Whilst leading this sort of life, on a long furlough, Richard determined to carry out a project he had long had in his head, to study thoroughly the "inner life of the Moslem." He had long felt within himself the qualifications, both mental and physical, which are needed for the exploration of dangerous regions, impossible of access, and of disguises difficult to sustain. His career as a dervish in Scinde greatly helped him. His mind was both practical and imaginative; he set himself to imagine and note down every contingency that might arise, and one by one he studied each separate thing until he was master of it. As a small sample he apprenticed himself to a blacksmith; he learned to make horseshoes and shoe his horse.

To accomplish a journey to Mecca and Medinah quite safely in those days (1853) was almost an impossibility, for the discovery that he was not a Mussulman would have been avenged by a hundred Khanjars. It meant living with his life in his hand, and amongst the strangest and wildest companions, adopting their unfamiliar manners, and living for perhaps nine months in the hottest and most unhealthy climate, upon repulsive food, complete and absolute isolation from all that makes life tolerable, from all civilization, from all his natural habits—the brain at high tension, never to depart from the rôle he had adopted.

He obtained a year's leave on purpose, and left London as a Persian, for, during the time, he had to assume and sustain several Oriental characters. Captain Grindlay, who was in the secret, travelled to Southampton and Alexandria as his English interpreter. John Thurburn, who, curiously to say, was also the host of Burckhardt till he died, and was buried in Cairo, received Richard at Alexandria. He and his son-in-law, John Larking, of the Firs, Lee, Kent, were the only persons throughout the perilous expedition who knew of his secret. He went to Cairo as a dervish, and he lived there as a native, till (as he told me) he actually believed himself to be what he represented himself to be, and then he felt he was safe, and he practised on his own country-people the finding out that he was unrecognizable. He had wished to cross the whole length of Arabia, but the Russian War had caused disturbances, which might have delayed him over his year's leave.

In those days it was almost impossible to visit the Holy City as one of the Faithful. First, there was the pilgrim-ship to embark on; then there were long desert caravan marches, with their privations and their dangers; then there was the holy shrine, the Ka'abah, to be visited, and all the ceremonies to be gone through, like a Roman Catholic Holy Week at Rome. Burckhardt, the Swiss traveller, did get in, but he never could see the Ka'abah, and he confessed afterwards that he was so nervous that he was unable to take notes, and unable to write or sketch for fear of being detected, whereas Richard was sketching and writing in his white burnous the whole time he was prostrating and kissing the holy Stone. He did not go in mockery, but reverentially. He had brought his brain to believe himself one of them. Europeans, converted Moslems, have of late gone there, but they have been received with the utmost civility, consistent with coldness, have been admitted to outward friendship, but have been carefully kept out of what they most wished to know and see, so that Richard was thus the only European who had beheld the inner and religious life of the Moslems as one of themselves.

Amongst the various Oriental characters that Richard assumed, the one that suited best was half-Arab, half-Iranian, such as throng the northern shores of the Persian Gulf. With long hair falling on his shoulders, long beard, face and hands, arms and legs browned and stained with a thin coat of henna, Oriental dress, spear in hand, and pistols in belt, Richard became Mirza Abdullah, el Bushiri. Here he commenced his most adventurous and romantic life, explored from North to South, from East to West, mixed with all sorts of people and tribes without betraying himself in manners, customs, or speech, when death must often have ensued, had he created either dislike or suspicion.

I here give a slight sketch from his private notes, and for fuller details refer the reader to his "Pilgrimage to Mecca and El Medinah," 3 vols., with coloured illustrations, published in 1855, and which made a great sensation. Although he has been the author of some eighty books and pamphlets, I think that this original edition of three volumes is the one that his name should live by, and it will be the first of the Uniform Library with the Meccan Press. The Uniform Library means a reproduction of all his hitherto published works, and eventually his unpublished ones, so that the world may lose nothing of what he has ever written.

As I have said, on the night of the 3rd of April, 1853, a Persian Mirza, accompanied by an English interpreter, Captain Henry Grindlay, of the Bengal Cavalry, left London for Southampton, and embarked on the P. and O. steamer Bengal. The voyage was profitable but tedious; Richard passed it in resuming his Oriental character, with such success, that when he landed at Alexandria, he was recognized and blessed as a true Moslem by the native population.

RICHARD BURTON AS HAJI ABDULLAH, EN ROUTE TO MECCA.

John Thurburn and his son-in-law, John Larking, received him at their villa on the Mahmudíyah Canal, but he was lodged in an outhouse, the better to deceive the servants. Here he practised the Korán and prayer, and all the ceremonies of the Faith, with a neighbouring Shaykh. He also became a hakím, or doctor, and called himself Shaykh Abdullah, preparing to be a dervish. The dervish is a chartered vagabond; nobody asks why he comes, where he goes; he may go on foot, or on horseback, or alone, or with a large retinue, and he is as much respected without arms, as though he were armed to the teeth. "I only wanted," he said, "a little knowledge of medicine, which I had, moderate skill in magic, a studious reputation, and enough to keep me from starving." He provided himself with a few necessaries for the journey.