Richard Burton
From The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society
VOL . 25, pp.136-150 (June 1855)
Reprinted by permission
By Richard F. BURTON,
Lieut. Bombay Army.*
Read June 11, 1855.
In May, 1849, the late Admiral Sir Charles Malcolm, an ardent geographer and a warm encourager of adventure, in concert with the President and Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, urged upon the Honourable the Court of Directors of the East India Company the desirability of ascertaining the productive resources of the Somali country; but the project lay in abeyance until March, 1850, when Sir Charles Malcolm offered the charge of an expedition to Dr. Carter, of Bombay, an officer well known as surgeon to the 'Palinurus' during the maritime survey of Eastern Arabia. The state of that gentleman's health and the exigencies of the service caused certain difficulties, and the project was again given up for the time.
In March, 1854, after my return from Arabia to Bombay, I applied myself to the task of resuscitating the expedition. My plans were favourably received by Lord Elphinstone, the en-lightened Governor of the Presidency, and by the local authorities, amongst whom the name of the Hon. William Lumsden, then member of council, will ever be remembered with the liveliest feelings of gratitude and affection. In August a despatch from the India House authorised the expedition. It was originally composed of three members-Lieut. Herne of the 1st Bombay Europeans, Lieut. Stroyan of the Indian Navy, and myself. The first-named officer was accustomed to survey, to daguerreotype, and to observe; and the second was distinguished by his surveys of the coast of Western India, in Sindh, and on the Panjab rivers. Soon afterwards the expedition received an addition in Lieut. .J. H. Speke, of the 46th regiment Bengal N. I., who bad spent many years in collecting the Fauna of Tibet and the Himalayan mountains, and who volunteered with ardour to become a sharer in the hardships and the perils of African travel.
Assembled at Aden, in the summer of 1854, we found the public voice so loud against our project, that I offered as a preliminary to visit Harar in disguise, thus traversing the lands of the dreaded Eesa clan, and entering a place hitherto closed to us by a ruler with the worst of reputations. I could not suppress my curiosity about this mysterious city. It had been described to me as the head-quarters of slavery in Eastern Africa, and its territory as a land flowing, with milk and honey; the birthplace of the coffee-plant, and abounding in excellent cotton, tobacco, saffron, gums, and other valuable products. But when I spoke of visiting it, men stroked their beards, and in Oriental phrase declared that the human head once struck off does not regrow like the rose.
Our arrangements were soon made. Lieutenant Speke was detached to Guray Bunder, with directions to explore, if possible, the celebrated Wadi Nogal, and to visit the Dulbahantas, most warlike of the Somal. Lieutenants Stroyan and Herne established their camp at Berbera, the great mart and harbour of the Eastern coast; and they employed themselves in ascertaining the productive resources of the country; in mastering the subject of slavery - still, I regret to say, flourishing in these regions; - and in collecting carriage for a more extended journey. They were also directed, in case of my detention by the Emir of Harar, to demand restitution before allowing the great caravan, which supplies that city with the luxuries of life, to leave the coast.
ln the mean time I prepared for a trip into the interior. The political resident at Aden, our possession in the Red Sea, assisted me with two Somali policemen, and I provided myself with a small stock of cloth, tobacco, rice, dates, trinkets, and other articles with which a Moslem merchant would load his camels. I determined to travel as El Haj Abdullah, a personage of some sanctity. Perhaps my adventures and a short description of a city hitherto unvisited by Europeans may not be unacceptable to a Society which, though essentially scientific, does not withhold encouragement from the pioneer of discovery, reduced by hard necessity to use nature's instruments-his eyes and ears.
On the 29th October, 1854, I started from Aden in a Somali boat bound to Zayla, a small port on the African coast of the Red Sea, nearly opposite and about 140 miles from our Arabian settlement. After two days' sail we reached our destination, when I found that the mules, ordered three months before, and paid for, had not been procured. The governor, our old friend El-Shermarkay, sent immediately to the neighbouring port of Tajurrah; but between the delay of catching the animals and a contrary wind which delayed the vessel, I lost at Zayla twenty eight days. Travellers, like poets, are mostly an angry race: by falling into a daily fit of passion, I proved to the governor and his son, who were profuse in their attentions, that I was in earnest. He supplied me with women (cooks), guides, servants, and camels -under protest, warning me that the road swarmed with brigands, that the Eesa had lately murdered his son, that the small-pox was depopulating Harar, and that the emir or prince was certain destruction. One death to a man is a serious thing: a dozen neutralize one another. I contented myself with determining the good Shermarkay to be the true Oriental hyperbolist.
With four mules and five camels laden with cotton cloth, Surat tobacco, rice, dates, various "notions," a few handsome tobes or sheets (intended as presents to chiefs) and necessaries for the way, on the 27th November, 1854, El Haj Abdillah, attended by the governor, his son Mohammed, and a detachment of Arab soldiers, passed through the southern gate of Zayla, and took the way of the Desert.
1
Richard Burton Trip to Harar