by him, lighted
upon Victoria Nyanza. The separate discovery led to a bitter dispute, but
Burton's expedition, with its discovery of the two lakes, was the incentive
to the later explorations of Speke and Grant, Baker, Livingstone and
Stanley; and his report in volume xxxiii. of the _Proceedings of the Royal
Geographical Society_, and his _Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa_ (1860),
are the true parents of the multitudinous literature of "darkest Africa."
Burton was the first Englishman to enter Mecca, the first to explore
Somaliland, the first to discover the great lakes of Central Africa. His
East African pioneering coincides with areas which have since become
peculiarly interesting to the British Empire; and three years later he was
exploring on the opposite side of Africa, at Dahomey, Benin and the Gold
Coast, regions which have also entered among the imperial "questions" of
the day. Before middle age Burton had compressed into his life, as Lord
Derby said, "more of study, more of hardship, and more of successful
enterprise and adventure, than would have sufficed to fill up the existence
of half a dozen ordinary men." _The City of the Saints_ (1861) was the
fruit of a flying visit to the United States in 1860.

Since 1849 his connexion with the Indian army had been practically severed;
in 1861 he definitely entered the service of the foreign office as consul
at Fernando Po, whence he was shifted successively to Santos in Brazil
(1865), Damascus (1869), and Trieste (1871), holding the last post till his
death on the 20th of October 1890. Each of these posts produced its
corresponding books: Fernando Po led to the publishing of _Wanderings in
West Africa_ (1863), _Abeokuta and the Cameroons_ (1863), _A Mission to
Gelele, king of Dahome_ (1864), and _Wit and Wisdom from West Africa_
(1865). The _Highlands of the Brazil_ (1869) was the result of four years'
residence and travelling; and _Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay_
(1870) relate to a journey across South America to Peru. Damascus suggested
_Unexplored Syria_ (1872), and might have led to much better work, since no
consulate in either hemisphere was more congenial to Burton's taste and
linguistic studies; but he mismanaged his opportunities, got into trouble
with the foreign office, and was removed to Trieste, where his Oriental
prepossessions and prejudices could do no harm, but where, unfortunately,
his Oriental learning was thrown away. He did not, howeve