These Travels Are,
However, Chiefly Interesting And Instructive For That Which Indeed Must
Give The Chief Interest To All Travels In Egypt And Nubia - The Description
Of Antiquities.
The second cataract continued the limit of the attempts of European
travellers, till it was reached and passed, first by Mr. Burckhardt, and
afterwards by Mr. Banks.
No modern traveller has excelled Mr. Burckhardt in
the importance of his travels; and-few, in any age, have equalled him in
zeal, perseverance, fortitude, and success.
He was employed by the African Association to explore the interior of
Africa. Having perfected himself in the knowledge of the religion, manners,
and language of the Mahomedan Arabs, by frequent and long residences among
the Bedouins, he proceeded to Cairo. Here, finding that the opportunity of
a caravan to Fezzan or Darfur was not soon likely to occur, he resolved to
explore Egypt and the country above the cataracts. He accordingly
"performed two very arduous and interesting journies into the ancient
Ethiopia; one of them along the banks of the Nile from Assouan to Dar al
Mahas on the frontiers of Dongola, in the months of February and March,
1813, during which he discovered many remains of ancient Egyptian and
Nubian architecture, with Greek inscriptions; the other between March and
July in the following year, through Nubia to Souakun. The details of this
journey contain the best notices ever received in Europe of the actual
state of society, trade, manufactures, and government, in what was once the
cradle of all the knowledge of the Egyptians."
Although it will carry us a little out of our regular and stated course, to
notice the other travels of this enterprising man in the place, yet we
prefer doing it, in order that our readers, by having at once before them a
brief abstract of all he performed for geography, may the better be enabled
to appreciate his merits.
Soon after his second return to Cairo, he resolved to penetrate into
Arabia, and to visit Mecca and Medina. In order to secure his own safety,
and at the same time gain such information as could alone be obtained in
the character of a Mahomedan, he assumed the dress, and he was enabled to
personate the religion, manners, and language of the native Hadje, or
pilgrims. Thus secure and privileged, he resided between four and five
months in Mecca. Here he gained some authentic and curious information
respecting the rise, history, and tenets of the Wahabees, a Mahomedan sect.
These travels have not yet been published.
The last excursion of Mr. Burckhardt was from Cairo to Mount Sinai and the
eastern head of the Red Sea. This journey was published in 1822, along with
the travels in Syria and the Holy Land; the latter of which he accomplished
while he was preparing himself at Aleppo for his proposed journey into the
interior of Africa. These travels, therefore, are prior in date to those in
Nubia, though they were published afterwards.
He spent nearly three, years in Syria:
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