely--and he owned it--was Christ on the Cross. He said, "I never could have imagined Christ on the Cross without seeing it; it made me feel very queer." Now, as to me, what broke my heart was the repentances of the sinners, and I am not ashamed to say that I sobbed bitterly--not Magdalen's, for she was too cold, but Peter's, when Christ came forth with the Cross, after he had denied Him and Christ looked at him. The penitent thief on the Cross, and Judas's despair, I shall never forget all my life. With all Richard's cynicism, he was right glad to have seen it.

We went to visit the Pfarrer, or priest, the only really paramount influence in Ober-Ammergau. We saw Josef Maier, who acted the Christ, and with his permission went to inspect the scenes behind the theatre, where they were practising fastening to the Cross, and, under strict secrecy, we saw how it was done.

On the 25th was the fête of St. Louis, when they celebrate the foundation of Bavaria, then seven hundred years before. On return to Munich we dined at the Embassy. We met in Munich the Dowager Lady Stanley and Mrs. John Stanley (now Lady Jeune), and found to our great annoyance that we had just missed Lord Houghton, who had been staying in the same hotel with us and we had never known it. We then went to Innsbrück, where we saw everything in and about, and on to Toblach, from whence three hours' drive takes you into the Dolomites into lovely scenery, beginning at Cortina di Ampezzo. Here we found actual winter weather, though it was only the 30th of August. From this we went on to Villach, a delightful place, where it was very difficult to get rooms; but we got some beds at a Braüerei. Here we saw, as usual, everything in and about, and then we went by the glorious new road Tarvis and Pont' Ebba (not so very long open), with scenery unrivalled, and reached Udine, where we were on the main line for our own home. Here we stayed to visit the tomb of Fra Oderico, a Franciscan monk, who went to China and wrote a book three centuries ago--a very holy man--and then we went home to Trieste to receive our old friends Mr. Aubertin, Sir Charles Sebright, the Dowager Lady Stanley of Alderley, with Mrs. John Stanley, who stayed a couple of days en route for Corfu. The Dowager Lady Stanley was one of Richard's oldest and best friends, and she has proved herself one to me since his death. I cannot say how much we enjoyed their visit.

On the 15th of September the Pandora came in with Mr. W. H. Smith and his family, and we took excursions together, showed them all the lions in a couple of days, and dined on board with them. We had visits also from Abbate Bey and Brugsch Bey from Egypt. Baron Marco Morpurgo, the director of Lloyd's, used sometimes to give us a charming supper-party on board one of the Lloyd's vessels anchored in the harbour. A great friend and admirer of Richard's, and my now true friend, Miss E. H. Bishop, who resides, like myself, in a little cottage near Redbridge, Hants, came to stay with us.

On the 9th of November, 1880, we had an earthquake at 7.30 in the evening, which demolished half Agram, injured Graz, and shook us terribly. Richard and I were writing, and our table ran away, and it made us feel very uncomfortable. Graeffe saw three earthquake waves come in and out.

[Sidenote: Celebrating a Vice-Consul's Jubilee.]

On the 11th we had a great pleasure in celebrating our dear old Vice-Consul Mr. Brock's fiftieth year at Trieste. He was so loved and respected, that everybody wished to contribute some little proof, and Mrs. Craig, the wife of Mr. George Craig, a merchant of Trieste, our principal English lady, and I, received the demonstrations of their good will, which were even more pronounced amongst the old Triestine families than amongst the English, who were less wealthy, though not less well disposed towards him; and on the 11th of September Mrs. Craig and I were able to put a purse of £170 into his hands. The dear old man was so much affected that I was afraid he would have a fit. He could not sign a Consular report for two hours after.

On the 10th of December my publisher, poor Mr. Mullan, died, and my boys' books were returned to me, to begin afresh with another publisher, which was, unhappily, Mr. Bogue. On the 15th, Richard lectured at the English Engineers' Club, which was very well attended, much applauded, and was noticed largely in the foreign Press, in most gratifying terms, speaking of him as dear and respected for his learning, merits, and philanthropy, and I had my third fête for humanity to animals.

[Sidenote: Monfalcone.]

We went to the baths of Monfalcone, supposed to be excellent for gout and rheumatism, heading round the gulf to the shore opposite Trieste, and I must say they did Richard a great deal of good, though it was slow.

"THE BATHS OF MONFALCONE.

"To the Editor of the Medical Times and Gazette.

"SIR,

"Will you allow me to make known to you a bathing-place which is never recommended in England by medical men, because it is so little known? Two hours' drive from Trieste, one by rail, two hours' drive from old classical Aquileja, close to the river Isonzo, and almost on the borders of Austria and Italy, a townlet of four thousand inhabitants lies seething in the plain, under a burning July sun. You may perhaps see it on the map, half an hour's distance from the sea, at the very head of the Adriatic. In 1433 it existed, and the baths in those days were thirty feet long and twelve broad. They have been perpetually bettered and destroyed from that period until a year ago; and I am not going to enter into any interesting or tedious details, but take them up at 1879, when the property was bought by a personal friend of ours, a gentleman of Trieste, named Dr. Rabl, D.C.L. He has put the baths in perfect condition and working order, and he will go on improving and bettering according as a more numerous and a better class of visitors are attracted here. At present there are a hundred and fifty bathers, but of the most uninteresting description--just the people 'you don't want to meet,' as Judy says. There are rows of rooms for the mud-baths, and opposite corresponding rooms for the water-baths, and a large basin for those who like to swim or bathe in company. There are douches, and we are going to have vapour-baths. The same arrangements exist on the men's side of the establishment as on that for the women. The work of pumping up the water and collecting the mud by machinery is carried out with a sufficient staff of servants in attendance. The mud and the water in their natural state show 34° Réaumur. The water is beautifully clear, is mixed with sea-water, and contains lots of things, of which the principal are sulphate of soda. The baths are very powerful, and are resorted to for all bone pains--rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, lumbago, sciatica. The treatment ranges from twelve to eighteen baths; and in three years 1315 cures have been effected. The doctor is beginning to hang up the crutches the people leave behind, as they do ex votos in a church. His name is Tamburlini; he is well informed and very efficient. We naturally take an interest in the works, as it is in our Consular district, and it might draw some nice English visitors here in summer-time. The baths are open from May to September. As I write now it is 83° F. in the rooms; going out is not possible (except to sit under the trees) from, say, 9 a.m. till 6 or 7 p.m.

"I am, etc.,

"ISABEL BURTON.

"Monfalcone, July 10th."

("We have much pleasure in publishing the above letter from the enterprising wife of the still more adventurous 'Hadji.' It seems the fate of well-known travellers and men of science to be relegated to parts unknown, to wear out their days in what is supposed to be rest. If we remember aright, Charles Lever was banished to the dulness of Trieste. They sent Palgrave to Guiana, and James Hannay to Barcelona. We are glad to see that Mrs. Burton, at all events, continues to keep up those active spirits which so often and so well bestead her.--Ed. Med. Times and Gaz.")

[Sidenote: Richard's Metal and Colour.]

Richard had quite a grande passion for silver. He declared that everybody had some particular metal which influenced them, and also colour. His metal was silver, and silver applied to his pains cured him; he would put florins on his eyes if they ached from over reading or study; he would apply them to his pains where he had gout; and after he got the "'Arabian Nights" earnings, everything he bought was silver. A heavy six-guinea knob of silver to a huge stick, his toilette box, his pencil-case, his snuff-box, his roll to put his pens and pencils in, everything was silver. His theory was that every man has some metal which affects his illness, and, after frequent trials, found his. So we used to bind silver florins round his feet and legs when he had gout, and though it did not cure him, it always relieved him. He had the same theory about colours, and his was the royal cramoisie, or blood-red, which soothed him. We continued our work, and we used to take drives, such as to Villa Vicentina, and to Aquileja, ancient Aquila, to the museum and church, and up the Campanile Tower.

[1] Richard used always to say that, psychologically speaking, he was convinced that he was a spoiled twin, and that I was the broken or missing fragment.

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

VII. ON SLAVERY

You must now, dear Reader, bear with, or skip, a chapter on Slavery, upon which Richard was very strong.

CAPTAIN BURTON'S REPORTS TO LORD GRANVILLE ON ANTI-SLAVERY.

Letter No. 1.

"Cairo, April 27th, 1880.

"MY LORD,

[Sidenote: Richard's Three Letters to Lord Granville.]

"I have the honour to report that during a late excursion to the Natron Lakes, lying north-north-west of Cairo, I came upon the track of a small but vigorous branch of slave traffic which is, I understand, carried on with much suffering to the victims. My companion, Professor William Robertson Smith, of Aberdeen, now returning to England, can give oral information on the subject; whilst Colonel Gordon, late Governor-General of the Equatorial Provinces, was perfectly successful in closing to slave-traders the Main Trunk Line--viâ the Nile itself--he could not but throw the transit into two branches, the one east, the other west of the river. On April 11th we engaged a guide of the village of Abu-Rawásh, near the northernmost pyramid, which is the Nilotic terminus of the journey. This man, El Haji Musà, was reticent on the subject of rakik (slaves); not so his son, Abdullah. The traffic was the conversation of the village; and from the youth we learnt that our only risk in a desert march would be that of meeting Arabs driving slaves. The village Ghafèr (a watchman), Mohammed el Zayyàt, is said to assist in smuggling the new arrivals, who are dressed like town slaves; and the Octroi authorities can hardly be ignorant of a traffic which gives such large gains. Whether the Pyramid Arabs are concerned in it or not, I have not as yet ascertained at the Coptic Convent of the Mar-Makarios. I could obtain no information except that the transit had been once active and was now closed. But a second guide, Abd el Alàh, of the Bedawi tribe Beni Salamah, gave a very different account, which confirmed that of the youth Abdullah. The slaves are driven from the land popularly called Wadar, and by the people Bargo, through the line of oases lying west of the Nile. The season is winter, when water holes abound; the summer heats effectually stop it. At Siwah, the Oasis of Amaun, some eighteen marches from Cairo, the rakik are driven to the Natron Lakes. Men, women, children, and babies carried on the shoulder, if they refuse to walk are beaten, and lastly are tied on camels' backs. At the Birket el Birdi, the easternmost of the Natron Lakes, we were shown the sweet-water pools from which they drink, and the places where they are kept to rest and recruit for several days, before being driven into the capital. Finally, in the Syrian convent, I heard that the last convoy of 1880 had passed by their monastery in March. Nothing would be easier than to put a stop to this proceeding, and if your Lordship should wish to know what measures I should propose, I am at all times ready to submit them to your approval.

"I have the honour to be, my Lord,

"Your obedient servant,

"RICHARD F. BURTON."

Letter No. 2.

"Cairo, May 3rd, 1880.

"MY LORD,

"In continuation of my letter, separate--Cairo, April 27, on the revival of slavery throughout Egypt, I have the honour to add the following details. Three villages are connected with the Wadái Sywal slave-trade, namely, Kardási, Abu Rawásh, and the so-called 'Pyramid Arabs.' Of the latter, I heard from the Chevalier de Kremer and H. E. Yacoub Artim Bey, who, two years ago, convicted them of complicity about Kardási.... I was informed by Dr. Grant, of Cairo, and Mr. Hayes, of Alexandria, who, some years ago, came upon the caves where the slaves had to be lodged. The slave importation in Egypt has now assumed an importance which threatens to become scandalous. I need not enter into the polities of this present Egyptian Government, but it is essentially retrograde and strongly opposed to all reforms, especially to the employment of European officials. It has established slave bureaux at Cairo, Alexandria, Santa, and Es Siegrét, but not at the principal place, Assouan (Syene).... These employés send in mere blinds by way of reports; they have no general head, and being under-paid, they cannot refuse the larger inducements offered by the slave-dealers. The scandal which happened at Es-Siyút on April 20, 23, has doubtless been reported to your Lordship, and has found its way into the papers. Of some thousand head, only sixty-seven (thirty-nine girls and twenty-eight boys) were captured; the hundred and fifty slave merchants, with their camels, had the audacity to march upon a point which is not only a slave bureau but a railway station, with telegraph, etc.... Comment on such a proceeding is useless.... When Colonel Gordon, R.E., was compelled to leave Egypt by the retrograde and anti-European party now in office, his employé, Signor Gessi, hung, they say, eight slave-dealers. It was at once reported from Cairo to the Soudan, and throughout the slavery region, that Colonel Gordon had been dismissed for undue severity, and such a report was virtually an exhortation to reopen the slave-trade by destroying the leaders, who commanded bodies composed of from three to four thousand armed men.... All foresaw that his departure would be followed by its reorganization, and yet no steps were taken by the present Egyptian Ministry--they sent up a Governor-General, a certain Rauf Pasha, a Berberin, known only by his cruelties in Harar, where the ruler died under most suspicious circumstances. The Indian trade, though scotched, is by no means killed. Money will be easily raised at Khartum, Cairo, Alexandria, and men will be readily found. The best proof is the scandalous affair of Es-Siyút. I have also heard of a caravan of three hundred head being seen at Karaski on the Nile. Meanwhile the slave-traders, too weak to invade the country, pitch their camp upon the borders of Dar-Wardác and other slaving centres. They buy the captives offered to them, and march them through the oases, and along the Nile, at a part where there are no guards. From the terminus depôt Siwah, slaves are sent to Cairo and Alexandria, and, when these lines are dangerous, through the Oases of Augila to Tunis and Tripoli. There would be no difficulty in controlling this trade. In reducing hundreds to tens, and tens to units, the necessary procedure cannot be taken by a retrograde and a remiss Egyptian Ministry, or by a staff of under-paid employés.

"I have the honour to be.

"Your Lordship's obedient servant,

"R. F. BURTON."

Letter No. 3.

"Consulate, Trieste, May 11th, 1880.

"MY LORD,

"In my two letters, separate--Cairo, April 27th, and Cairo, May 3rd, which forwarded details of the slave-trade revival in Egypt and of the Wadái-Siwah line, which has temporarily taken the place of the Soudan trade, I neglected to mention another branch--which would require control, chiefly through the Red Sea. This is the Abyssinian, which includes the Galla tribes. The market resembles the Caucasian, especially the Circassian now extinct, in so far as parents sell their children, and relatives their kin. It is a small but constant supply of a high-priced article equally prized in Arabia and in Egypt. It required no apparatus, no expenditure of men and money, and consequently, to suppress it, will be a work of time and well-directed energy. During my return voyage from Alexandria, I met an old acquaintance (Dr. Geo. Reinisch), Professor of Egyptology to the University of Vienna, who with his wife had been living for some months in Abyssinia and the Upper Nile; he gave me all manner of details, and declared that the slave traffic is assuming an importance which it never had in the days of Ismail, the ex-Khedive. His account of it, indeed, is anything but creditable to the present administration of Egypt. Under Nubar Pasha or Sheríf Pasha, instant measures would be taken to abate the scandal, but the actual Ministry is too Moslem and too retrograde to interfere with the so-called patriarchal institution.

"I have the honour to be, my Lord,

"Your obedient servant,

"R. F. BURTON."

He wrote, besides, a private letter to Lord Granville as follows:--

"The Ministry under Riaz Pasha is doing all it can to abolish Colonel Gordon's fine anti-slavery work for the last six years. They have sent up a certain Rauf Pasha, almost a black, who will have no weight whatever; and the Red Sea will be in a worse state than ever unless some measures are soon taken; and slave-trade is speedily reviving in the Soudan and the Red Sea. The Ministry wishes to drive out all foreigners, and this makes times in Egypt harder than ever.

[Sidenote: His Application to be made Slave Commissioner.]

"I would like to have a temporary appointment in the Red Sea as Slave Commissioner. I want a salary of from £1600 to £2000 a year (£1600 would do if allowed to keep Trieste on half-pay, £350 per annum), the use of a gun-boat, and a roving commission, independent of the Consul-General of Egypt, but to act in concert with a Consul (such as young Wylde) appointed to the Soudan. It is a thing that has long been talked about as a great want in the Red Sea, if slavery is really to be exterminated, and Gordon's splendid work to be carried out on the coast. Gordon Pasha has long wished to recommend me for this work. As this last appointment would only be temporary--say for a couple of years--I would like to be allowed to keep Trieste to fall back upon when my work is done, and as a home for my wife when she cannot be with me. Other men are allowed to retain their Indian appointments, and still to take temporary service in Egypt: for this there are several precedents. Mr. Brock, the Vice-Consul at Trieste, who is thoroughly reliable, would act for me on half-pay, as he has done the last forty years. I guarantee that, placed in such a position, in two years' time the Red Sea shall be as clear of slaves as if slavery had never existed.

"RICHARD F. BURTON."

"HOW TO DEAL WITH THE SLAVE SCANDAL IN EGYPT.

"The systematic and official revival of the import slave-trade in Egypt was the necessary consequence of Colonel Gordon's compulsory retirement. The merest sketch of the measures adopted by that energetic English 'Governor-General of the Equatorial Provinces' would occupy the whole of this paper. Suffice it to say that, when matters came to a crisis, he attacked the well-armed and well-organized forces of the slave-dealers, sometimes numbering three to four thousand musketeers; and during two years' fighting he defeated them in more than one pitched battle. Thus he stopped the slave-hunting at its head-quarters, with its train of death and desolation. Had he remained in 'Black-land' the moral sense of England would not have been outraged by the horrors brought to light so soon after his departure. But he had routed the slaver without abolishing the slave, nor were his measures calculated to set the latter free.

"Colonel Gordon's work, however, was too 'thorough;' moreover, his strict and honourable rule allowed no plundering and embezzling of 'parasitical Pashas, foreigners in Egypt.' The Khedive (Ismail I.) by a stout-hearted coup d'état had appointed and had unhesitatingly supported his great lieutenant. The Prince's dethronement was a signal for the downfall of the English Governor-General. The former was succeeded (June 26, 1879) by his eldest son, Taufik Pasha, who, however upright and public spirited, was young and inexperienced; and he had nothing to do but to place the helm of State affairs in the hands of a ministry. The President of the Council was Riaz Pasha el-Wázán, whose cognomen shows that he was not of Moslem origin. Rising, as Pashas usually rise, from the very lowest class, he determined to conciliate and gratify his new co-religionists by a retrograde and destructive, an anti-European and pro-Mohammedan policy. He went as far in this matter as he safely could; he gagged the Press in Egypt, and he addressed to the Consulate-General of the United States a complaint that the missionaries were attempting to proselytize Moslems. This Ministry ended (mid-February, 1881) with causing a military émeute at Cairo, a thing absolutely unknown to the annals of the Capital. The movement is ominous, and it will injure the City in the estimation of the winter visitors, even more than did the Dengue-fever bred by its filth.

"Again we must rapidly pass over the nicely graduated slights and insults by which Riaz Pasha compelled Colonel Gordon to send in his resignation early in 1880. But the desired effect was attained. Popular rumour pointed out Colonel Mason, an American staff officer, as Colonel Gordon's successor. This, however, was not to be; L'Egitto farà da se, Egypt for the Egyptians, i.e. Turks. The Kafir and the Giaour must be prepared to depart when no longer required; and Riaz Pasha made no secret of his hopes to see them depart without delay.

"All men of experience in Egypt and elsewhere foresaw what would result from Colonel Gordon's compulsory retirement. Under Sherif Pasha or Nubar Pasha measures would have been taken to prevent the revival of the traffic. The old serpent had been scotched, not slain. Money was easily raised at Khartum, Cairo, and Alexandria. The Riaz Ministry contented itself with spreading a report throughout their unhappy hunting-grounds that Colonel Gordon had been dismissed for undue severity to the Jellabs (slave dealers); and such a rumour acting upon the reaction, the rebound was virtually an exhortation to reopen the trade. A successor was soon found in a man of colour, Rauf Bey (now Rauf Pasha), an officer of Berberine or negro origin, known, but not favourably, for his conquest of Somali-land and for strangling the old Amir of Harar after surrender. He was mentioned by Sir Samuel Baker ('Ismailïa,' i. 286, Appendix, 'Raouf Bey') as the bosom friend of the monster Abu Sa'úd. The new Governor-General of the Soudan acted as all knew he would; and his seal presently appeared upon the Government passage-tickets on board slave-transporting steamers (Anti-Slavery Reporter, November, 1880). These papers were given only to be retaken when no longer wanted as 'blinds.'

"Colonel Gordon's orders were cancelled, and the import slave-trade was energetically revived by the Riaz Ministry. The scandalous scenes in the Desert, on the Nile, and even in the suburbs of Cairo, were known to Europeans as well as to natives. When every Consulate-General received the exactest details, these could hardly have escaped the knowledge of her Britannic Majesty's representative. But, as Colonel Gordon says, 'to the generality of our officials all is more or less rose-coloured.' Whether the cause was a commendable desire not to embarrass a struggling and indebted Government, or a laudable ambition to report what sounds pleasant to authoritative ears, the effect undoubtedly was that the English Government and the public were left in utter ignorance of the scandalous revival. It is time for the world to know how the crime was brought to light. 'Honour to whom honour is due' does not appear to be the rule of the Anti-Slavery Society.[1]

"On April 10, 1880, Professor W. Robertson Smith, of Aberdeen, and I, set out together with the view of visiting the Coptic convents in the Desert about the Natron Lakes to the north-west of Cairo. We were detained three days at the village of Abu-Rawásh, near the northernmost pyramid of that name, by a robbery which called for the intervention of the police. The time was not wasted. The traffic of rakik (chattels) was the common topic of conversation amongst the peasants; and the settlement proved to be one of the Nilotic termini of the transport line. We subsequently ascertained that the so-called 'Pyramid Arabs' and the neighbouring hamlets, especially Kardási, were also connected with it. Kardási, indeed, had been convicted of complicity two years ago by Yacoub Artin Bey. Of course the Octroi employés were well acquainted with a traffic so lucrative.

"The guide El-Haji Musá, engaged at Abu-Rawásh, succeeded in missing the way, and in nearly losing himself, by his desire to prevent the two Englishmen meeting a slave Caravan which was then expected. At the Coptic convent of Már Makárius no information was forthcoming from the monks, except that the once active traffic had been closed. But a second guide, Abd el-Aláh, of the Benú Salamáh Bedouins, gave a very different account, which was confirmed by others. The slaves are driven from the large region, popularly called Dar Wadái, and, by the inhabitants, Bargo. The season is the rainy winter, when the water-holes are full; the summer heats effectually end it. At Siwah (the Oasis of Ammon), some eighteen marches from Cairo, the chattels are driven to the Natron Lakes; men, women, children, and babes in arms forming regular caravans. If the adults refuse to walk, they are beaten; and, as a last resource in sickness, they are tied on camels' backs. At the Birket el Birdi, the easternmost of the Natron Lakes, we were shown the sweet-water pools from which the slave-gangs drink, and the places where they are halted to rest and recruit before being smuggled one by one into the capital. Finally, we heard at the Syrian convent that the last convoy of 1880 had passed in March.

"On returning to Cairo (April 21) I met Dr. Leo Reinisch, Professor of Egyptology to the University of Vienna, who, with his wife, had been living for some months in Abyssinia, and on the Upper Nile. He gave all manner of details, and detailed that the slave-trade was assuming an importance which it never had in the days of the ex-Khedive. His account of it, indeed, was disgraceful to the Riaz Ministry. The slave-traders, no longer organized to invade the country, pitch their zaribahs, or armed camps, upon the borders of the man-hunting lands, Dar-Fur, Kordofan, the Niam-Niam country; Monbuttoland, and the whole valley of the Bahr el Ghazál. In these lands, nominally Egyptian, they buy the kidnapped negroes offered to them, and march them through the oasis, and along the Nile at parts where there are no guards. From the terminus of the main depôt, Siwah, the victims are sent to Cairo and Alexandria, and when these lines are dangerous, they are passed through the Oases of Augila to Tunis and Tripoli. Besides the Soudan, there is another branch, the Habesh or Abyssinian, which includes the Galla tribes and the peoples of Shoa, Gouga, Gurágue, and Godjam, whose chief Ras Adal has made his name infamous. The Habesh market does not include the 'Abid' (negroes proper) from the South and West of Khartum. At Zayla the notorious Governor, Abu Beker,[2] and his fifty sons (the former now charged with the foul murder of M. Lucereau), work the Galla mine to great profit. This trade resembles the almost extinct Caucasian, especially the Circassian, so far that parents and relatives sell their children and kinsfolk. It is a small but constant supply of a high-priced article, equally in demand throughout Arabia and Egypt. It requires no apparatus, no outlay of men and money; and, consequently, to suppress it by closing the main artery, the Red Sea, may be pronounced practically impossible. It can only be destroyed by abolishing the demand.

"Before leaving Cairo, Professor Smith, in a private conversation, recounted to her Majesty's Consul-General, who had never heard of the revival, what he had seen and gathered during his excursion. I reported the new tactics, of which the Foreign Office could know nothing, in three official letters to her Majesty's Government (April 27, May 3 and 11). I proposed what I then considered easy and efficacious means of suppressing this disgrace to humanity. The unmanageable duplicity shown in the after proceedings of the Riaz Ministry, and the adoption of plausible measures which serve only to mislead the public, have, since that time, compelled me to change my views, to expect nothing from compromise and to advocate whole measures.

"Meanwhile the revival throve. In March, 1880, a large slave Caravan had been marched down the Nile; this successful speculation emboldened the Jellábs (slave-dealers) and the local authorities to attempt a second, which became a national scandal. Despite the convention with Great Britain, a large slave Caravan was openly conducted into Assiout (Lycopolis), a town of thirty thousand souls, a railway and telegraph station, the seat of a Christian mission, and actually one of the four slave bureaus. The latter had also been established at Cairo, Alexandria, and Tanta, purposely neglecting Assouan (Syene, at the First Cataract), whence there was a regular slave-line to Cairo. But the whole purpose was to satisfy the Consulate-General, or, as Colonel Gordon has it, to 'act whitewash.' Some such object must always be expected in Egypt when there is no European supervision.

"This insult to the Powers was brought to light by Herr Gottfried Roth, a young Swiss teacher in the admirable mission schools of the United States. He had already heard of the March Caravan of three hundred head having been seen at Korosko on the Nile; and he had been informed that another from El-Fashr was expected at Assiout. He at once (April 20) visited the encampment of a thousand camels pitched in the Desert, near the town, and was assured that the traders had brought natron and ostrich feathers, but no slaves. He returned the same evening, and was offered fifty to sixty head for sale, at fifteen to twenty napoleons each. Next morning he went to Cairo, and laid the case before the English Consul-General (Mr. Malet), who, of course, knew nothing of the matter. The outrage was at once reported to Riaz Pasha and to the Ministry, who, doubtless, were well acquainted with all the details. They affected complete ignorance, and thus confessed to the pleasant position of being indebted for the first news to a foreigner. However, foreseeing trouble, they resolved to act at once, and, alla Turchesca, to counteract as much as possible their own action.

"Herr Roth, knowing that the slave camp contained about three hundred dealers, headed by a notorious Ali, applied for a force to arrest the offenders. Next morning he returned to Assiout with a company of 108 regulars and three pashas, including a certain Doromanli. A cordon was drawn round the camp, with sentinels to prevent its being broken; and sixty-seven starveling slave boys (twenty-eight) and girls (thirty-nine) in filthy rags were found lying on the sand. It was a dreadful sight, which drew tears even from the Egyptians.

"Next morning, at three a.m., Herr Roth led the wretches under military escort to the American Mission, the only safe place. At the same time the town was watched, and the chief streets were occupied by guards, with orders not to pass negroes. The Caravan had brought twelve hundred slaves, and almost all were stowed away in the houses.

"The Kazi (judge) sent with Herr Roth by the Riaz Ministry, then opened proceedings. Had he arrested all the negroes in the camp he would have secured testimony to proceed against the local slave-dealers, of whom many slept in the tents. But that was not his object. By the law of Egypt these men were guilty of theft with manslaughter. He took down the names of thirty-five traders, who swore that the chattels were their wives, children, and servants; and he illegally let the rest go. Herr Roth, despite his protests, was utterly unable to prevent this gross miscarriage of justice. Doromanli Pasha, in the presence of Dr. Hogg, Principal of the American Mission, also examined some of the thirty-five prisoners before several of the most influential men of Assiout. Not a few of those arrested confessed that the negroes had been stolen, but when the witness was asked the name of the buyer, the good Pasha silenced the answerer. Herr Roth, after attending the tribunal for a day and a half, left it in disgust at this gross misconduct in a Government official who, however, was doubtless acting under orders of the Ministry.

"The slaves, when questioned in Arabic by the mission, related harrowing stories of their having been kidnapped. Some were stolen from their hearths and homes; others were forcibly dragged away while tending their cattle--min wara el bahim (from behind the cattle) is the phrase generally used. A young wife was thus torn from her husband, and a lad of eighteen showed upon his neck the marks of the chains in which all were bound.

"To abate so great a scandal as that exposed by Herr Roth, the Governor of Assiout was formally removed; but in Egypt that punishment has the less significance because it generally leads to a better appointment. Nor can underpaid officials, as are all Easterns below a certain grade, fairly be expected to refuse the large inducements, varying from $2 to £2 per head, offered by the slave-dealers. The Jellábs were at once set at liberty by Doromanli Pasha, with free permission to enter the town and to return home when they pleased. Of the slaves, forty-two were 'liberated,' that is, were handed over to the Pashas and Beys of the pro-slavery party: and, as Colonel Gordon remarked, a sale had been better for them. At the request of the British Consul-General some sixty were set free and carried for manumission to the baptizoh (police office). The only result was, that on May 29 a boatload of the wretches was sent down to Cairo, and there disappeared. On May 18, an old slave, who went to the Government for 'papers of liberation,' was put in irons, as the marks on his body proved; he refused to obey the Mudir and declare that he had emigrated of his own accord. In brief, out of the twelve hundred head only three hundred, almost all children, were recovered from the buyers.

"So open and notorious a breach of treaty as that of the Assiout caravan compelled the Ministry to do something. Riaz Pasha abolished in June, 1880, the worthless slave bureaux, whose only work had been to send in more blinds by way of reports, and published in the Moniteur Egyptien (June 9th) a circular letter addressed to eight Mudirs or local governors. It ran as follows, and enabled Mr. Malet to assure his Government that the Riaz Ministry was most earnest and energetic in its measures to put down slavery. His Majesty's Ministers acknowledged the Pasha's good works by sending him a decoration, and retrograde Turkey showed her sympathy by advancing him to the grade of Mushir (Field-Marshal)--

"Lettre-Circulaire.

"'Adressée par S.E. le Ministre de l'Intérieur aux Moudirs de Isneh, Keneh, Djirdjeh, Syout, Beni-Souef, Minieh, Fayoum, Djizeh, et Béhéra, en date du 9 Juin, 1880.

"'Vous n'ignorez pas, Monsieur le Moudir, le degré de l'importance qui s'attache à la suppression de la traite des esclaves, ce commerce étant à la fois contraire aux principes mêmes de l'humanité et aux engagements qui lient le Gouvernement de S.A. le Khédive vis-à-vis du Gouvernement de S.M. Britannique, en vertu de la convention intervenue entre les deux Gouvernements.

"'Pour atteindre ce but, certaines mesures avaient déjà été prises, des instructions rigoureuses avaient même été données à tous les agents de l'Autorité, pour qu'ils eussent à se pénétrer de leur devoir et des mesures qu'ils auraient à prendre dans cette question. Les faits récents, dont l'instruction a démontré qu'il a été possible à quelques djellabs (marchands), arrivant avec des caravanes venues de l'intérieur de l'Afrique, d'amener nombre d'esclaves, et de les introduire dans le territoire du Gouvernement, d'une part, et la négligence des agents de l'Autorité dans cette partie du territoire qui a donné lieu à leur poursuite et condemnation, d'autre part, ont crée pour le Gouvernement l'obligation de prendre des mesures plus grandes et plus efficaces pour supprimer complètement ce honteux trafic, et de renouveler ses instructions, et avertissements à tous ses agents, afin de leur rappeler leurs devoirs et la responsabilité qui en est la conséquence.

"'A cet effet, le Gouvernement vient de créer un service spécial pour supprimer la traite, empêcher l'entrée en Egypte d'aucun esclave, et punir toute personne qui oserait entreprendre un commerce aussi révoltant, et tout agent de l'Autorité qui négligerait de remplir son devoir.

"'Le Gouvernement a confié la direction de ce service à M. le Comte della Sala, sous les ordres duquel l'Autorité a placé un nombre suffisant de soldats et d'agents, et lui a désigné pour siège principal de son service la ville de Syout. La mission du Comte della Sala comprend toutes les provinces et toutes les parties de la Haute-Egypte jusqu'à Djizeh, à l'est et à l'ouest, et depuis Djizeh jusque et y compris la province de Béhéra, à l'ouest du Nil; elle comprend aussi la surveillance et la préservation de toutes les routes et de tous les chemins, de tous les déserts à l'ouest, les limites des oasis intérieurs et extérieurs jusqu'à Mariouette.

"'S.A. le Khédive a donné au Comte della Sala pleins pouvoirs pour l'exécution et l'accomplissement de la charge qui lui est confiée.

"'C'est pour le même effet que je vous adresse cette lettre, Monsieur le Moudir. Vous recevrez plusieurs exemplaires de la convention passée entre le Gouvernement Egyptien et le Gouvernement de Sa Majesté Britannique, ainsi que des règlements qui établissent les obligations des agents de l'Autorité, les mesures à prendre, et les peines bien graves à encourir par toute personne qui entreprendrait ce trafic ignominieux. Ces dispositions serviront de guide à votre conduite et action; vous aurez en outre à les faire publier parmi tous les agents et toutes les communes placés sous votre direction. Vous reconnaîtrez Monsieur le Comte della Sala comme étant le chef unique de ce service, et devant être l'intermédiare entre vous et l'Autorité Supérieure pour tout ce qui concerne ce service. Toutes les correspondances qui s'y rattachent doivent émaner de lui, ou lui être adressées. Vous devez suivre ses ordres et ses prescriptions avec la plus grande exactitude et la plus grande vigilance, et lui prêter immédiatement et sans le moindre retard toutes facilités et assistance quelconque qu'il pourra se trouver dans le cas de vous demander relativement à ce service.'

"Despite this show of indignation and threats of severity, the revival went on merrily. Colonel Gordon had calculated that fifty thousand head annually leave what may now be called Equatorial Egypt to supply the households and harems of Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and other Moslem lands. Of these, some thirty thousand are run across direct to Jeddah, Hodaydeh, and other neighbouring ports with the full consent of the local authorities, who levy a capitation tax of ten piastres. During the April-May of 1880, about three thousand head, at the lowest figure, found a ready market in Egypt. Although open sale was forbidden, and the old slave market has been sold, there are still bagnios in the Moslem quarter of the capital.

"Herr Roth, well knowing that other Caravans were expected, applied for an escort of fifty men to scour the desert oases and borders of the desert, in which the 'captives' were stowed away; he might have set free one thousand or so, but he was refused. And he had an unpleasant correspondence with Baron de King, the French Consul-General, for reporting as one of the most energetic of the slave-dealers at Assiout, a Captain M. Magar Damian, the French Consular Agent. He was charged with trop de zèle, and was told officially, that is, unpleasantly, to mind his own business. However, he did good work by printing a map of the Libyan Desert, showing the five favourite stations for stowaways. These are chiefly the oases of Khargeh (El-Khárijeh, the 'outer') and Dakhleh (El-Dákhilah, the 'inner'), and neither had even a sentinel to stop the traffic. From the latter (in N. lat. 25°) the Caravans pass on to the Faráfarah Oasis and to Assiout, or to El-Bahriyeh and the Siwah Oases.[3] These favourite depôts are now guarded by a fair number of men; and sections of companies with dromedaries are also stationed in the Fazyúm, a notorious slaving province; at Turá, near Cairo, where the fellahs hide their goods in the Mukattam Hills; at Abusír, near Lake Mareotis; at Wardán, to command the line of the Natron Lakes, and at a few other crucial points.

"Despite the Ministerial Circular, slaves poured in. Shortly after mid-May, eighty captives were taken at the Bolák Dakrúr station, on the west of the Nile and within sight of Cairo. They were found to be part of a batch of a hundred and twenty-six; the other forty-six had probably been sent forward and sold. In early June, some six weeks after the Assiout scandal, a third Caravan was reported to be making for that station from Dar-Fur, along the inland highway. When it arrived only thirty men and a hundred and sixty camels were counted: the slavers had heard of the capture and had left their chattels in the desert, some say with cut throats.[4] A fourth body was reported to be camping near one of the oases. About the same time a boat with ten slave-girls left Assiout for Cairo; on June 10, four Circassian girls were sold--one at Alexandria for £100, another at Assiout, and the two remaining at the capital, where they were secured for the highest harems. This branch of white slavery, though much reduced, still continues. In October, 1880, two white girls of eight and twelve years old were sold without opposition at Alexandria, and even on January 4, 1881, four more were landed at that port.

"In June also a Nubian or Abyssinian 'beauty' was bought at the Meydán, or Moslem quarter of Alexandria, for £40 to £50, while two other Nubian girls fetched £12 to £15. This cheapness of an expensive commodity tells its own tale. In fact, the prices have not varied between 1874 and 1880. Nubian boys in the former year fetched from $40 to $60; girls, $45 to $70; and adults, $40 to $100. The relative prices of Abyssinians were $50 to $80, $80 to $150, and $85 to $200. In 1875 the values rose about 15 per cent.; and in 1878 they fell 12 to 18 per cent. In 1879-80 the prices 'ruled firm.'[5]

"To note a few more individual cases. A negro applied to the United States Mission at Assiout for aid in recovering his young wife, who had been cruelly beaten and put in irons by her master. This was the practice of the Bureaux when old slaves legally demanded their liberty. It was also reported to the mission that from forty to fifty slave-girls, driven by a Cairo dealer, were for sale in a yard at El-Farshút, a town three and a half days' march from Assiout. In August a hundred slaves were reported to be kept in the house of the Shaykh-el-Balad (Mayor) of the Khargeh Oasis, who demanded an honorarium of £1 to £2 per head. In October two Nubian girls, belonging to Mustafa Pasha el-Arab, a pensioned officer of Government, having been cruelly beaten, obtained a certificate of freedom from the Police Office, Alexandria; they were, notwithstanding, recovered by their inhuman master, who brought against them the usual unjust accusation of theft. The 'counter-charge' had become a system. Before 1873 an ill-treated slave could generally obtain legal manumission. This humane measure became obsolete under the present retrograde and anti-European Ministry. Slaves have even been punished for calumniating their owners.[6] No more need be said concerning individual sales: these pages could be filled with such cases; but their object is to take a broader view of the subject.

"To return to the Riaz Circular. In May, 1880, Mr. John Scott, the learned and upright judge of the Supreme Court, Alexandria, had proposed to Mr. Malet and Major Baring to appoint an English chief for the 'Service of the Suppression of the Slave-trade,' newly organized to take the place of the absurd 'Bureaux.' But the department was to be made inefficient. There are three great trunk roads for slave importation--the Nile, the Western Desert, and the Red Sea. The superintendent should have had charge of all three, with assistants at Maritime Masáwwah and Suakin; and at Assouan and Khartoum, on the Nile line, he should have been provided with steamers on both waters, with a roving commission to visit all the ports, and powers to establish slave approvers. In fact, he should have been enabled to organize suppression, or at least repression. There are sundry of our countrymen perfectly fitted for the post, notably Dr. Lowe, now Sanitary Inspector at Alexandria, who served under Colonel Gordon, and who is well acquainted with Upper Egypt and the Soudan. But Mr. Malet was too cosmopolitan, too 'Anglophobie,' to prefer a compatriot, and he chose for nominee Count della Sala, a 'man of independent position, with his heart in the business.' Possibly the hope was quieta non movere, and to see work done, but without publicity or severity. A certain Ali Riaz Pasha was made Governor-General of the Egyptian Coast of the Red Sea, where the Port of Suakin had become notorious for shipping slaves.[7] The Commissioner's appointment was worth having, thirty thousand francs a year and the rank of Pasha (Major-General), under ten months' service. Count della Sala was supplied with an aide-de-camp, Colonel Turneisen, and a secretary, Dr. Dutrieux. This Belgian physician, who had travelled with the Belgian exploring expedition to Central Africa, presently left the 'service,' apparently because its operations were too restricted.[8] An agency was also offered to Herr Roth; the pay was 200 francs a month; but it was to be a secret, and the agent was to bind himself not to correspond with the newspapers, nor to write upon subjects connected with the slave. The young Swiss's honesty refused the attempt to silence him. The new department, whose range was limited by Alexandria and Assouan, doubtless, was intended to show good; but it has done more than the intended good. Another mere sop as to foreign Powers, it has proved that no such half-measures are of the slightest use. When the highest native dignitaries support the abuse, which has the active sympathies of the public, and where foreign officials, with a few exceptions, know nothing of the people, and are almost indifferent to the existence of slavery, there can be but one way of abating the nuisance.

"Though appointed early in June, Count della Sala contented himself with preparations till August. He then left Cairo for Assiout; and, in early September, found himself at Assouan, the southernmost point of his beat. With his escort of four hundred infantry and sixty cavalry, and acting with energy and discretion, he had little difficulty in temporarily closing the line of the Nile. But all foresaw the effect of that proceeding, which merely diverted the traffic to the Red Sea. The Jellábs must have laughed consumedly at the naïve simplicity of Europeans, so strong in arms, so weak in wits. The result was, despite the new 'service,' an immense increase of activity in the slave-trade. Count della Sala complained (November 19th) to Riaz Pasha that his work had been misreported. The Berberine Governor-General of the Soudan declared that the 'slave-trade was to-day unknown on the coasts of Red Sea,' and the Ministerial newspapers (Moniteur, Egyptien, etc.) assumed a tone of offended dignity. 'What right have people to complain when Egypt was never so active in the suppression of slavery, when we are spending £14,000 a year!' True, but notwithstanding the import notably increased, and people will look at results. To the boast that six hundred slaves (a mere handful) had been liberated, it asked how many slavers had been arrested en flagrant délit and hanged. It had a right to show surprise when the answer was 'none.'

"Thus we can perfectly appreciate the value of the following supplementary circular of July, 1880:--

"'MINISTÈRE DE L'INTÉRIEUR.

"'Lettre-Circulaire adressée à tous les Moudirs.

"Malgré les mesures rigoureuses, prises en vu d'empêcher la traité, et en dépit des peines prescrites à l'égard des Djellabes (marchands) qui osent encore se livrer à ce trafic, ces derniers ne reculent pas devant l'entreprise d'amener des personnes en qualité d'esclaves.

"'Il est incontestable que les Djellabes ne continuent ce commerce que par ce qu'ils trouvent des acquéreurs qui achètent leur marchandise et qui entretiennent ainsi à leur profit une ressource de bénéfices considérables. Il est élémentaire, en effet, que faute d'acheteurs les Djellabes auraient depuis longtemps abandonné ce commerce, et comme conséquence le Gouvernement ne se serait plus trouvé dans la nécessité de surmonter bien des difficultés et de supporter tant de dépenses. On aurait évité aussi l'application des peines graves qui atteignent plusiers des Djellabes et autres dans le but de supprimer complètement la traite.

"'En conséquence, et considérant qu'aux termes de la convention intervenue entre le Gouvernement du Khédive et le Gouvernement de S.M. Britannique toute personne qui prendrait part à la traite des individus amenés dans les conditions précitées est considérée comme complice du Djellabe au double point de vue du crime et de la peine qu'il entraîne, il a été jugé nécessaire d'avertir que toute personne qui achèterait des esclaves amenés et vendus frauduleusement par les Djellabes, est soumise aux mêmes peines qui frappent ces derniers, en vertu du règlement relatif à la suppression de la traite.

"'Le présent avertissement est donné au public afin qu'il soit connu de tous, que toute personne qui s'exposerait à commettre le crime ci-dessus signalé s'attirerait elle-même l'application de le même peine prescrite à rencontre des Djellabes.

"Le Ministre de l'Intérieur,

"'(Signé) RIAZ.

"'Caire, 31 Juillet, 1880.'

"The moment the Chief of the 'service' returned to Cairo the slave import again distributed itself between the Red Sea and the Nile. The Riaz Ministry, however, did not fail to make the most of the temporary shift. A German employé, Giegler Pasha, Deputy-Governor of the Soudan, a lieutenant of Rauf the Berberine, and ipsis Muslimis Muslimior, was put forward to romance for the benefit of his adopted country. Accordingly, he wrote to the official journal of Cairo (October 11th) emphatically denying that the traffic of slaves had increased in the Soudan since the departure of Colonel Gordon. He denounced such attacks as 'unjust and ignoble, and offensive to truth;' and he ended by a personal attack on Dr. Lowe, an officer universally respected. At Khartum itself the trade, it is true, has been extinct; at least, slave Caravans are no longer marched there, and Herr Giegler had not visited the unhappy hunting-grounds since 1876.

"But this German official's assertions were utterly opposed to fact. Schweinfurth, of 'The Heart of Africa,' who had lately reported the murder of King Munga, of Monbutto, by Yusuf Pasha, Mudir of Senár, forwarded (November 11th) a report from Herr Richard Buchta, a young Austrian, who had lived three years (1878-80) in the valley of the Bahr el-Ghazal, and in Mtesa-land, working as a photographic artist. He named seven Mudirs engaged in shipping slaves, one of them receiving two dollars a head: he accused the Captains and crews of the Government steamers of the White Nile as implicated in the trade; he forwarded a list of prices paid for 'chattels' ($50 to $200); he reported meeting a Caravan of a hundred head at Metemma, in June, 1880, and he declared that negroes were shipped for Jeddah with passage tickets granted at the Government office, Khartum (Anti-Slavery Reporter, November, 1880). His statements were confirmed by a letter (September 21st) to La Finanza, an Italo-Egyptian paper, by Messrs. Wilson and Felkin, who had travelled from Uganda, and found the trade thriving in Kordofan, Dar-Fur, and other Egyptian provinces of Equatorial Africa.

"The utter failure of the 'Service for the Suppression of Slavery' bore fruit in Egypt. Conceding that the Government was disposed seriously to carry out the provisions of the Anglo-Egyptian Convention, sensible men found that this instrument, despite its apparent stringency, abounds in faults and omissions. There is no need to quote the text in extenso; it is given in that popular publication the Anti-Slavery Reporter (November 1st, 1877), and in the official collections of such documents, dated August 4th, 1877. It was signed by Cherif Pasha, one of the most straightforward statesmen known to this part of the world; and it was followed by a decree of the ex-Khedive, Ismail, on the 17th of the same month.

"Briefly to note the defects of the seven Articles. No. I makes all public trading in slaves, negroes, and Abyssinians, illegal, vaguely punishable by law. Good; but also Article II., which condemns slavers guilty of vol avec meutre, and would punish the Jellábs as murderers, is so severe that it defeats its own object. Article III. promises well in favour of released slaves, who, it gratuitously assumes, cannot be returned to their homes; but does not specify the measures. Article IV. pursues as murderers all 'mutilators' of, and 'traffickers' in, children; the former would be justly punished; but the latter would escape. Article V. refers to a special ordinance concerning slave traffic in the Egyptian dominions. Article VI. concedes the right of search, but allows an open door of escape for slaving vessels; and, finally, Article VII. fixes the date when the Convention shall become operative. Annex A. establishes a special slave department at Alexandria and Cairo to carry out the Convention. Of this mere 'blind' sufficient has already been said. A supplement of four articles prohibits private sale and transfer of black slaves from family to family, after seven years (1884) in Egypt proper and twelve years (1889) in the Soudan. This measure should have been made immediate under pain of fine and imprisonment; the custom has long been the favourite excuse and subterfuge for the import trade; and now, while wholesale is forbidden, retail is permitted. Lastly, the supplementary article, No. III., abolishes the traffic in white slaves (i.e. Circassians), male and female, after the expiration of seven years (1884). Here again is another undoubted error of judgment; the white 'chattel,' a mere article of luxury and luxure, should have been made at once contraband.

"Nor was Colonel Gordon's scheme for the suppression of slavery less criticized. That energetic officer again proposed (Anti-Slavery Reporter, p. 120, November, 1880) a permanent Consul at Suakin, the great outlet of North-eastern Africa; a Vice-Consulate at Masáwwah, and a Consul-General for the Soudan, with a roving commission, and head-quarters at malarious Khartum. He would also--(1) register existing slaves; (2) proclaim that non-registered slaves are free; and (2) forbid Arabs passing into the Bahr el-Ghazal basin without passport or guarantee that the travellers will not buy slaves. The same precaution was to be taken for Dar-Fur, 'of whose population at least two-thirds has been carried away into slavery.' But Consuls are not dictators--they may be useful in reporting, but they cannot put down the scandal. In fact, all these measures are mere palliatives when humanity calls aloud for a cure. We must strike at the fons et origo mali.

"In this conviction I addressed my Government (February 7th, 1881) a letter upon the detestable traffic in eunuchs. All forms of slavery are as contrary to the spirit of El-Islam as to that of Christianity, but Mohammed especially forbade the employment of unsexed men, lest a demand be thereby created (Hidayah, vol. iv. p. 121). Article IV. of the Anglo-Egyptian Convention rightly punishes the offence with death; and no one would regret to see the murderer hanged when a boy dies under the mutilating razor. Yet it is calculated that not less than eight thousand of these unfortunates are annually imported into Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. As a rule, the 'Tawashi' are now an obsolete article of luxury, used to sit at the doors of wealthy Beys and Pashas, and to escort 'Harems' when driving out.

"The foci of the supply are the Soudan, Nubia, Abyssinia, Kordofan, and Dar-Fur, especially the Messalmiyeh district. One of the frontier towns is called Towasheh (eunuchs), from the infamous traffic there conducted by Moslem 'Fakih,' or religious teachers.[9] Many are emasculated in the district between Majarah, or Majarash, and the port of Masáwwah. There are also shambles at Mbadr, near the harbour of Tajurrah, where Yusuf Bey, the Governor, last year unsexed some forty boys, including the brother of a hostile African Chief. All these places are now Egyptian.

"The nature of the subject forbids details in pages intended for the public eye; but, in communicating with my Government, I have been as explicit as decency permits, and my description makes the blood run cold. The subjects range between four and ten; if this operation be performed on older boys, they seldom survive. At the age of ten the loss may be seventy per cent., and even in the case of younger children about one-fourth, to state a low figure, die from the razor. By this murderous operation, boys who would fetch from £5 to £10 rise in value to £25 and £80. Here, then, the manumission might well begin. All eunuchs should be set free without compensation to the owners, who have broken the Commandments of their own Lawgiver by purchasing them; and the extreme penalty of the Convention should be carried out in the cases of notorious mutilators, who have slain literally their hundreds.[10]

"The foregoing pages prove, if they prove anything, that the Egyptian Government has done what it could, in fact what we may characterize as its best, and has failed; that when the course of slave importation is blocked upon the Nile, or the desert, it shifts to the Red Sea, or vice versâ; that the stowing away of 'chattels' in the various oases greatly increases their miseries; and that the numbers imported and the prices ruling in 1880 do not materially differ from those of 1873.

"The abolition of slavery is unpopular amongst the mass of Egyptians, whose prejudices in its favour are often charged upon their faith. On the contrary, Mohammed went as far as any innovator could go, in attacking a national custom of immemorial origin. He nowhere speaks of a legitimate source of slavery, except those taken captive in war, men who would otherwise be put to death; and, even in this case, he enjoins their being set free on payment of a fair ransom. 'You all come one from another and from Adam, the common father,' he exclaims. In one place he enjoins that alms-giving should buy the freedom of slaves; in another he expressly commands, 'Show kindness to your slaves;' and in another (Korán, chap, xxiv.) he says, 'If any one of your slaves asks from you his freedom, give it to him, if you judge him worthy of it; give them a little of the goods which Allah granted you.'[11] And it may be noted that amongst Moslems of all sects the name of Jelláb, the 'seller of men,' is synonymous with infamy.

"Egypt has now reached that grade of civilization when she can afford to dispense with the corvée (forced labour) and with every form of slavery. All Egyptians know that the slave mostly leads an idle and useless life; and that reduced cultivation reduces revenue. All right-thinking Egyptians will rejoice to see the pauper freeman employed, instead of the rich man's slave, to see honest labour relieved from the curse of servile competition. But there must be pressure from without. The present state of things is unfair to all. It is unfair to the Prince, whose humanity revolts against the institution, but who cannot abolish it single-handed. It is unfair to the Government, which is impotent, and will be impotent in presence of public prejudice. It is unfair to the Jelláb, who is legally doomed to death, and socially encouraged by large profits to persist in his organized murders. And I need scarcely say that it is unfair to the slave, whose hard lot is made harder by the impotent attempts to 'suppress' him. Briefly, there is no possibility of arresting the supply except by cutting off the demand. It was the same in Western Africa, where the whole British fleet, much less a 'Coffin Squadron,' could not have barred the Middle Passage, had not the Southern United States, Brazil, and finally Cuba, refused to buy. Hence, for the last decade, not a slave has left the Western Coast, and we now keep a cruiser or two where, in 1865, we had sixteen.

"It is certain--and let the reader duly weigh the fact--that the blow must come from Head-quarters in the shape of an immediate and absolute manumission of slaves domestic and prædial in every part of Egypt. The 'international supervision,' an idea lately ventilated, could do no good. The proposed registration of slaves will prove a snare and a delusion. We must not salve the core that wants the knife. A decree abolishing the legal status of slavery would be a grand and generous policy, spontaneously anticipating the period when the public opinion of Europe will enforce the measure. Such a decree would meet with universal favour, not only in England, which has ever denounced this blasphemy against humanity, and in France, whose several Republican Governments have always been inspired with the noblest sentiments upon the subject of freeing the slave; it would be applauded throughout the Civilized World.

"Nor would this decree entail, as it appears at first sight, a formal interference with the rights of property, even conceding to man the right to hold property in man. The proclamation would not cause the good slave-master to lose his 'chattels.' The cruel and the niggardly would lose them, and would deserve their losses. At the same time, if judged advisable to follow the example of 1834, the owners might receive a certain indemnity for slaves purchased before 1877; and a small loan would easily be raised for the purpose. Grants of land, free of taxation for some years, might be given to the industrious liberti who wish to remain in Egypt; the others might be established in colonies at Bogos and the many healthy sites near the highlands of Abyssinia. But these are mere details. The essential point is a decree for general and absolute manumission.

"And when humanity is satisfied by setting men free, it is to be hoped that Egypt will do something towards the prevention of cruelty to animals. The Egyptian is not brutal; his is the thoughtless cruelty of the child, who cannot realize the fact that beasts suffer like himself. Such is the force of custom that a donkey boy rarely passes a donkey in the street without dealing a cut of the jeríd, or palm stick. There have been various abortive attempts to organize protective measures; but without the active co-operation of the native authorities none can succeed, and the retrograde Ministry of Riaz Pasha has proved a stumbling-block in the way of all improvement.

"Financially speaking, Egypt is now on the path of Progress. Let her show herself worthy of the good fortune that awaits her, and of her high destinies as a civilizing Power in the barbarous regions of the 'Dark Continent.' Let her gratify the World, and secure for herself the blessings of all good men by a decree abolishing utterly and for ever the sale of human beings--the 'league with death and covenant with hell.'

"RICHARD F. BURTON."

[1] "Their publications have carefully mentioned every traveller who reported the 'steady increase of the trade in slaves,' and have carefully ignored Professor Smith and me."

[2] "Egyptian Gazette, December 28, 1880."

[3] "The reduced map is given in the Supplement to the Anti-Slavery Reporter, September, 1880."

[4] "This detail is given in a private letter to the writer."

[5] "Il Messaggiere Egiziano, Alexandria, August 7, 1880."

[6] "L'Echo d'Orient of Alexandria, December 3, 1880."

[7] "An account of a Caravan and prices is given in the Egyptian Gazette of August 21, 1880."

[8] "Anti-Slavery Reporter, January, 1881."

[9] "For this particular see Dr. Lowe's valuable communication in the Anti-Slavery Reporter (September, 1880, p. 87). He is personally acquainted with the ground."

[10] "'And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.'--EXOD. xxi. 16."

[11] "M. Jules Sakakini, corresponding member of the Anti-Slavery Society, has treated this matter in the Echo d'Orient, December 22nd, 1880."

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