One of the papers on May 16th, and I think it was the Daily News, wrote as follows:—
"We referred yesterday to the latest discovery of Captain Richard Burton, who is surely the most fortunate of modern voyagers, as he is certainly the most widely travelled. The Highlands of Brazil, the kingdom of Dahomey, the fever-stricken shores of Eastern Africa, the Equatorial Lakeland whence flow the waters of the Nile, Scinde and the Punjaub, the ruined cities of Etruria, Iceland, and Hecla, the City of the Mormons, the country of the Druzes, the unknown land of El Aláh, with as many Cities as there are days in the year—all these are places not only visited, but described by a writer whose wealth of information seems unparalleled. Almost alone among Christian travellers, he has penetrated into the most sacred places of the most fanatic people; has witnessed the secret rites of Hindoos; has worshipped as a Moslem among Moslems in the City which received the fugitive Prophet, and may wear the green turban of a pilgrim, because he has performed the ritual of Islam at the Kaaba of Mecca, and has also received the Brahminical thread. His books of travel, united, form almost as many volumes as may be found in Hakluyt's Collection, Purchas's 'Pilgrims,' or Pinkerton's 'Voyages.' The wanderings of this modern Ulysses cover an area of a good quarter of the habitable globe and a period of forty years. He is one of those who have kept alive the glorious tradition of English adventure. There are Geographical Societies in every European country, but none can show so long a list of achievements as our own. There are travellers of France, Germany, Italy, and Russia to be found in every far-off corner of the earth, but none who have done so much as our own men. And now, to add to his long catalogue of honourable and successful voyages, the gallant Captain reports that he has restored an ancient California to the World, and that is none other than the Land of Midian."
Midian means the district which in the Bible covers the peninsula of Sinai, and the country east of the Gulf of Akabah, east of the river Jordan, into which the Midianites fled before the Three Hundred, and comprises that great desert south and east of the Euphrates, through which the modern Midianites, who are the present Bedawi, with their cattle and black tents still wander. Their manners and customs are just the same, only guns have taken the place of the bow, coffee and tobacco have been brought in; a sort of veneer of Mohammedan doctrine is added to the ancient patriarchal faith, still keeping its own traditions.
Richard's Midian was an utterly unknown country along the east coast of the Gulf of Akabah, one of the two narrow inlets in which the Red Sea ends. When I say unknown, it has been practically unvisited and its shores unexplored until now. There is abundant evidence of a former population and a cultivated period; there are ruins of large towns, of solid masonry, roads cut in the rock, aqueducts five miles long; remains of massive fortresses with artificial reservoirs, all the signs of a busy and a prosperous period, when fleets with richly laden cargoes came to and fro. The rocks are full of mineral wealth—gold, silver, tin, antimony, and many other rich things, just as in the gold districts elsewhere. The sands of the streams yield gold, and the ancient mining works lie destroyed round every town, heaps of ashes close to the mineral furnaces. There are mines of turquoises. This hoard of possible wealth would have set up Ismail Khedive and Egypt for ever, if she could only have worked it. Richard began to be called in fun the "new Pharaoh's new Joseph."
These seas were once bright with trade and craft and cargoes from every part of the Eastern World. The mines flourished with the trade, and doubtless perished through the same causes. First the struggle between the Persians and Heraclius, and then the Moslem conquest.
Richard went first to Moilah, thence to Aynunah Bay. Every ruined town had its mining works, dams for washing of sand and crushed rock, and gold-washing vessels. Then they went to Makna, written "Mugua" in the maps, the Capital of the land, as far as Jebel Hassani, and he found it much like ancient California. These gold and precious stones producing parts of Arabia were closed up four thousand years ago, and present the appearance of having been suddenly left, in consequence of earthquake or some great volcanic evolution. They found a black sand containing a very clear oxide of tin, and a large stone engraved with antique inscriptions, which they copied.
At the first expedition there was not money enough for us both to go, so I had to make the sacrifice and stay behind.