Enterprise and Adventure. Ralph Temple

sought to molest him. These he never exhibited except in the last resort, as they necessarily betrayed his disguise in some degree. On one occasion, when at Sonakim, in Arabia, he was ordered to be arrested, and to have his hands tied, and be thrust into a prison. Concealment was now useless, and Burckhardt drew his firmans from a secret pocket in his cloak, written on long scrolls in Turkish and Arabic. The production of these imposing documents wrought an immediate change in the tone of the Arab functionary. After kissing both the scrolls and placing them to his forehead, he protested that it was the good of the public alone that had led him to treat him as he had done. He then inquired the cause of the traveller's appearance; "for by this time," says Burckhardt, "my dress, which had not been very splendid when I set out on my journey, was literally in rags."

      In his Nubian wanderings, Burckhardt succeeded in penetrating to the banks of the Astobaros, and thence crossed the desert to Sanakin, on the shore of the Red Sea. This, and a former journey along the Nile ​towards Dongola, were, unfortunately, the only travels in the unexplored regions of the interior of Africa which he accomplished; but his tour in Arabia, the last he performed, though not productive of additions to our geographical knowledge, enabled him to collect a vast deal of information of the highest interest.