Sir Richard Francis Burton was born in 1821 in the UK and studied Arabic
at Oxford University. He joined the British Indian Army where he mastered
many more languages. He has been described variously as “brilliant
and eccentric” but also as “one of those men who could never
do wrong”. His major claim to fame lay in the controversy surrounding
his involvement with the quest for the source of the Nile and also translating
the 16 volumes of “The Tales of the Arabian Nights” and the
Kama Sutra.
He was an explorer, an excellent linguist – said to speak over
29 languages, a writer, soldier and an excellent swordsman. He also loved
travelling in disguise and in 1853 he entered the forbidden cities of
Medina and Mecca, disguised as an Arab pilgrim. No account of Burton would
be complete without a quick discussion of John Hanning Speke. In contrast
to Burton, Speke was not very good at languages, and by all accounts,
not terribly bright. Speke’s great passion was big game hunting and this
was one of his motivating reasons for joining an expedition to seek the
source of the Nile and also open up hitherto unexplored parts of Africa.
In 1856 the British Royal Geographical Society invited Burton to lead
an expedition in search of the source of the Nile. Speke was part of the
expedition. The two found Lake Tanganyika but both were too ill to explore
the lake. Burton’s legs were paralysed through malaria and Speke was almost
blind as a result of a beetle getting into his ear. They both returned
to Tabora and whilst Burton was recovering, Speke made a trip north to
Lake Victoria and guessed that this was the source of the White Nile –
an inspired guess that was not confirmed by Livingstone and Stanley many
years later. This started the disagreement between Burton and Speke. Burton
was too ill to travel back to England, so Speke arrived back in London
first. When Burton returned, he discovered that Speke had taken most of
the credit for the discovery of Lake Tanganyika and that Speke had upstaged
him.
Burton and Speke remained bitter public rivals. Mysteriously, Speke
died after meeting with Burton the night before Speke was going to give
a public talk about finding the source of the White Nile. About 14 years
later, Burton was appointed British Consul to Trieste where he wrote around
43 books and translated many other texts. Queen Victoria knighted Burton
in February 1886 and he died on Oct. 20, 1890, in Trieste.