On his expedition with Speke to Tanganyika, Burton had already written four volumes, 267 and it was now to be the subject of another work, Zanzibar, which is chiefly a description of the town and island from which the expedition started. The origin of the book was as follows. With him on his way home from Africa he had brought among other MSS. a bundle of notes relating both to his "preliminary canter" and to Zanzibar, and the adventures of these notes were almost as remarkable as those of the Little Hunchback. On the West Coast of Africa the bundle was "annexed" by a skipper. The skipper having died, the manuscripts fell into the hands of his widow, who sold them to a bookseller, who exposed them for sale. An English artillery officer bought them, and, in his turn, lost them. Finally they were picked up in the hall of a Cabinet Minister, who forwarded them to Burton. The work contains an enormous mass of geographical, anthropological and other information, and describes the town so truthfully that nobody, except under compulsion, would ever dream of going there. The climate, it seems, is bad for men, worse for women. "Why," he asks, "should Englishmen poison or stab their wives when a few months at Zanzibar would do the business more quietly and effectually?" The expense of getting them over there may be one objection. But whoever goes to Zanzibar, teetotallers, we are told, should keep away. There it is drink or die. Burton introduces many obsolete words, makes attacks on various persons, and says fearlessly just what he thinks; but the work has both the Burtonian faults. It is far too long, and it teems with uninteresting statistics.

There also left the press this year (1871) a work in two volumes entitled Unexplored Syria, by Burton and Tyrwhitt Drake. 268 It describes the archaeological discoveries made by the authors during their sojourn in Syria, and includes an article on Syrian Proverbs (Proverba Communia Syriaca) which had appeared the year before in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Some of the sayings have English analogues, thus:

"nah" being wealth or honour; "ah," the expression of fear or doubt. 269

At one of the meetings of the Royal Geographical Society, at which Burton had been billed to speak, there were present among the audience his wife, Mr. Arundell, and several other members of the family. Considerable hostility was shown towards Burton; and Colonel Rigby 270 and others flatly contradicted some of his statements respecting Zanzibar. Then Burton flew into a temper such as only he could fly into. His eyes flashed, his lips protruded with rage, and he brandished the long map pointer so wildly that the front bench became alarmed for their safety. Old Mr. Arundell, indignant at hearing his son-in-law abused, then tried to struggle on to the platform, while his sons and daughters, horrified at the prospect, hung like bull-dogs to his coat tails. Says Burton, "the old man, who had never been used to public speaking, was going to address a long oration to the public about his son-in-law, Richard Burton. As he was slow and very prolix, he would never have sat down again, and God only knows what he would have said." The combined efforts of the Arundell family however, prevented so terrible a denouement, Burton easily proved his enemies' statements to be erroneous, and the order was eventually restored.