Lady Isabel Burton

“ If you do not want the truth, if you order me to describe a Darwin, a Spencer, a John Stuart Mill, I can do it; but it will not be the home-Richard, the fireside-Richard whom I knew, the two perfectly distinct Richards in one person; it will be the man as he was at lunch, at dinner, or when friends came in, or when he dined out, or when he paid visits; and if the world—or, let us say, a small portion of the world,—is so unjust and silly as to wish for untrue history, it must get somebody else to write it. ”

“ Environs of Damascus.
The Environs of Damascus.
The small rides and excursions round Damascus are innumerable and beautiful; they lead through garden and orchard with bubbling water, under the shady fig and vine, pomegranate and walnut. You emerge on the soft yellow sand, and you throw off your superfluous strength, by galloping as hard as you will. There is no one to check your spirits; the breath of the desert is liberty. There is Mizzeh, a village placed exactly on the borders of the green and yellow; one side looks into trees and verdure, and the other side in the bare sand. ”

“ After sunset the only sounds were the last call to prayer on the Minaret top, the howling of the wild dogs, the cries of the jackals in the burial-ground outside the village, the bubbling of the fountains, the hootings of the owls in the garden, the soughing of the wind through the mountain gorges, and the noise of the water-wheel in a neighbour's orchard. There was often a free fight in the road below, to steal a mare, or to kill. We have often gone down to take some poor wretch in, and bind up his sabre-cuts. ”

“ Fancy achieving a good which affects millions, making your name a national one? It is infamous the way most men in the world live and die, and are never missed, and, like us women, leave nothing but a tombstone. By ambition I mean men who have the will and power to change the face of things. I wish I were a man. If I were, I would be Richard Burton; but, being only a woman, I would be Richard Burton's wife. He has not mere brilliancy of talent, but brains that are a rock of good sense, and stern decision of character. ”

“ Richard said to me, "Now mind, when they see us two horsemen, they will come galloping across the sand in a body with their lances couched; if we were to turn and run, they would spear us; but if we sit our horses, facing them like statues on parade, just as the Life Guards sit in their sentry-boxes at the Horse Guards at home, they will take us in with great applause, and our horses will stand it, because they are used to desert manners." ”

“ Beneath our feet lay a long grassy plain—the sight must have gladdened the hearts of our starving mules—and for the first time in Africa horses appeared grazing free amongst the bushes. A little further off lay the Aylonda Valley, studded with graves and dark with verdure. Beyond it stretched the Wady Haráwwah, a long gloomy hollow in the general level. The background was a bold sweep of blue hill, the second gradient of the Harar line, and on its summit, closing the western horizon, lay a golden streak, the Marar Prairie. ”

“ Your life will be like one always swimming against big waves, but God will always be with you, so you will always win. You will fix your eye on your polar star, and you will go for that without looking right or left. You will bear the name of our Tribe, and be right proud of it. You will be as we are, but far greater than we. ”

“ One could see villages, cultivated lands, fishermen's canoes on the water, and a profuse lavishness and magnificence of Nature and vegetation. The smiling shores of this vast crevasse appeared doubly beautiful to me after the silent and spectral mangrove-creeks on the East African sea-board, and the melancholy monotonous experience of desert and jungle scenery, tawny rock and sun-parched plain, or rank herbage and flats of black mire. ”

“ We hurrah'd for France, and hooted for England, "The Land on which the Sun ne'er sets—nor rises," till the sailor who was hoisting the Jack, looked upon us as a pair of little monsters. In our delight at getting away from school and the stuffy little island, we had no idea of the disadvantages which the new kind of life would inflict on our future careers. We were too young to know. A man who brings up his family abroad, and who lives there for years, must expect to lose all the friends who could be useful to him when he wishes to start them in life. ”

“ We sailed in a steam launch across the Bay of Rio, which is like a beautiful broad lake studded with islands and boulder rocks and bordered by mountains. Two hours brings you to a rickety wharf, where a little railway, running for eleven miles through a mangrove flat, lands you at the foot of the mountains. Here a carriage waits for you, drawn by four mules, and you commence a zigzag ascent for two hours up these most regal mountains, and arrive at a table-land some distance from the summit, where the small white settlement called Petropolis lies. ”

“ At one village the people rushed out, exclaiming, 'Lo! let us look at the Kings;' at others, 'Come and see the white man; he is the Governor of Zayla.' My fairness (for, brown as I am, I am fair to them) and the Arab dress made me sometimes the ruler of Aden, the Chief of Zayla, the Haji's son, a boy, an old woman, a man painted white, a warrior in silver armour, a merchant, a pilgrim, a head priest, Ahmed the Indian, a Turk, an Egyptian, a Frenchman, a Banyan, a Sheríf, and, lastly, a calamity sent down from heaven to weary out the lives of the Somal. Every kraal had its own conjecture. ”

“ But this is what makes the demi-semi-fashionable of Beyrout hate Damascus, with a spice of fear, knowing nothing of her attractions; whilst she, on her side, lazily despises the effeminate and, to her, luxurious and feeble Beyroutine. Damascus, I have said, is the heart and capital of Syria, the residence of the Wali and his entourage, who rule Syria, who fear the strong and who oppress the weak, who persecute Christians, who starve the people, and who fill their own pockets. ”

“ When you enter by degrees under the trees, the orchards, the gardens of Damascus, you smell the water from afar, and you hear its gurgling long before you come to the rills and fountains; you scent and then see the fruit—the limes, figs, citron, water-melon; you feel a madness to jump into the water, to eat your fill of fruit, to go to sleep under the delicious shade. ”

“ Friendship between the Amir of Harar and the Governor of Zayla had been broken; the road through the Eesa Somal had been closed by the murder of Masúd, a favourite slave and adopted son of Sharmarkay; all strangers had been expelled the City for some misconduct by the Harar chief; moreover, small-pox was raging there with such violence that the Galla peasantry would allow neither ingress nor egress. The tide was out, and we waded a quarter of a mile amongst giant crabs, who showed gristly claws, sharp coralline, and seaweed so thick as to become almost like a mat. ”

“ Richard Cobden, one of the most single-sided of men, whose main strength was that he embodied most of the weakness, and all the prejudice, of the British middle-class public, was watching the affairs of India with a jealous and unfriendly eye, as a Military and Despotic Government, as an acquisition of impolitic violence and fraud, and as the seat of unsafe finance. India appeared to him utterly destitute of any advantage either to the natives or to their foreign masters. ”

“ The little villages, with their leafy huts, were surrounded and protected by hedge milk-bush, green as emeralds, and nothing could be more peaceful or charming than the evening hour, when the flocks and herds were returning home, and the villagers were preparing for supper and sleep, with a sky-blue mist overhanging the scene. A light veil, coloured like Damascene silver, hung over each settlement, and the magnificent trees, compared with which the oaks in Hyde Park appeared like shrubs, were tipped by peacocks screaming their good-night to the sun. ”

“ Your fancy and imagination are powerfully aroused, and the wildness and sublimity of the scenes around you, stir up all the energies of your soul, whether for exertion, danger, or strife. Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded; the hypocritical politeness and the slavery of Civilization are left behind you in the City. Your senses are quickened; they require no stimulants but air and exercise; in the desert spirituous liquors excite only disgust. ”

“ The journey from Alexandria to Cairo lasted three days and nights. We saw nothing but muddy water, dusty banks, sand, mist, milky sky, glaring sun, breezes like the blasts of a furnace, and the only variation was that the steamer grounded four or five times a day, and I passed my time telling my beads with a huge rosary. I was a deck passenger. The sun burnt us all day, and the night dews were raw and thick. Our diet was bread and garlic, moistened with muddy water from the canal. At Cairo I went to a caravanserai. ”

“ I rose at five, just before we went into the harbour at Rio. It is about the most glorious sight that a human being can behold, at sunrise and at sunset, the mountains being of most fantastic shapes, and the colours that of an opal. Richard said it beats all the scenery he had ever seen in his life—even the Bosphorus. He came on board at half-past eight in the morning, and we had a joyful meeting, and I handed him all the letters which, by some strange mischance, had accumulated at Pernambuco during our month's separation. ”

“ A day or two after his arrival at his post, a very dandified-dressed and full-blooded nigger walked into the Consulate, the window of which was not far from the ground, clapped Richard on the back in the most jovial manner, with his disagreeable "yah-yah" laugh. "How do, Consul? Come to shake hands—how do?" holding out his black paw, as if he were a condescending Royalty. There were some other Englishmen waiting about for different business, looking curiously to see what was going to be the attitude of the new Consul. ”

“ She spoke French, Italian, German, Slav, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, and Greek, as she spoke her native tongue. She had all the tastes of a country life, and occupied herself alternately with painting, sculpture, music, or with her garden-flowers, or poultry, or with her thoroughbred Arab mares, or in carrying out some improvement. She was thoroughly a connoisseur in each of her amusements or occupations. To the last she was fresh and young; beautiful, brave, refined, and delicate. ”

“ Tadmor.
The first sight of Palmyra makes you think it is a regiment of cavalry drawn out in single line on the horizon; it was the most imposing sight I ever looked upon, though I have seen plenty of other ruins. It is so gigantic, so extensive, so bare, so desolate, rising out of, and partially buried in a sea of sand. There is something that almost takes your breath away about this splendid City of the Dead. ”

“ It is the recital of a high-spirited lad of the old school, full of animal spirits and manly notions, a lively sense of fun and humour, reckless of the consequences of playing tricks, but without a vestige of vice in the meaner or lower forms—a lad, in short, who would be a gentleman and a man of the world in his teens, and who, from his foreign travel, had seen more of life than boys do brought up at home. ”

“ I quote Charles Reade's story to show that nowadays England does not confer honour on merit in any class of life. The higher and lower orders share the same fate. Honours follow a certain red-tape routine, not noble deeds, and often mock their wearer; whilst many a noble brow looks up to heaven with patient, uncomplaining dignity, adorned only by God and Nature, and by a life of chivalrous actions. ”

“ On June 22nd, 1863, Jack received an ovation in the shape of a special meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, when the windows were broken in by the eager crowd. By-and-by people began to cool their enthusiasm. Despite all that Jack had done to me, I was the first to give flattering opinions of the exploration, until the personal account Jack gave, told me how little had been done. It was something to have passed over three hundred and fifty untrodden miles, but it would take a great deal more than that to settle the Nile problem. Jack tried to crush all expressions of thought. ”

“ Amongst Italian families, nothing is more common than for all the brothers and sisters to swear that they will not marry if they are to be separated from one another. And even now, in these subversive and progressive days, what a curious contrast is the English and the Italian household. Let me sketch one of the latter, a family belonging to the old nobility, once lords of the land, and now simple proprietors of a fair Estate. In a large garden, and a larger orchard of vines and olives, stands a solid old house, as roomy as a barrack, but without the slightest pretension of comfort or luxury. ”

“ The field-cricket chirped like the Italian cicala in the shady bush, and everywhere, from air, from earth, from the hill-slopes above, and from the marshes below, the hum, the buzz, and the loud continuous voice of insect life, through the length of the day, spoke out its natural joy. ”

“ Do not embitter my whole future life, for God's sake. I would rather die a thousand times than go through again what I have borne for the last five years. Do not quarrel with me, or keep me away from you, and you shall not regret it. I shall have a wide field for a useful, active life, if you do not crush me by an unhappy coldness. ”