Part 22

After another seventy years the Bombay Marine became in name what, as the only local armed fleet, it had long been in fact--the Indian Navy. Wherever round the basin of the Indian Ocean there had been fighting in those years, the vessels of the Bombay Marine had borne the British flag with honour, though the services of officers and crews, both afloat and ashore, had been too sparingly recognised. And in those years was commenced the series of surveys which are still the chief authorities for the navigation of the Eastern seas, and have given the names of Rennie, Moresby, Haines, and Taylor a permanent place in history. But men who entered the Bombay Marine were still serving efficiently when the Indian Navy was abolished, in the belief that ships of the Royal Navy would carry on the police of the seas as efficiently, but at less annual cost, and that other arrangements might be made for the business of inland navigation and transport; the necessity for recurrent shore surveys seems not to have been foreseen, though already a special department has been created and placed under a retired officer of the Indian Navy. It is impossible not to admit that, through its want of influential friends, the Service was treated unjustly. The guarantee of "Colonel Sykes's clause" has, through repeated agitation, been made so effectual for officers of the Indian Army that men of forty have retired as full colonels, because all their regimental seniors had joined the Staff Corps, while the officers of the Indian Navy were forced to retire without appeal on something like the pension of their rank. But they must have felt a grim satisfaction in knowing that they had outlived the piracy which had been the scourge of Western India and the first cause of the creation of the force; their last serious service was in administering a final pounding to their old enemies the Waghers, the last survivors of the flourishing pirate communities of Kattyawar.

Besides surveys of the Eastern seas, European nations trading with India are indebted to the Indian Navy for the opening up of the Overland Route, and so, indirectly, for the construction of the Suez Canal. Without steam, indeed, the Red Sea could never have become a highway of commerce, while with its extended use that great canal could not for ever be closed; but the _Hugh Lindsay_ of the Indian Navy, the first steamer constructed in the East, which, after thirty years of service, was still staunch enough for work as a tug at Kurachi, was the first steamer to appear on its waters, making the voyage to and from Suez in 1830, under the command of Captain John Lindsay. The expense of the voyage, however, was so great that, after seven trips, the Court bade the Government of Bombay only repeat it in case of emergency, and it was reserved for Lieutenant Waghorn, also of the Indian Navy, by sacrifice of his private fortune and professional prospects and ten years' unceasing labour, to prove that communication with India through the Red Sea was not only a luxury of State, but a profitable commercial enterprise. From his labours all have profited save himself and his family, and the only public acknowledgment of his services is a bust in the Canal Garden at Suez.

With some labour, caused by the want of an index, many notices of interest might be quarried from Captain Low's pages. The early history of Bombay, the antecedents of the rulers of Muscat and Zanzibar, the settlement at Aden, the true story of Perim, the achievements of the Sepoy Marines, who are now represented by two regular regiments of the Bombay Army, all invite notice, but our space is exhausted. Yet we must find room to mention the self-denial of Commodore Hayes, who, rather than embroil the Company with China, released two junks captured in running the blockade from Batavia with Dutch property, and so sacrificed his large share of £600,000 lawful prize; and the gallantry of Midshipman Denton, who, unable to board a proa, lashed her bowsprit to the taffrail of his gunboat, and so continued his course, fighting her all the time. And for contrast with the experience of the Bay of Bengal, where we believe that the full pressure of a great cyclone has never been recorded, as the anemometers have broken with a pressure of sixty pounds, we may note that, in the cyclone of November, 1854, so famous at Bombay, the pressure did not exceed thirty-five pounds to the square foot: with such a storm as that which raged in Calcutta in October, 1864, the whole native town of Bombay would come down like a house of cards. We are sorry not to have been able to notice Captain Low's labours more favourably; particular points which we had noted for objection we will pass over in silence.

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Captain Richard Burton is _facile princeps_ of modern travellers. There scarcely any part of the world which he has not visited, and wherever he goes he seems to have the history, geography, and ethnology of the country at his fingers' ends. His last important contribution to geographical science is the account of his visit to the Land of Midian, whither he went, commissioned by the ex-Khedive of Egypt, in search of the gold mines of which the ancient Arab geographer and others speak. The results of his expeditions are published in two works: _The Gold-Mines of Midian and the Ruined Midianite Cities_ (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1878) and _The Land of Midian (Revisited)_, 2 vols., issued by the same publishers during the present year. Having received an invitation from the ex-Viceroy, Captain Burton proceeded to Cairo in March, 1877, where an expedition was organized for the purpose of exploring the auriferous region. The author's comparison of the Cairo of the present time with the city as he knew it in his old pilgrim days, and as it is described in Lane's "Modern Egyptians," forms, although only incidental, a very interesting portion of the book. The chapter on Suez also is a good specimen of Captain Burton's style, and contains at once a topographical sketch, an archæological and historical description, and a chatty and amusing account of the modern city, its society, and surroundings. Midian, called nowadays by its inhabitants, as by the mediæval Arabic geographers, _Arz Maydan_, the Land of Midian, is that part of Arabia which occupies the east coast of the Gulf of Akabah, and extends some two degrees further to the south. The borders are somewhat difficult to ascertain, and it is probable that the ancient Midianites, like some of the larger and more powerful Bedawin tribes of the present day, wandered far and wide, and that their limits shrunk or extended according to their numbers, or the resisting power of their neighbours. The ancient history of the land is told by Captain Burton in a most exhaustive manner, the Biblical accounts being supplemented by copious references to Greek, Latin, Jewish, and Arabic writers of all ages. The quantity of gold, silver, and other metals mentioned in Numbers xxxi. 22, as being produced by Midian, was curiously borne out by the results of the expedition. A lengthy and learned notice is also given of the Nabathæans, whose former rock-cut capital, Petræa, is still one of the marvels of Arabia; whose king, or ethnarch, Aretas (in Arabic, El Hareth), is mentioned in the New Testament; and whose rule embraced so large a portion of Syria and Arabia, and extended late into Christian times.

The discovery that gold existed in Midian was in the first place due to Haji Wali, familiar to the readers of Captain Burton's "Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina" as the companion of the author in the caravanserai at Cairo while preparing for the journey to Hejjaz. The old Haji was once returning from a visit to Mecca, when halting by the shore of the Gulf of Akabah he scooped up a handful of granitic sand which sparkled in the bed of the wady and took it with him to Alexandria. There he took his specimen to an assayer, and, although the glitter which had attracted him proved only to be produced by the presence of mica, his sand when smelted in a crucible yielded a comparatively large portion of pure gold. The information of the discovery was not received with encouragement by the official to whom Haji Wali communicated it, and the latter ceased to think more of the subject. The assayer, however, set out for the new Eldorado and lost his life, probably murdered by the Bedawin. Captain Barton believes that the secret of the gold has never been really lost, and that the washing of sand has always been clandestinely carried on. Be that as it may, Captain Burton, believing the Haji's story, endeavoured to recommend his discovery to the notice of the Egyptian authorities, who _pooh-pooh'd_ the whole thing, and merely remarked that gold was becoming too common. For nearly a quarter of a century Captain Burton kept the secret to himself, but at length he again sought out his old friend Haji Wali, obtained from him more exact information as to the locality, and carried him off with the expedition, the means for organizing which Ismail Pasha furnished. The results of the expedition, which was only a pioneer one, were sufficient to corroborate all that the Haji had said, and to confirm Captain Burton's own prognostications drawn from the ancient sources which his extensive learning enabled him to consult. The adventures of the party fill the remainder of the first of his two books and form extremely pleasant reading.

The second of the two books contains somewhat less antiquarian research, but more practical information than the first. It is a record of the second expedition (also equipped at the expense of the Egyptian Government by order of the ex-Khedive), and is full of pleasant travel-talk and adventure. Setting out from Cairo in a sickly season and under the most unfavourable circumstances--the resources of the country being drained by distress at home and the Turkish-Russian war abroad--they at length got under way once more for the desert, not without encountering hair-breadth escapes from the bursting of some of the tubes of the engine of their steamer. Once landed, the initial difficulties of desert travel had to be encountered. "It had been reported," says Captain Burton, "that I was the happy possessor of £22,000, mostly to be spent in El-Muwaylah. The unsettled Arabs plunder and slay; the settled Arabs slander and cheat." These, however, were soon smoothed over by the commander's tact and firmness, the rival claims of two tribes to act as escort were disposed of, and the work of the expedition then began.

The first march, through Madyan proper (North Midian), occupied fifty-four days. The country was essentially a mining district, and very rich in mineral wealth, though, strange to say, it had not been much worked by the ancients. The first expedition found free gold in the basalt, but the researches of the second yielded none. The second march, through South Midian, lasted eighteen days. Its principal object was to ascertain the depth from east to west of the quartz formations, and to explore the virgin region towards the east. Here, however, they were stopped by the exactions and turbulent conduct of the Maazeh, who tried to pick quarrels with their Huweitat guides, and made it impossible for Captain Burton to proceed without such loss of time and other inconveniences as must have sacrificed the other and more important objects of the expedition. The last journey was through the southern portion of Midian, and lasted twenty-four days. This part of the country has been systematically worked in former times, and it is here that the gold and silver mines are placed by the mediæval Arab geographers.

Throughout Midian, ruined towns, villages, mining stations, and smelting furnaces were found, testifying to the former mining industry of the country, and described by Captain Burton in his usual graphic and careful style.

That Midian abounds in mineral wealth, and that gold and silver may be found in plenty there, is clear both from the documentary evidence of the author and from the testimony of the physical and geological features of the country. The very first reconnaissance showed a formation exactly reproducing "the conditions which Australia shows, and which produced the huge 'welcome nugget' of Ballarat." The country also closely resembles the known gold-working sites of Ancient Egypt, but with _filons_ of larger size. Some of these "Ophirs of Egypt Proper" yielded the treasury of Ramses the Great the enormous sum of £90,000,000 a year, as hieroglyphic inscriptions tell us. Herodotus, too, tells us of the immense wealth in the precious metals possessed by some of the Pharaohs. The modern Bedawins have legends of "gold pieces, square as well as round, bearing, by way of inscription, 'prayers' to the Apostle of Allah," which Captain Burton suspects to be "the Tibr, or 'pure gold-dust,' washed from the sands and cast probably in rude moulds." The close proximity to the sea and the facilities of the country for transport, it being "prepared by Nature to receive a tramway," remove half the difficulties of working.

That the specimens brought back by Captain Burton's expedition did not actually yield a larger proportion of the precious metals is in all probability due to the fact that they had no expert with them, and did not, therefore, sufficiently seek for and select stone from the auriferous rocks, but brought away much that the ancients had rejected, or left as unworkable. He is, however, convinced, as the impartial reader of his work must also be, that the gold land of Midian is still a fine field for commercial enterprise, which would soon restore to it the advantages which all ancient authorities declare that it once possessed.

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"The Land of Midian" attracted another explorer besides Captain Burton--namely, the late Dr. Beke, an account of whose labours has been given to the world by his widow in a bulky volume on the subject. His object was to discover the "true Mount Sinai," which he identified with a certain Jebel Barguir, otherwise the "Mountain of Light," on the Eastern shore of the Gulf of Akaba, and in which he fancied he saw the "volcano," the existence of which he had previously conjectured in his pamphlet, "Mount Sinai a Volcano." To make this theory accord with the Scriptural account, he had not only to shift the scene of the Law-giving from the Sinaitic Peninsula to the other side of the Gulf, but he was obliged to find another Mizraim than Egypt, and boldly sacrificed hieroglyphic, Biblical, and classic testimony, as well as that of tradition, to his own hypothesis. In confirmation of his theory, he found indications that the Mountain of Light was regarded as a holy place, and discovered ancient inscriptions near the summit, of which he brought copies home in triumph. Unfortunately, however, the name _Barguir_ turns out to be his own corruption of _Bakir_, a well-known Mohammedan name, and, in the present instance, that of the petty Arab saint whose tomb gives the only sanctity the mountain may possess, while the proper name of the mountain is Jebel el Yitm; the inscriptions are only the ordinary Nabathæan _graffiti_ and Arab-tribe marks, which are so common all over Arabia Petræa; and lastly, there is no volcano at all. The volume is interesting, as it contains much topographical information about a country the ancient history and future prospects of which render it of the highest importance; but as a contribution to the literature of the much-vexed question of the Exodus the late Dr. Beke's work is absolutely useless. Whether the so-called Peninsula of Sinai is really the scene of the early portion of that drama, the recent Egyptian researches of Dr. Brugsch Bey have rendered very doubtful; but wherever Mount Sinai has ultimately to be placed, it is not that discovered by Dr. Beke.

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As Mrs. Burton supplemented the "Unexplored Syria" of her husband and the late C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake with her own more personal but none the less interesting "Inner Life of Syria," so she has now embodied her own impression of the various localities which she and Captain Burton have visited during the last few years in a pleasant book entitled, _A. E. I.: Arabia, Egypt, and India_ (London: W. Mullan & Son, 1879). Mrs. Burton's pages are eminently readable, her powers of observation are keen, and her descriptions always fresh and vivid. If the spots she writes about have been often before depicted by pen and pencil, she yet finds something new to say, and some interesting and little-known historical incident to narrate, concerning them. The latter part of the book, containing a history and description of the old Portuguese settlement of Goa, and a minutely-detailed account of the life and works of St. Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, will be new to most readers and read with interest by all. The book is one which may be taken up at any moment with the certainty of finding something to amuse, instruct, or furnish food for earnest thought.

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_Egypt to Palestine_, by S. C. Bartlett, though bearing the name and address of a London publisher (Sampson Low, Marston, & Co.) on the title-page, is evidently the production of an American firm, the name of which, indeed, appears on some of the maps. The book is well got up, and as a description of the localities, their antiquities and history, is equal to the average of such publications. It is, however, entirely composed of materials collected from the works of other authors, taken often without acknowledgment, and is profusely illustrated by pictures and maps copied from other works, the sources of which are never acknowledged at all. The only passages at all original in the work are those which describe Mr. Bartlett's own journey, the highest interest of which consists in an occasional enumeration of the hymns he and his companions sang to the Arabs (cf. p. 193), and which would have much the same effect on the Tiyahah as the performances of the howling dervishes have upon an American tourist.

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Sir Lewis Pelly has published, in two handsome volumes, a literal translation of the text of the _Miracle Play of Hasan and Husein_ (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1879), as performed throughout India and Persia during the month of Mohurram, by the Shiah Mohammedans. The progress of Islam in its early days was so rapid that, in a short time, it had overwhelmed Persia, Egypt, Syria, and a large portion of the rest of the Byzantine Empire in its tide of conquest. The death of Mohammed naturally brought forward rival claimants to the supreme authority, and the dispute ultimately resolved itself into one between Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, and representative of the Hashimi clan, and Moawiyeh, the representative of the Ommayeh family, between whom and the Hashimis an old feud existed, originating in their rival claims to be the hereditary guardians of the Kaabeh Temple at Mecca. These two parties offered an obvious rallying point for the two opposing factions in El Islam, the conquered Persians and the conquering Arabs, the former of whom resisted the traditional ceremonial law with which their Semitic co-religionists would have trammelled them. The consequence was that the Aryan faction rallied round Ali, and the Arabs round Moawiyeh. The latter proved the stronger party, and were known as Sunnis, followers of the Sunnah or traditional law, while the adherents of the former were designated Shiahs or Sectarians, and thus originated the first great schism in Mohammedanism. The struggles of Ali's party for supremacy, his own murder, and the subsequent massacre of his sons, Hasan and Husein, who lost their lives under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, are the incidents on which the drama is founded, and the memory of which has kept alive the rancorous ill-feeling between the two sects. In the play itself the historical element is largely mixed with the marvellous and legendary, and the dramatic unities are wholly neglected; but it nevertheless exhibits enough of the real facts to give it an intense living interest, while the antiquated language and strange incidents that are introduced carry us back to the remotest times. An admirable introduction contains a notice by Dr. Birdwood, C.S.I., of the origin of the Shiah schism, and of the ceremonies with which the Mohurram festival is celebrated throughout India and Persia; and Mr. A. N. Wollaston, of the India Office, has both edited the text and illustrated it with some concise and appropriate notes.

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Dr. Charles Riew has just issued the first volume of his _Catalogue of the Persian MSS. in the British Museum_ (London: 1879), containing Christian and Mohammedan Theology, and the works on History and Geography of which the Museum has a large and important collection. Amongst these are the _Jámi ut tawárikh_, written in the seventh--eighth centuries of the Hejra, and comprising the histories of all the principal Turkish and Mongol dynasties; the _Táríkh i Rashídí_, a history of the Khans of Mogolistan and of the Amirs of Kashgar; and the _Zafar Namah_, the earliest authentic history of Timur, written by his order in 1404 A.D. A brief but complete analysis of each manuscript is given, enabling scholars to refer at once and without difficulty to any portion of the histories without the labour of looking through an often voluminous manuscript. The value of such a scholar-like production as this Catalogue is cannot be over-estimated; it has, in fact, placed within reach of the student of history most important and authentic works, the very existence of which was unknown except to a few Orientalists. The second volume is already complete in MS., and will be shortly published. We shall look forward to it with great interest, as the British Museum possesses a magnificent collection of Persian poetical and other works.

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