Fallow Year*, 1844 184! !'.! 



Duty, however, calls on me to be serious. It is incumbent on me to point out the 

 vast moral responsibility you incur, to warn you of the irretrievable disgrace in which 

 all your friends will hold you, if when you are fairly committed to the pellucid streams 

 and bracing atmosphere of an Egyptian river you stop short of penetrating to the Court 

 of the Negus and reposing for awhile under the shadow of the Asylum of the Universe. 

 If you will follow my advice you will go right ahead till you reach the Mountains of the 

 Moon, then taking the first turning to the right continue your course until you tint I it, 

 necessary to ask your way ; by which means you may immortalise yourself by the 

 discovery of the great Central Sea, and by which time I hope to be able to join you 

 there or anywhere else. 



As you are anxious to have your dignity supported at foreign courts you may rely 

 on a handsome case of brickbats with " Robert Peel " or " By Her Majesty's command," 

 "From the East India Company, private " etc., addressed to you at every large town, 

 postage of course not paid. Are you going before the end of next week? On Friday 

 the 10th or Monday the 13th at latest I shall make my transit over the London disk, 

 and will attempt to find you, if possible. I am sorry you never came into this part of 

 the country as we should have been delighted by a visit. I am grown tremendously 

 agricultural, and intend to come out strongly on the Potato disease next term. Yours 

 most sincerely, H. T. HALLAM. 



One wonders how the Egyptian and Syrian journeys would 

 have worked out had Galton had Henry Hallam for his comrade. As 

 it was Galton started alone. In the following memorandum we see 

 how forty years later he described the events of those days : 



EGYPT, SOUDAN AND SYRIA 



18456 

 F. GALTON 



written from memory 1885. 



After my Father's death, October 1844, finding I had a competent fortune and 

 hating the idea of practising medicine, also being disheartened by the sense that the 

 medical knowledge to which I had access was very lax and that its progress seemed 

 barred I don't do justice I know to the state of the case, but only describe my feelings 

 fresh from the rigorous methods of proof- at Cambridge that I determined to give it 

 up. My passion was for movement and travel and I ultimately started for the East in 

 September (I think 1 ), 1845. On going by diligence south from Paris, I found myself 

 with Denham Cookes as a companion. He was charming and full of anecdote and fun ; 

 we travelled together to Avignon, where we stayed some days and there I left him. He 

 was killed at a steeplechase in Florence soon after. Stopped at Malta where Temple 

 Frere was with his Uncle Hookham Frere 2 . On reaching Alexandria, (or was it 



1 From what has been said above this is probably incorrect and the middle or lnt in- 

 half of October more likely. 



- In his Memories, Galton regrets not having, owing to Frere's ill-health, been able 

 to talk to the man whose Loves of the Triangles had given the "coup de grdce to the 

 turgid poetry that had become a temporary craze in my grandfather's time " (p. 85). 



