Читать книгу The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2) - Lady Isabel Burton - Страница 23

"The only scrap of autobiography we have from Richard Burton's pen," said Alfred Richard Bates, "was written very early in life, whilst in India, and dates thirty years ago. It is so characteristic it deserves to be perpetuated:—

"I extract the following few lines from a well-known literary journal as a kind of excuse for venturing, unasked, upon a scrap of autobiography. As long as critics content themselves with bedevilling one's style, discovering that one's slang is 'vulgar,' and one's attempts at drollery 'failures,' one should, methinks, listen silently to their ideas of 'gentility,' and accept their definitions of wit, reserving one's own opinion upon such subjects. For the British author in this, our modern day, engages himself as clown in a great pantomime, to be knocked down, and pulled up, slashed, tickled, and buttered à discrétion for the benefit of a manual-pleasantry-loving Public. So it would be weakness in him to complain of bruised back, scored elbows, and bumped head.

"Besides, the treatment you receive varies prodigiously according to the temper and the manifold influences from without that operate upon the gentleman that operates upon you. For instance—

"''Tis a failure at being funny,' says surly Aristarchus, when, for some reason or other, he dislikes you or your publisher.

"'It is a smart book,' opines another, who has no particular reason to be your friend.

"'Narrated with freshness of thought,' declares a third, who takes an honest pride in 'giving the devil his due.'

"'Very clever,' exclaims the amiable critic, who for some reason or another likes you or your publisher.

"'There is wit and humour in these pages,' says the gentleman who has some particular reason to be your friend.

"'Evinces considerable talent.'

"And—

"'There is genius in this book,' declare the dear critics who in any way identify themselves or their interests with you.

"Now for the extract:—

"'Mr. Burton was, it appears, stationed for several years in Sind with his regiment, and it is due to him to say that he has set a good example to his fellow-subalterns by pursuing so diligently his inquiries into the language, literature, and customs of the native population by which he was surrounded. We are far from accepting all his doctrines on questions of Eastern policy, especially as regards the treatment of natives; but we are sensible of the value of the additional evidence which he has brought forward on many important questions. For a young man, he seems to have adopted some very extreme opinions; and it is perhaps not too much to say, that the fault from which he has most to fear, not only as an author, but as an Indian officer, is a disregard of those well-established rules of moderation which no one can transgress with impunity.'

"The greatest difficulty a raw writer on Indian subjects has to contend with, is a proper comprehension of the ignorance crasse which besets the mind of the home-reader and his oracle the critic. What a knowledge these lines do show of the opportunity for study presented to the Anglo-Indian subaltern serving with his corps! Part of the time when I did duty with mine we were quartered at Ghárrá, a heap of bungalows surrounded by a wall of milk-bush; on a sandy flat, near a dirty village whose timorous inhabitants shunned us as walking pestilences. No amount of domiciliary visiting would have found a single Sindian book in the place, except the accounts of the native shopkeepers; and, to the best of my remembrance, there was not a soul who could make himself intelligible in the common medium of Indian intercourse—Hindostani. An ensign stationed at Dover Castle might write 'Ellis's Antiquities;' a sous-lieutenant with his corps at Boulogne might compose the 'Legendaire de la Morinie,' but Ghárrá was sufficient to paralyse the readiest pen that ever coursed over foolscap paper.

"Now, waiving, with all due modesty, the unmerited compliment of 'good boy,' so gracefully tendered to me, I proceed to the judgment which follows it, my imminent peril of 'extreme opinions.' If there be any value in the 'additional evidence' I have 'brought forward on important questions,' the reader may, perchance, be curious to know how that evidence was collected. So, without further apology, I plunge into the subject.

"After some years of careful training for the Church in the north and south of France, Florence, Naples, and the University of Pisa, I found myself one day walking the High Street, Oxford, with all the emotions which a Parisian exquisite of the first water would experience on awaking—at 3 p.m.—in 'Dandakaran's tangled wood.'

"To be brief, my 'college career' was highly unsatisfactory. I began a 'reading man,' worked regularly twelve hours a day, failed in everything—chiefly, I flattered myself, because Latin hexameters and Greek iambics had not entered into the list of my studies—threw up the classics, and returned to old habits of fencing, boxing, and single-stick, handling the 'ribbons,' and sketching facetiously, though not wisely, the reverend features and figures of certain half-reformed monks, calling themselves 'fellows.' My reading also ran into bad courses—Erpenius, Zadkiel, Falconry, Cornelius Agrippa, and the Art of Pluck.

"At last the Afghan War broke out. After begging the paternal authority in vain for the Austrian service, the Swiss Guards at Naples, and even the Légion étrangère, I determined to leave Oxford, coûte qui coûte. The testy old lady, Alma Mater, was easily persuaded to consign, for a time, to 'country nursing' the froward brat who showed not a whit of filial regard for her. So, after two years, I left Trinity, without a 'little go,' in a high dog-cart—a companion in misfortune too-tooing lustily through a 'yard of tin,' as the dons started up from their game of bowls to witness the departure of the forbidden vehicle. Thus having thoroughly established the fact that I was fit for nothing but to be 'shot at for sixpence a day,' and as those Afghans (how I blessed their name!) had cut gaps in many a regiment, my father provided me with a commission in the Indian army, and started me as quickly as feasible for the 'Land of the Sun.'

"So, my friends and fellow-soldiers, I may address you in the words of the witty thief—slightly altered from Gil Blas—'Blessings on the dainty pow of the old dame who turned me out of her house; for had she shown clemency I should now doubtless be a dyspeptic Don, instead of which I have the honour to be a lieutenant, your comrade.'

"As the Bombay pilot sprang on board, twenty mouths agape over the gangway, all asked one and the same question. Alas! the answer was a sad one!—the Afghans had been defeated—the avenging army had retreated! The twenty mouths all ejaculated a something unfit for ears polite.

"To a mind thoroughly impressed with the sentiment that

'Man wants but little here below,

Nor wants that little long,'

the position of an Ensign in the Hon. E. I. Company's Service is a very satisfactory one. He has a horse or two, part of a house, a pleasant Mess, plenty of pale ale, as much shooting as he can manage, and an occasional invitation to a dance, where there are thirty-two cavaliers to three dames, or to a dinner-party when a chair unexpectedly falls vacant. But some are vain enough to want more, and of these fools was I.

"In India two roads lead to preferment. The direct highway is 'service;'—getting a flesh wound, cutting down a few of the enemy, and doing something eccentric, so that your name may creep into a despatch. The other path, study of the languages, is a rugged and tortuous one, still you have only to plod steadily along its length, and, sooner or later, you must come to a 'staff appointment.' Bien entendu, I suppose you to be destitute of or deficient in Interest whose magic influence sets you down at once a heaven-born Staff Officer, at the goal which others must toil to reach.

"A dozen lessons from Professor Forbes and a native servant on board the John Knox enabled me to land with éclat as a griff, and to astonish the throng of palanquin bearers that jostled, pushed, and pulled me at the pier head, with the vivacity and nervousness of my phraseology. And I spent the first evening in company with one Dosabhai Sohrabji, a white-bearded Parsee, who, in his quality of language-master, had vernacularized the tongues of Hormuzd knows how many generations of Anglo-Indian subalterns.

"The corps to which I was appointed was then in country quarters at Baroda, in the land of Gujerat; the journey was a long one, the difficulty of finding good instructors there was great, so was the expense, moreover fevers abounded; and, lastly, it was not so easy to obtain leave of absence to visit the Presidency, where candidates for the honours of language are examined. These were serious obstacles to success; they were surmounted, however, in six months, at the end of which time I found myself in the novel position of 'passed interpreter in Hindostani.'

"My success—for I had distanced a field of eleven—encouraged me to a second attempt, and though I had to front all the difficulties over again, in four months my name appeared in orders as qualified to interpret in the Guzerattee tongue.

"Meanwhile the Ameers of Sind had exchanged their palaces at Haydarábád for other quarters not quite so comfortable at Hazareebagh, and we were ordered up to the Indus for the pleasant purpose of acting police there. Knowing the Conqueror's chief want, a man who could speak a word of his pet conquest's vernacular dialect, I had not been a week at Karáchee before I found a language-master and a book. But the study was undertaken invitâ minervâ. We were quartered in tents, dust-storms howled over us daily, drills and brigade parades were never ending, and, as I was acting interpreter to my regiment, courts-martial of dreary length occupied the best part of my time. Besides, it was impossible to work in such an atmosphere of discontent. The seniors abhorred the barren desolate spot, with all its inglorious perils of fever, spleen, dysentery, and congestion of the brain, the juniors grumbled in sympathy, and the Staff officers, ordered up to rejoin the corps—it was on field service—complained bitterly of having to quit their comfortable appointments in more favoured lands without even a campaign in prospect. So when, a month or two after landing in the country, we were transferred from Karáchee to Ghárrá—purgatory to the other locale—I threw aside Sindí for Maharattee, hoping, by dint of reiterated examinations, to escape the place of torment as soon as possible. It was very like studying Russian in an English country-town; however, with the assistance of Molesworth's excellent dictionary, and the regimental pundit, or schoolmaster, I gained some knowledge of the dialect, and proved myself duly qualified in it at Bombay. At the same time a brother subaltern and I had jointly leased a Persian moonshee, one Mirza Mohammed Hosayn, of Shiraz. Poor fellow, after passing through the fires of Sind unscathed, he returned to his delightful land for a few weeks, to die there!—and we laid the foundation of a lengthened course of reading in that most elegant of Oriental languages.

"Now it is a known fact that a good Staff appointment has the general effect of doing away with one's bad opinion of any place whatever. So when, by the kindness of a friend whose name his modesty prevents my mentioning, the Governor of Sind was persuaded to give me the temporary appointment of Assistant in the Survey, I began to look with interest upon the desolation around me. The country was a new one, so was its population, so was their language. After reading all the works published upon the subject, I felt convinced that none but Mr. Crow and Captain J. MacMurdo had dipped beneath the superficies of things. My new duties compelled me to spend the cold season in wandering over the districts, levelling the beds of canals, and making preparatory sketches for a grand survey. I was thrown so entirely amongst the people as to depend upon them for society, and the 'dignity,' not to mention the increased allowances of a Staff officer, enabled me to collect a fair stock of books, and to gather around me those who could make them of any use. So, after the first year, when I had Persian at my fingers'-ends, sufficient Arabic to read, write, and converse fluently, and a superficial knowledge of that dialect of Punjaubee which is spoken in the wilder parts of the province, I began the systematic study of the Sindian people, their mariners and their tongue.

"The first difficulty was to pass for an Oriental, and this was as necessary as it was difficult. The European official in India seldom, if ever, sees anything in its real light, so dense is the veil which the fearfulness, the duplicity, the prejudice, and the superstitions of the natives hang before his eyes. And the white man lives a life so distinct from the black, that hundreds of the former serve through what they call their 'term of exile' without once being present at a circumcision feast, a wedding, or a funeral. More especially the present generation, whom the habit and the means of taking furloughs, the increased facility for enjoying ladies' society, and, if truth be spoken, a greater regard for appearances, if not a stricter code of morality, estrange from their dusky fellow-subjects every day more and more. After trying several characters, the easiest to be assumed was, I found, that of a half-Arab, half-Iranian, such as may be met with in thousands along the northern shore of the Persian Gulf. The Sindians would have detected in a moment the difference between my articulation and their own, had I attempted to speak their vernacular dialect, but they attributed the accent to my strange country, as naturally as a home-bred Englishman would account for the bad pronunciation of a foreigner calling himself partly Spanish, partly Portuguese. Besides, I knew the countries along the Gulf by heart from books, I had a fair knowledge of the Shiah form of worship prevalent in Persia, and my poor moonshee was generally at hand to support me in times of difficulty, so that the danger of being detected—even by a 'real Simon Pure'—was a very inconsiderable one.

"With hair falling upon his shoulders, a long beard, face and hands, arms and feet, stained with a thin coat of henna, Mirza Abdullah of Bushire—your humble servant—set out upon many and many a trip. He was a bazzaz, a vendor of fine linen, calicoes, and muslins—such chapmen are sometimes admitted to display their wares, even in the sacred harem, by 'fast' and fashionable dames—and he had a little pack of bijouterie and virtù reserved for emergencies. It was only, however, when absolutely necessary that he displayed his stock-in-trade; generally, he contented himself with alluding to it on all possible occasions, boasting largely of his traffic, and asking a thousand questions concerning the state of the market. Thus he could walk into most men's houses, quite without ceremony; even if the master dreamed of kicking him out, the mistress was sure to oppose such measure with might and main. He secured numberless invitations, was proposed to by several papas, and won, or had to think he won, a few hearts; for he came as a rich man and he stayed with dignity, and he departed exacting all the honours. When wending his ways he usually urged a return of visit in the morning, but he was seldom to be found at the caravanserai he specified—was Mirza Abdullah the Bushiri.

"The timid villagers collected in crowds to see the rich merchant in Oriental dress, riding spear in hand, and pistols in holsters, towards the little encampment pitched near their settlements. But regularly every evening on the line of march the Mirza issued from his tent and wandered amongst them, collecting much information and dealing out more concerning an ideal master—the Feringhee supposed to be sitting in State amongst the moonshees, the Scribes, the servants, the wheels, the chains, the telescopes, and the other magical implements in which the camp abounded. When travelling, the Mirza became this mysterious person's factotum, and often had he to answer the question how much his perquisites and illicit gains amounted to in the course of the year.

"When the Mirza arrived at a strange town, his first step was to secure a house in or near the bazar, for the purpose of evening conversazioni. Now and then he rented a shop, and furnished it with clammy dates, viscid molasses, tobacco, ginger, rancid oil, and strong-smelling sweetmeats; and wonderful tales Fame told about these establishments. Yet somehow or other, though they were more crowded than a first-rate milliner's rooms in town, they throve not in a pecuniary point of view; the cause of which was, I believe, that the polite Mirza was in the habit of giving the heaviest possible weight for their money to all the ladies, particularly the pretty ones, that honoured him by patronizing his concern.

"Sometimes the Mirza passed the evening in a mosque listening to the ragged students who, stretched at full length with their stomachs on the dusty floor, and their arms supporting their heads, mumbled out Arabic from the thumbed, soiled, and tattered pages of theology upon which a dim oil light shed its scanty ray, or he sat debating the niceties of faith with the long-bearded, shaven-pated, blear-eyed, and stolid-faced genus loci, the Mullah. At other times, when in merrier mood, he entered uninvited the first door whence issued the sounds of music and the dance;—a clean turban and a polite bow are the best 'tickets for soup' the East knows. Or he played chess with some native friend, or he consorted with the hemp-drinkers and opium-eaters in the estaminets, or he visited the Mrs. Gadabouts and Go-betweens who make matches amongst the Faithful, and gathered from them a precious budget of private history and domestic scandal.

"What scenes he saw! what adventures he went through! But who would believe, even if he ventured to detail them?21

"The Mirza's favourite school for study was the house of an elderly matron on the banks of the Fulailee River, about a mile from the Fort of Haydarábád. Khanum Jan had been a beauty in her youth, and the tender passion had been hard upon her—at least judging from the fact that she had fled her home, her husband, and her native town, Candahar, in company with Mohammed Bakhsh, a purblind old tailor, the object of her warmest affections.

"'Ah, he is a regular old hyæna now,' would the Joan exclaim in her outlandish Persian, pointing to the venerable Darby as he sat in the cool shade, nodding his head and winking his eyes over a pair of pantaloons which took him a month to sew, 'but you should have seen him fifteen years ago, what a wonderful youth he was!'

"The knowledge of one mind is that of a million—after a fashion. I addressed myself particularly to that of 'Darby;' and many an hour of tough thought it took me before I had mastered its truly Oriental peculiarities, its regular irregularities of deduction, and its strange monotonous one-idea'dness.

"Khanum Jan's house was a mud edifice, occupying one side of a square formed by tall, thin, crumbling mud walls. The respectable matron's peculiar vanity was to lend a helping hand in all manner of affaires du cœur. So it often happened that Mirza Abdullah was turned out of the house to pass a few hours in the garden. There he sat upon his felt rug spread beneath a shadowy tamarind, with beds of sweet-smelling basil around him, his eyes roving over the broad river that coursed rapidly between its wooded banks and the groups gathered at the frequent ferries, whilst the soft strains of mysterious, philosophical, transcendental Hafiz were sounded in his ears by the other Mirza, his companion; Mohammed Hosayn—peace be upon him!

"Of all economical studies this course was the cheapest. For tobacco daily, for frequent draughts of milk, for hemp occasionally, for four months' lectures from Mohammed Bakhsh, and for sundry other little indulgences, the Mirza paid, it is calculated, the sum of six shillings. When he left Haydarábád, he gave a silver talisman to the dame, and a cloth coat to her protector: long may they live to wear them!"

"Thus it was I formed my estimate of the native character. I am as ready to reform it when a man of more extensive experience and greater knowledge of the subject will kindly show me how far it transgresses the well-established limits of moderation. As yet I hold, by way of general rule, that the Eastern mind—I talk of the nations known to me by personal experience—is always in extremes; that it ignores what is meant by 'golden mean,' and that it delights to range in flights limited only by the ne plus ultra of Nature herself. Under which conviction I am open to correction.

"Richard F. Burton."

His Books on India.

Richard's works on India are—A grammar of the Játakí, or Belochi dialect. Here I would remark he mixed with the Játs of Sind, a race extending from the mouth of the Indus to the plains of Tartary, and who he believed to be the origin and head of the numerous tribes of Oriental gypsies, and he worked with the Camel men to assimilate himself with them. The next work was a grammar of the Mooltanee language, "Notes on the Pushtû, or Afghan Dialect," Reports to Bombay, (1) "General Notes on Sind," (2) "Notes on the Population of Sind."

These were all preparatory to becoming an author, and were brought out in 1849 by the Royal Asiatic Society, Bombay branch, and the Government Records. I have a single copy of each, but they must be out of print; meantime he prepared "Goa and the Blue Mountains," 1 vol.; "Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," 2 vols.; and "Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus," 1 vol.; but these did not appear until 1851.

"Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," is, I think, the freshest, most witty and spirited thing I ever read. He had not been to war with the critics and Mrs. Grundy then, and there is all the boy's fun and fire in it. "Falconry in the Valley of the Indus" was produced in 1852, and is worthy of any sportsman's attention. That is Van Voorst's, now Gurney and Jackson, whom Richard used to say was the only honest publisher he ever met. It is not out of print. In 1870 appeared "Vikram and the Vampire," 1 vol. These tales are thoroughly witty, and make those laugh heartily who have lived in the East, but it was a great amusement to Richard and me, when the publisher, having accepted "Vikram," which is full of "chaff," said to me with a long face, "My eldest boy and I read over some of the tales last night, and we were so disappointed we could not laugh." I could not help saying drily, "No, I dare say you couldn't."

The last book on India was "Sind Revisited," 2 vols., 1877. It was written in maturer years and after hard experience of the world. It may be more valuable, but to my mind has not the sparkle of twenty-six years earlier. All these eight or ten books, including my own "A.E.I."—"Arabia, Egypt, and India"—brought out in 1879, I boiled down into Christmas books for boys. I took my manuscript (enough for three Christmas books) to David Bogue, King William Street, Strand, and went abroad, and the next thing I heard was, that David Bogue was bankrupt, and my manuscript had disappeared.

I give a few pages in the appendixes out of his first book on Scinde as a sample. One describes his visit to the village of a Scindian chief, a perfect picture of an Oriental visit; the other is a description of a cock-fight. After his transfer to the Goanese Church, his bungalow was nicknamed the "Inquisition," and there he buried Bhujang, when his favourite game-cock departed this life, and people declared it was a baby's grave. For all that my husband said of India, he talked exactly as Mr. Rudyard Kipling writes, and when I read him, I can hear Richard talking; hence I knew how true and to the point are his writings. Also I think Mr. Kipling must have taken his character of "Strickland" from my husband, who mixed with, and knew all about, the natives and their customs, as Strickland did.

During those first seven years in India, Richard passed in Hindostani, Guzaratee, Persian, Maharattee, Sindhee, Punjaubee, Arabic, Telugu, Pushtû (Afghan tongue), with Turkish and Armenian. In 1844 he went to Scinde with the 18th Native Infantry, and Colonel Walter Scott put him on Sir Charles Napier's staff, who soon found out what he was worth, and turned his merits to account, but he accompanied his regiment to Mooltan to attack the Sikhs. He became much attached to his Chief; they quite understood each other, and remained together for five years. Richard's training was of the uncommon sort, and glorious as it was, dangerous as it was, and romantic as it will ever be to posterity, he did not get from dense and narrow-minded Governments those rewards which men who risk their lives deserve, and which would have been given to the man who took care of "number one," and who, with average stupidity, worked on red-tape lines. He was sent out amongst the wild tribes of the hills and plains to collect information for Sir Charles. He did not go as a British officer or Commissioner, because he knew he would see nothing but what the natives chose him to see; he let down a curtain between himself and Civilization, and a tattered, dirty-looking dervish would wander on foot, lodge in mosques, where he was venerated as a saintly man, mix with the strangest company, join the Beloch and the Brahui tribes (Indo-Scythians), about whom there was nothing then known. Sometimes he appeared in the towns; as a merchant he opened a shop, sold stuffs or sweetmeats in the bazar. Sometimes he worked with the men in native dress, "Játs" and Camel men, at levelling canals.

When Richard was in India he at one time got rather tired of the daily Mess, and living with men, and he thought he should like to learn the manners, customs, and habits of monkeys, so he collected forty monkeys of all kinds of ages, races, species, and he lived with them, and he used to call them by different offices. He had his doctor, his chaplain, his secretary, his aide-de-camp, his agent, and one tiny one, a very pretty, small, silky-looking monkey, he used to call his wife, and put pearls in her ears. His great amusement was to keep a kind of refectory for them, where they all sat down on chairs at meals, and the servants waited on them, and each had its bowl and plate, with the food and drinks proper for them. He sat at the head of the table, and the pretty little monkey sat by him in a high baby's chair, with a little bar before it. He had a little whip on the table, with which he used to keep them in order when they had bad manners, which did sometimes occur, as they frequently used to get jealous of the little monkey, and try to claw her. He did this for the sake of doing what Mr. Garner is now doing, that of ascertaining and studying the language of monkeys, so that he used regularly to talk to them, and pronounce their sounds afterwards, till he and the monkeys at last got quite to understand each other. He obtained as many as sixty words, I think twenty more than Mr. Garner—that is, leading words—and he wrote them down and formed a vocabulary, meaning to pursue his studies at some future time. Mr. Garner has now the advantage of phonographs, and all sorts of appliances. Had Richard been alive, he could have helped him greatly. Unfortunately his monkey vocabulary was burnt in Grindlay's fire. He also writes—but this was with his regiment—

Burying a Sányasi.

"Amongst other remarkable experiments made by me, a Sányasi, whom I knew, talked to me about their manner of burying themselves alive. I said I would not believe it unless I saw it. The native therefore told me that he would prove it, by letting me try it; but that he should require three days for preparation, and hoped for a reward. Accordingly for three days he made his preparations by swallowing immense draughts of milk. I refused to put him in a coffin, or to bury him in the earth, lest he should die; but he lay down in a hammock, rolled his tongue up in his throat, and appeared to be dead. My brother officers and I then slung him up to the ceiling by four large hooks and ropes, lying comfortably in the hammock, and, to avoid trickery, one of us was always on guard day and night, each taking two hours' watch at a time. After three weeks we began to get frightened, because if the man died there would be such a scandal. So we lowered him down, and tried to awake him. We opened his mouth and tried to unroll his tongue into its natural position. He then, after some time, woke perfectly well. We gave him food, paid him a handsome reward, and he went away quite delighted, offering to do it for three months, if it pleased us."

Richard would be in a dozen different capacities on his travels, but when he returned, he was rich with news and information for Sir Charles, for he arrived at secrets quite out of the reach of the British Army. He knew all that the natives knew, which was more than British officers and surveyors did. General MacMurdo consulted his journals and Survey books, which were highly praised by the Surveyor-General. He was frequently in the presence of and speaking before his own Colonel without his having the slightest idea that it was Richard.

Sir Charles Napier liked decision; he hated a man who had not an answer ready for him. For instance, a young man would go and ask him for an appointment. Sir Charles would say, "What do you want?" The youth of firm mind would answer, "An Adjutancy, Sir." "All right," said Sir Charles, and he probably got it. But "Anything you please, Sir Charles," would be sure to be contemptuously dismissed. On returning from his native researches, Sir Charles would ask Richard such questions as: "Is it true that native high-class landowners, who monopolize the fiefs about the heads of the canals, neglect to clear out the tails, and allow Government ground and the peasants' fields to lie barren for want of water?"

"Perfectly true, Sir."

"What would be my best course then?"

"Simply to confiscate the whole or part of those estates, Sir."

"H'm! You don't mince matters, Burton."

He once asked Richard how many bricks there were in a newly built bridge (an impossible question, such as are put to lads whom the examiner intends to pluck). Richard, knowing his foible, answered, "229,010, Sir Charles." He turned away and smiled. Another time he ordered a review on a grand scale to impress certain Chiefs—

"Lieutenant Burton, be pleased to inform these gentlemen that I propose to form these men in line, then to break into échelon by the right, and to form square on the centre battalion," and so on, for about five minutes in military technical terms, for which there were no equivalents in these men's dialects.

"Yes, Sir," said Richard, saluting.

Turning to the Chiefs, Richard said, "Oh, Chiefs! our Great Man is going to show you the way we fight, and you must be attentive to the rules." He then touched his cap to Sir Charles.

"Have you explained all?" he asked.

"Everything, Sir," answered Richard.

"A most concentrated language that must be," said Sir Charles, riding off with his nose in the air.

His Indian Career practically ends.

After seven years of this kind of life, overwork, overstudy, combined with the hot season, and the march up the Indus Valley, told on Richard's health, and at the end of the campaign he was attacked by severe ophthalmia, the result of mental and physical fatigue, and he was ordered to take a short rest. He utilized that leave in going to Goa, and especially to Old Goa, where, as he said himself, he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Francis Xavier, and explored the scenes of the Inquisition. At last news reached him that another campaign was imminent in Mooltan, that Sir Charles Napier would take command; Colonel Scott and a host of friends were ordered up. He writes as follows:—

"I applied in almost suppliant terms to accompany the force as interpreter. I had passed examinations in six native languages, besides studying others, Multani included, and yet General Auchmuty's secretary wrote to me that this could not be, as he had chosen for the post Lieutenant X. Y. Z., who had passed in Hindustani.

"This last misfortune broke my heart. I had been seven years in India, working like a horse, volunteering for every bit of service, and qualifying myself for all contingencies. Rheumatic ophthalmia, which had almost left me when in hopes of marching northward, came on with redoubled force, and no longer had I any hope of curing it except by a change to Europe. Sick, sorry, and almost in tears of rage, I bade adieu to my friends and comrades in Sind. At Bombay there was no difficulty in passing the Medical Board, and I embarked at Bombay for a passage round the Cape, as the Austral winter was approaching, in a sixty-year-old teak-built craft, the brig Eliza, Captain Cory.

"My career in India had been in my eyes a failure, and by no fault of my own; the dwarfish demon called 'Interest' had fought against me, and as usual had won the fight."

1. Those curious upon the subject will consult my "Book of the Sword," vol. i. p. 163. Remember, young swordsman, these people never give point and never parry it.

2. The word is a Portuguese "corruption" of mausim, in Arabia a season, and per excellentiam the sailing season. Thence it was transferred to the dry season, when the north-eastern trade-winds blow upon the Indian Ocean. But popular use transferred the name to the south-western rainy winds, which last from June to September.

3. On June 26th, 1843, "Ensign Burton" appeared in orders as "Regimental Interpreter."

4. See "Humanism versus Theism, or Solipsism (Egoism)—Atheism," letters by Robert Lewin, M.D. London: Freethought Publishing Company, 1887.

5. "Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," 2 vols.; and "Sind Revisited," 1877.

6. "Scinde," chapter iv.

7. "Scinde," vol. i. p. 252.

8. Ibid., p. 89.

9. It was brought out in 1852, by my friend John Van Voorst, of Paternoster Row, who, after a long and honourable career, retired at the ripe age of eighty-four to take well-merited rest. He has proved himself to me a phœnix amongst publishers. "Half profits are no profits to the author," is the common saying, and yet for the last thirty years I have continually received from him small sums which represented my gains. Oh that all were so scrupulous!

10. "Falconry in the Valley of the Indus," pp. 100, 101.

11. Vol. x. p. 205, et seqq.

12. See, in vol. i. p. 53 of "Sind Revisited," Sir Charles's outspoken opinion.

13. "Scinde," vol. ii. p. 258, etc.

14. "Sind Revisited," vol. i. p. 256, shows how I found my old home in 1876.

15. "Scinde," vol. i. p. 151.

16. "Falconry," pp. 103–105.

17. "Goa," etc., p. 355.

18. See Ibid., p. 339.

19. This stuck to him off and on all his life.—I. B.

20. Written with the assistance of a fine old Afghan mullah, Akhund Burhan al-Din.

21. This was the manner in which he excelled in Eastern life and knowledge, and knew more than all your learned Orientalists and men high in office. I wish he would have written a personal novel about these scenes, but I never could induce him to do so. First he thought that they would never suit Mrs. Grundy, and though he could retain a crowd of friends around him till the small hours of the morning to listen to his delightful experiences, in print he never could be got to talk about himself.—I. B.