Читать книгу The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2) - Lady Isabel Burton - Страница 41

It was the Royal Geographical Society which induced Lord Clarendon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to supply Richard with funds for an exploration of the then utterly unknown Lake Regions of Central Africa. In October, 1856, he set out for Bombay, applied for Captain Speke, and landed at Zanzibar on December 19th, 1856. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, her Majesty's Consul at Zanzibar, was very good to them; they made a tentative expedition from January 5th to March 6th, 1857, about the Mombas regions. They got a bad coast fever, and returned to Zanzibar. They then set out again into the far interior, into which only one European, Monsieur Maizan, a French naval officer, had attempted to penetrate; he was cruelly murdered at the outset of his journey.

It was the first successful attempt to penetrate that country, and laid the foundation for others. It was the base on which all subsequent journeys were founded; Livingstone, Cameron, Speke and Grant, Sir S. Baker, and Stanley carried it out. Where Richard found the rudest barbarians, Church missions have been established, and commerce, and now a railway is proposed to connect the coast with the Lake Regions. This expedition brought neither honour nor profit to Richard; but the world is not likely to forget it; the future will be more generous and juster than the past or present. During these African explorations, Richard was attacked by fever twenty-one times, by temporary paralysis and partial blindness. On his return he brought out "The Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa," 2 vols., 1860, and the Royal Geographical Society devoted the whole of their thirty-third volume to its recital (Clowes and Son). Richard's book was translated into French by Madame H. Loreau, and republished in New York by Fakir, 1861. It will shortly be added to the Uniform Library in preparation. In May, 1859, the moment he returned to England, he immediately proposed another Expedition, which, however, the Royal Geographical Society gave to his disloyal companion, who completely and wilfully spoiled the first Expedition as far as lay in his power.