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Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah
Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah Author:Richard F. Burton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A PILGRIMAGE AL-MADINAH AND MECCAH. CHAPTER I. TO ALEXANDRIA. A few Words concerning what induced me to a Pilgrimage. In the autumn of 1852, throu... more »gh the medium of my excellent friend, the late General Monteith, I offered my services to the Royal Geographical Society of London, for the purpose of removing that opprobrium to modern adventure, the huge white blot which in our maps still notes the Eastern and the Central regions of Arabia. Sir Roderick I. Murchison, Colonel P. Yorke and Dr. Shaw, a deputation from that distinguished body, with their usual zeal for discovery and readiness to encourage the discoverer, honoured me by warmly supporting, in a personal interview with the then Chairman of the then Court of Directors to the then Honourable East India Company, my application for three years' leave of absence on special duty from India to Maskat. But they were unable to prevail upon the said Chairman, the late Sir James Hogg, who,1 remembering the fatalities which of late years have befallen sundry soldier-travellers in the East, refused his sanction, alleging as a reason1 1 "Remembering .... reason," afterwards altered by the author to " much disliking, if fact must be told, my impolitic habit of telling political truths, (in 1851 I had submitted to the Court of Directors certain remarks upon the subject of Anglo-Indian misrule: I voL. I. I that the contemplated journey was of too dangerous a nature. In compensation, however, for the disappointment, I was allowed the additional furlough of a year, in order to pursue my Arabic studies in lands where the language is best learned. What remained for me but to prove, by trial, that what might be perilous to other travellers was safe to me? The "experimentum crucis" was a visit to Al-Hijaz, at once the most d...« less