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st as a hich he peninrt of the the twentyfulness and a great fa-officers, and tronage and Douglas, whose le of Toulouse, he field after he leg by a cannonEngland, he was Ission in the fiftycon after, entering was engaged in the

at the termination eded with the allied and set out from thence gh France and Italy. ngland in 1819, he obself an admission into epartment of the Royal ege, at Farnham, where under the directions of the sir Howard Douglas, whose and commendation he was in gaining.

the death of Mr. Ritchie, the Traveller, Captain Denham vod to carry on his researches; that purpose, was sent out by thurst to join Dr. Oudney and Clapperton, who had already he same expedition. Having Tripoli, he left that city on March, 1822, and proceeded srs. Oudney and Clapperton, whence he travelled to g the first of his country

men who had ever entered the town in an English dress; which, contrary to the information he had received, he found to procure him a much more favourable reception from the inhabitants than if he had been in disguise. From Sockna, he continued his course towards Mourzuk, crossing, on his way thither, an extensive desert, where he experienced great pain and peril from the effects of thirst and a tremendous sand storm which blew down his tent in the night, and nearly suffocated him before he was able to rise. On his arrival at Mourzuk, finding the sultan unwilling to furnish him with an escort to Bornou, he left his companions, and returned to Tripoli; charged the bashaw with duplicity; and, on his hesitating to appoint a time to convey him to the former place, set sail for Marseilles, with the intention of proceeding to England, and informing the government how he had been deceived. Upon this, says Major Denham, in his journal,

The bashaw sent three despatches after me, by three different vessels, to Leghorn, Malta, and the port I had sailed to, which I received in quarantine, informing me that Bhoo-Khaloom was appointed with an escort to convey us to Bornou." Accordingly, our traveller reimbarked for the shores of Barbary, and re-entered Sockna on the 2nd, and Mourzuk on the 30th of October; and, in the latter end of the following month, set out on his way to Kouka, in Bornou.

Passing through Traghan, over a road of salt and sand, to Maefen, "an assemblage of date-huts, with but one house," he came up with Oudney and Clapperton, at Gatrone; whence he proceeded to Tegerhy, where he remained some days in consequence of the illness of his two companions, and of the rest he himself required previous to crossing the adjoining desert, a jour

compelled to sell his slave, and he had already thoughts of resorting to manual labour, for his subsistence, when he fortunately obtained three thousand piastres (about £100) by giving a bill upon Cairo. Crocodile's flesh occasionally formed part of his food, and the dangers of the desert he found no greater than the inconveniences. Though almost worn out with fatigue, "I was obliged," he says, "every day, to fetch and cut wood, to light a fire, to cook, to feed the ass, and finally to make coffee; a cup of which, presented to my companions, was the only means I possessed of keeping them in tolerable good humour." "In his way through the Nubian desert, he relates a singular custom of the Arab guides, for the purpose of extorting small presents from travellers. They alight," he says, "at certain spots, and beg a present; if it be refused, they collect a heap of sand, and mould it into the form of a diminutive

tomb, and then placing a stone at each of the extremities, they apprize the traveller that his tomb is made; meaning, that henceforth there will be no security for him in this rocky wilder

ness."

Our traveller remained at Mecca from the 9th of September until the 15th of January, 1815, during which time he accurately noted the manners and customs of the holy city, without his real character being discovered, though it had been previously suspected by the Pasha of Tayef, who jocosely observed, "It is not the beard alone which proves a man to be a true Moslem." On the 28th, Burckhardt reached Medina, which he quitted on the 21st of April, in a state of great mental depression, and still suffering from the recent attack of an intermittent fever. To add to his dejection, he found, on his arrival at Yambo, the plague in its most virulent shape; and being unable to procure a boat, he was obliged to remain a witness of its horrors for more than a fortnight, during which time, he says," the air, night and day, was filled with the piercing cries of those who had been bereaved of the objects of their affection." At length, on the 24th of June, he reached Cairo, where, after having recruited his health, he employed himself in drawing up an account of his travels. In the spring of 1816,

source

he visited Mount Sinai; and, having returned to Cairo, was making preparations to commence his long-deiayed journey to Fezzan, to explore the of the Niger, when he was attacked with dysentery on the 14th, and died on the 15th of October, 1817. "I have closed," says Mr. St. John, "the lives of few travellers with more regret" His obsequies were performed after the Mohammedan custom, according to his own request to Mr. Salt, to whom he observed, a few moments previously to his death, "that as he had lived as a mussulman in the east, the Turks would claim his body; and perhaps," said he, "you had better let them."

Thus fell another victim in the cause of geographical discovery, which, in Mr. Burckhardt, may be said to have lost one of its most able and enterprising devotees. Patient, courageous, cautious, and intelligent, no fatigues dispirited, no obstacle disconcerted, and no dangers dismayed him. He conformed himself to the manners of the various countries through which he passed with admirable tact; and, with an apparent carelessness of what was passing around him, suffered nothing worth observation to escape his attention. The penetrating and sagacious turn of his mind displays itself throughout the whole of his various works; the first of which, containing an account of his journey along the banks of the Nile to Mahass, and from Upper Egypt to Nubia, was published in 1819, in quarto, by the African Association. In 1822, a volume was published containing the particulars of his travels in Syria and the Holy Land, from the year 1810 to 1816; in 1829, appeared his Travels in Arabia; and, in 1830, another quarto volume was published, entitled Manners and Customs of the Egyptians.

The whole of these publications will be read with deep interest, not only for the light thrown by them on the geography of the countries described, but for the personal sympathy which they cannot fail to awake in the breast of the reader. Mr. St. John, however, differs from Mr. Burckhardt's views of men and things, saying, "that he interpreted men in too refined and systematical a manner, and often saw in their actions

more contrivance than ever existed:"how could Mr. St. John possibly know this? Surely, the experience of Mr. Burckhardt is to be preferred to the

opinions of him who, in the quotation above, takes upon himself to contradict an affirmative upon no other ground than his own presumption to the contrary.

DIXON DENHAM was born in London on the 1st of January, 1786; and, after receiving his education at Merchant Taylor's School, was articled to a solicitor. Finding, however, the profession he had chosen, uncongenial to his gay and adventurous spirit, he relinquished it altogether; and, in 1811, went as a volunteer into the army, in which he served till the termination of the peninsular war, during the latter part of the campaign, as lieutenant of the twentythird fusileers. His cheerfulness and gallantry rendered him a great favourite with all his fellow-officers, and procured for him the patronage and friendship of Sir James Douglas, whose life he saved at the battle of Toulouse, by carrying him off the field after he had been struck on the leg by a cannonball. On his return to England, he was appointed to a commission in the fiftyfourth foot; and soon after, entering the Netherlands, was engaged in the battle of Waterloo; at the termination of which, he proceeded with the allied armies to Paris, and set out from thence on a tour through France and Italy. Returning to England in 1819, he obtained for himself an admission into the senior department of the Royal Military College, at Farnham, where he studied under the directions of the governor, Sir Howard Douglas, whose friendship and commendation he was not long in gaining.

;

After the death of Mr. Ritchie, the African traveller, Captain Denham volunteered to carry on his researches and, for that purpose, was sent out by Lord Bathurst to join Dr. Oudney and Lieutenant Clapperton, who had already started on the same expedition. Having arrived at Tripoli, he left that city on the 5th of March, 1822, and proceeded to join Messrs. Oudney and Clapperton, at Memoon, whence he travelled to Sockna, being the first of his country

men who had ever entered the town in an English dress; which, contrary to the information he had received, he found to procure him a much more facourable reception from the inhabitants than if he had been in disguise. From Sockna, he continued his course towards Mourzuk, crossing, on his way thither, an extensive desert, where he experienced great pain and peril from the effects of thirst and a tremendous sand storm which blew down his tent in the night, and nearly suffocated him before he was able to rise. On his arrival at Mourzuk, finding the sultan unwilling to furnish him with an escort to Bornou, he left his companions, and returned to Tripoli; charged the bashaw with duplicity; and, on his hesitating to appoint a time to convey him to the former place, set sail for Marseilles, with the intention of proceeding to England, and informing the government how he had been deceived. Upon this, says Major Denham, in his journal,

The bashaw sent three despatches after me, by three different vessels, to Leghorn, Malta, and the port I had sailed to, which I received in quarantine, informing me that Bhoo-Khaloom was appointed with an escort to convey us to Bornou." Accordingly, our traveller reimbarked for the shores of Barbary, and re-entered Sockna on the 2nd, and Mourzuk on the 30th of October; and, in the latter end of the following month, set out on his way to Kouka, in Bornou.

Passing through Traghan, over a road of salt and sand, to Maefen, "an assemblage of date-huts, with but one house," he came up with Oudney and Clapperton, at Gatrone; whence he proceeded to Tegerhy, where he remained some days in consequence of the illness of his two companions, and of the rest he himself required previous to crossing the adjoining desert, a jour

ney of fifteen days. On the 13th of December, he set out for Kouka; meeting, daily, during the first fortnight of the way, an immense quantity of skeletons, and dead bodies, some of which he found with their arms clasped round each other, just as they had expired." Alluding to these corpses in his journal, he relates, "Whilst I was dozing on my horse, about noon, I was suddenly awakened by a crashing under my feet, which startled me excessively. I found that my steed had, without any sensation of shame or alarm, stepped upon the perfect skeletons of two human beings, cracking their brittle bones under his feet, and, by one trip of his foot, separating a skull from the trunk, which rolled on like a ball before him. This event gave me a sensation which it took some time to remove." On the 8th of January, 1823, he arrived at Derkee, where he was compelled to sanction the sending of a marauding party to capture some camels, the chief part of those who had attended him having died on the road. During a halt of two days, nine others were procured, and he continued his journey, passing through Bilma, the capital of the Tilboos, Chukama, Dibla, Kasama-foma, Beere-Kashifery, Lari, Woodie, Burwha, Geudawhat; and, after having been without animal food for fifteen days together, and narrowly escaping the jaws of alligators, hyaenas, and elephants, in the course of his travels, he arrived at Kouka on the 17th of February. "This," says he, "was to us a momentous day, and it seemed to be equally so to our conductors. Notwithstanding all the difficulties that had presented themselves at the various stages of our journey, we were at last within a few short miles of our destination; were about to become acquainted with a people who had never seen, or scarcely heard of, an European; and to tread on ground, the knowledge and true situation of which had hitherto been wholly unknown."

On his presentation to the Sheikh of Bornou, he soon gained his confidence, and was promised, by him, all the assistance in his power to give him a knowledge of the country and its inhabitants. After passing about two months at Kouka, he joined a hostile expedition, sent out by the sheikh,

against the Felatahs; in his way to attack whom, he passed some days at Mandara, the sultan of which country joined the Bornouese troops, who, together with himself, after burning two small towns, were put to flight and defeated by the Felatahs, at the siege of Musfeia. The situation of Major Denham, in his retreat from the pursuers, was dreadful in the extreme; both himself and his horse were badly wounded; and, after twice falling with the latter, and fighting singly against three or four assailants, he at length lay disarmed on the ground. "At that moment," he relates, "my hopes of life were too faint to deserve the name. I was almost instantly surrounded; and, incapable of making the least resistance, was as speedily stripped. My pursuers then made several thrusts at me with their spears, that badly wounded my hands in two places, and slightly my body, just under my ribs, on the right side; indeed, I saw nothing before me but the same cruel death I had seen unmercifully inflicted on the few who had fallen into the power of those who now had possession of me. My shirt was now absolutely torn off my back, and I was left perfectly naked. When my plunderers began to quarrel for the spoil, the idea of escape came like lightning across my mind; and, without a moment's hesitation, I crept under the belly of the horse nearest me, and started as fast as my legs could carry me for the thickest part of the wood: two of the Felatahs followed, and gained upon me; for the prickly underwood not only obstructed my passage, but tore my flesh miserably; and the delight with which I saw a mountainstream gliding along at the bottom of a deep ravine cannot be imagined. My strength had almost left me, and I seized the young branches issuing from the stump of a large tree which overhung the ravine, for the purpose of letting myself down into the water; when, under my hand, as the branch yielded to the weight of my body, a large liffa, the worst kind of serpent this country produces, rose from its coil, as if in the very act of striking. I was horror-struck, and deprived, for a moment, of all recollection-the branch slipped from my hand, and I tumbled headlong into the water beneath this