and
cool courage may be called into request. There are legends that Burton had
to defend his life by taking others'; but he carried no arms, and
confessed, rather shamefastly, that he had never killed anybody at any
time. The actual journey was less remarkable than the book in which it was
recorded, _The Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah_ (1855). Its vivid
descriptions, pungent style, and intensely personal "note" distinguish it
from books of its class; its insight into Semitic modes of thought and its
picture of Arab manners give it the value of an historical document; its
grim humour, keen observation and reckless insobriety of opinion, expressed
in peculiar, uncouth but vigorous language make it a curiosity of
literature.

Burton's next journey was more hazardous than the pilgrimage, but created
no parallel sensation. In 1854 the Indian government accepted his proposal
to explore the interior of the Somali country, which formed a subject of
official anxiety in its relation to the Red Sea trade. He was assisted by
Capt. J.H. Speke and two other young officers, but accomplished the most
difficult part of the enterprise alone. This was the journey to Harrar, the
Somali capital, which no white man had entered. Burton vanished into the
desert, and was not heard of for four months. When he reappeared he had not
only been to Harrar, but had talked with the king, stayed ten days there in
deadly peril, and ridden back across the desert, almost without food and
water, running the gauntlet of the Somali spears all the way. Undeterred by
this experience he set out again, but was checked [v.04 p.0865] by a
skirmish with the tribes, in which one of his young officers was killed,
Captain Speke was wounded in eleven places, and Burton himself had a
javelin thrust through his jaws. His _First Footsteps in East Africa_
(1856), describing these adventures, is one of his most exciting and most
characteristic books, full of learning, observation and humour.

After serving on the staff of Beatson's Bashi-bazouks at the Dardanelles,
but never getting to the front in the Crimea, Burton returned to Africa in
1856. The foreign office, moved by the Royal Geographical Society,
commissioned him to search for the sources of the Nile, and, again
accompanied by Speke, he explored the lake regions of equatorial Africa.
They discovered Lake Tanganyika in February 1858, and Speke, pushing on
during Burton's illness and acting on indications supplied