PREFACE. 



xi 



so the ' Letts ' containing my excursions to Sa'adani and 

 to Kilwa also came to temporary grief. Annexed by a 

 skipper on the West African coast, appropriated by his 

 widow, and exposed at a London bookseller's stall (label- 

 led outside, ' Burton Original MS. Diary in Africa'), it was 

 accidentally left by the buyer, an English Artillery 

 officer, in the hall of one of H. M.'s Ministers of State. 

 Here being recognized, it was kindly and courteously re- 

 turned to me. The meteorological observations made by 

 me on the East African seaboard and at other places dur- 

 ing the discovery of the Lakes were also, I would re- 

 mark, mislaid for years, deep hidden in certain pigeon- 

 holes at Whitehall Place. May these three accidents be 

 typical of the fate of my East African Expedition, which, 

 so long the victim of uncontrollable circumstance, appears 

 now, after many weary years, likely to emerge from the 

 shadow which overcast it, and to occupy the position 

 which I ever desired to see it conquer. 



The two old documents are published with the 

 less compunction as Zanzibar, though increasing in im- 

 portance and now the head-quarters of an Admiralty 

 Court and of two Mission-Schools, with a printing-press 

 and other civilized appliances, has not of late been worked 

 out. The best authorities are still those who appeared 

 about a quarter of a century ago, always excepting, how- 

 ever, the four magnificent volumes, Baron Carl Clare von 

 der Decken's Reisen in Ost-Afrika, in den Jahren 1859 

 bis 1861, which I first saw at Jerusalem : there too I had 

 the pleasure of making acquaintance with Dr Otto Kersten, 

 who accompanied the unfortunate traveller during the 



