Sir Samuel IHlbttc JBafeer 583 



So he abandoned the idea of cloth in;.; his stalwart 

 form in a cassock, and sought consolation once more 

 in sport. In the course of his sporting travels in 

 Hungary in 1860 he met the lady who was destined 

 to exercise such a remarkable influence over his life- 

 Florence, the daughter of M. Firmian von Sass, who 

 became his second wife and the sharer of all his future 

 journeys and adventures. It is not often that a man 

 of Samuel Baker's stamp meets with a woman so 

 thoroughly in sympathy with his tastes and aspirations 

 as Florence Baker was with those of her husband. 

 Brave and resolute as he was, he found that her courage 

 and determination were equal to his own. Adventure 

 had the same charm for her as for him, and danger 

 had as little power to shake her nerves as it had to 

 shake his. One had only to look at the perfect oval 

 of that calm, brave face, with its singular mixture of 

 sweetness and strength, to realise what a helpmate such 

 a woman must have been in times of peril or sickness, 

 of distress or doubt. 



In 1 86 1 Baker set off with his wife on an expedition 

 to Egypt. He had some vague idea of combining ex- 

 ploration with sport when he started, and this idea 

 gradually crystalised into a determination to go in 

 search of Speke and Grant, and help to clear the 

 mystery of the sources of the Nile. Of his sporting 

 adventures in Abyssinia, of his journey to Khartoum, 

 of his meeting with Speke and Grant, of his discovery 

 of the great lake Albert N'yanza, I have no space to 

 write. Let it suffice to say that when he and his wife 

 returned to England in 1865, after suffering indescribable 



