Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey Investigates. This is a follow-up to an earlier recording I did about the book, The Life of Captain Richard F. Burton by his wife, Isabel Burton. Last time I read from Volume 1, Chapter 8, so I'll read from Volume 1, Chapter 9.

This book, much like the last recording I did, has a lot of excerpted material from Richard Burton.

So she had her own writing and then includes pieces or long kind of elements from his other books.

He wrote like over 40 books.

And you can, I did a kind of a longer

discussion about Richard Burton and his background biography in my first recording of this.

So I'll go back and if you want to, go back and listen to that. But again, this will be

Chapter 9, Volume 1 of the Life of Captain Richard F. Burton by his wife,

Isabel Burton.

Harar, the Muslim Abyssinia, the Timbuktu of East Africa, the exploration of which had been

attempted in vain by some 30 travelers.

Richard returned up the Red Sea to Egypt, and much enjoyed the rest and safety for a short time,

and then returned to Bombay, his leave being up. But the wandering fever was still upon him,

and as the most difficult place for a white man to enter was Harar in Somaliland, Avicenia,

he determined that that should be his object. It is inhabited by a very dangerous race to deal with,

and no white man had ever penetrated

her arc. The first white man who went to Abyssinia was kept prisoner until he died.

The East India Company had long wished to explore it, because Burr-Bara, the chief port of Somaliland,

is the safest and best harbor on the western side of the Indian Ocean, far better than Aden.

They went to work with that strange mixture of caution and generosity, with which they treated

those of their servants who stepped out of what Richard calls their quarter-deck routine,

that is, to let him go as a private traveler, and the government to give him no protection,

...