load, they easily break, and therefore travellers in the East would do better to put their wine and brandy in goat skins. The hides which are used to contain water have the hair on the outside, but those for wine have it on the inside, and are so well pitched, that the liquor acquires no bad taste. And if Europeans do at first feel some disgust at drinking what has been kept in such vessels, they are, at least, freed from the fear of losing their wine, as we did. Wood or coals travellers seldom take with them. At the places where the caravans halt, they generally find the dried dung of beasts, and this they use as firing when they can procure no wood or sticks in the neighbourhood."

In October the party set sail for Suez, on board a Turkish vessel; they landed at Djidda, and reached Loheia, the first point of their proper destination-the country of Yemen-at the end of the year 1762. On this journey Niebuhr made astronomical, geographical, and geodetical observations, as often as possible, and made some inquiries respecting the currents. Out of these laborious investigations grew the chart of the Red Sea, which, with reference to the circumstances under which it was made, and the means at his disposal, may be regarded as a masterly work.

After some stay in this agreeable town, the party, especially Forskaal and Niebuhr, travelled through western Yemen, in various directions; the former botanizing, the latter ascertaining the geographical situation of places. They then returned to the sea coast to Mokha, where Von Haven died about the end of May, 1763.

At the same time Niebuhr was again attacked by dysentery, and was only saved by the greatest care and temperance. After many delays and difficulties, and before he was perfectly recovered, he set out, undismayed by the danger he ran, with the rest of the party, for the capital, Sana. The climate, and numerous annoyances, which Forskaal had partly brought upon himself, partly aggravated through his caprice, brought on a bilious disorder, of which he died at Jerim, on the 11th of July, 1763.

Niebuhr was the more depressed at his loss from his own protracted illness. He set out, with the two survivors, on the road to Sana, but without the slightest hope of returning, and fearful that no precautions could ensure those papers which were not left in the care of his

English friends at Mokha, reaching Europe. This was a source of much greater anxiety to him than his life, to which he never held with any very great eagerness. He feared the entire frustration of the object, and, with good reason, the injustice which might be done to his and Forskaal's discharge of their duties. This was the only point of time during his whole expedition at which his spirits completely sunk.

At length he found himself in that state of dull resignation into which Europeans in the torrid zone generally sink, when under the influence of sickness and depression. He, who, both earlier and later in his journey, struck into the most toilsome path on the slightest rumour of an inscription or a ruin, could not now be stimulated to quit the high road to copy the Hamjarish inscriptions at Hoddafa;-an omission which any one, who imagines himself in his place, will easily excuse him for; but for which he used bitterly to reproach himself after a lapse of fifty years.

From the same causes the survivors declined the cordial and friendly invitation they received to pass a whole year in Sana and Upper Yemen; which would have been quite agreeable to the original plan. They hastened, on the contrary, to reach the coast before the English ships sailed. Their haste was much too great, for they had to wait the whole month of August, and more, before the vessel in which they were to sail was ready. Mokha, situated in the arid desert of Tehama, is, during summer, a horrible residence, and but few days elapsed before the surviving travellers and their servant were attacked with the fever of the climate.

Bauernfeind and the servant died at sea. Cramer reached Bombay, languished for some months, and died. Niebuhr was saved by that extreme abstemiousness which renders a tropical climate as little dangerous to Europeans as to natives. While he was labouring under the dysentery, the physician had told him to abstain from meat, and to eat nothing but bread and a sort of rice soup. This regimen cured his illness. At the end of several weeks the physician learnt, with astonishment, that Niebuhr was patiently continuing a diet by means of which few Europeans could be induced to purchase their lives, even when labouring under dangerous illness.

The merchant to whom the ship

which conveyed Niebuhr from Mokha to Bombay belonged, was Francis Scott, a younger son of the Scotts of Harden, a jacobite family of Roxburghshire. He became his intimate friend. "Five and thirty years afterwards," says his son, "when I studied in Edinburgh, I was received, in all respects, as one of the family in the house of this venerable man, who then lived at his ease in the Scottish capital, on the fortune he had acquired by honourable industry.

"The reception he met with from the English was extremely cordial. Bombay was, indeed, in a very different state from that which it now exhibits. The governor, instead of being a highly cultivated and scientific man, like many of those who have since filled that office, was, in conformity with the old system of the Company, a factor, who had risen by service; the council were men of low education and habits; the officers, for the most part, were men of various nations, who had entered an obscure service as a refuge from disagreeable adventures, or from indigence. Yet, even in this infant colony, the noble English spirit was not imperceptible; and, besides Scott, there were many in whom the vigorous, sensible, upright national character had wrought out for itself an education which cannot be given.

In Egypt, Niebuhr had first learned to delight in the society of Englishmen; and there was laid the foundation for that mutual attachment, which was permanent, and of which I shall have occasion to speak more hereafter."

Among his most intimate friends were Captain Howe, of the Royal Navy, brother of Admiral Lord Howe, and or General Sir William. From him he received some admirably drawn charts of the Indian seas, and detached parts, roads and harbours of the south-eastern coast of Arabia. He had great pleasure in being able to requite his friend's gift by another, which might serve as a token of his gratitude to the English nation for their hospitality: this was, a copy of his maritime chart of the Red Sea which he had completed at Bombay, and which, from Djidda northwards, was new to the English, no British vessel having as yet navigated that sea. A few years afterwards they attempted the navigation of it with the aid of this very chart, Since that time it has been greatly improved and perfected by Englishmen : the eastern shore by Sir Home Popham; the western, which

in Niebuhr's chart is deficient, by the expedition planned by Lord Valentia; the groundwork of these now perfect charts is, however, his.

At Bombay, Niebuhr learned the English language. He also endeavoured to acquire all the information possible from the Parsees and Hindoos, visited the excavated pagodas of Elephanta, and made drawings of the sculptures.

Lastly, he employed himself in arranging his journal, and sent a copy of it through London to Denmark. He also made use of an opportunity to visit Surat.

It was originally settled that the travellers should return by India: when, however, the inclinations which had first prompted Niebuhr to undertake the journey had returned in full force with the return of health, this plan displeased him, and he determined to make his way back overland. To achieve this, he was obliged to relax a little from the intense and wearing application to his original pursuit. From the time he quitted Bombay, where he learnt the death of his friend Mayer, (without whose examination and sanction he did not dare to trust himself, as he might and ought,) he gave up his observations for the longitude; to which he was further induced by the death of his Swedish servant, whom he had taught to assist him in the mechanical part of the observations. This is greatly to be regretted, for Persia and Turkey in Asia still present a wide and untrodden field for observations of this kind. Those who saw what pain this gave him in his old age, rather felt inclined to love and admire his zeal and modesty, than to lament the omission of a work he so much desired to perform.

In December, 1764, after a stay of fourteen months, Niebuhr quitted Bombay, visited Mascat, and made himself acquainted with the state of the remarkable province of Oman. He, however, did not remain there long, but went by Abusheher and Shiraz to Persepolis.

The drawings of the ruins, inscrip tions and bas-reliefs of Persepolis, made by three preceding travellers, had forcibly drawn Niebuhr's attention to them as the most remarkable monument of eastern antiquity: no other, either in Asia or in Egypt, awakened such wellgrounded hopes of being able to understand and interpret historical records

by a discovery of the meaning conveyed in the symbolical sculptures; and his acute and experienced eye immediately taught him the incompleteness of all the existing drawings. Nothing of all that he had seen in Asia raised his expectations to such a pitch; he could not rest till he reached Persepolis, and the last night of his journey thither was perfectly sleepless. The picture of these ruins remained during his whole life indelibly engraven on his mind-they appeared to him the crown and glory of all he had seen.

He passed between three and four weeks amidst them, in the desert, in unremitting labour, measuring and drawing the fragments. The inscriptions on the walls, which were at a considerable height, were distinctly legible only when the sun shone upon them; and as in this climate the hard polished black marble is not corroded by weather, his eyes, already greatly enfeebled by incessant labour, were attacked by a very dangerous inflammation. This, joined to the death of his Armenian servant, compelled him, in spite of his strenuous resistance to these complicated difficulties, to abandon the ancient sanctuary of Persia before he had thoroughly exhausted its treasures.

He returned by way of Shiraz and Abusheher, and from thence across the Persian gulf to Bassora. In Persia he collected historical documents concerning the fate of this unfortunate country, from the death of Nadir Shah up to his own times. With these he conferred a value little known on the German translation of Jones's History of Nadir Shah, the original of which was written in French. The information concerning that period furnished either by Olivier, or by Sir John Malcolm, is not (to use the most modest language) more valuable than that for which we are indebted to him.

In November, 1765, he went from Bassora through Meshed Ali and Meshed Hussein, two places of resort for pilgrims, but hitherto unvisited by any European, to Bagdad, and from thence through Mosul and Diarbekr to Haleb, where he arrived on the 6th of June, 1766. He was now perfectly at home: since he had been alone, he had been at liberty to conform, without molestation, to oriental manners and customs. He was, moreover, now living in a perfectly healthy country, and was as well as at any period of his life.

During this year and a half he had had scarcely any intercourse with Europeans, except at the remarkable Dutch establishment at Karek. In many of the large Turkish cities he visited were convents of Catholic missionaries; these men he regarded with the utmost aversion as disturbers of the tranquillity of the unfortunate native Christians, and of course shunned them. That among these missionaries, by far the greater number of whom were quarrelsome, malignant and ignorant, there were some scattered instances of such sanctity of life as is rarely to be met with in any other class of men, he bore ready testimony. At Bagdad he had become acquainted with Father Angelo, who had nursed many thousand people of every nation and religion in the plague, and whose life had been saved by a crisis which, to pious minds, appeared miraculous, when he was himself attacked by that frightful disease.

At Haleb, however, he found himself in a numerous society of consuls and merchants of all the nations of Europe, in consequence of the profound peace, living in undisturbed harmony. Some of them were married, and their houses afforded the charm of European domestic life, under the directing hand of woman.

His dearest and most intimate connexions were here also with Englishmen. Here he became acquainted with Dr. Patrick Russel, the author of the work on the Plague, and editor of his uncle Alexander's Description of Aleppo. "This respected friend of my father," says Mr. B. L. Niebuhr, "I had also the satisfaction of knowing many years afterwards, and of hearing from him many histories of by-gone days, told with a heart overflowing with the warmest affection and veneration."

Count Bernstorf had very readily consented to the extension of Niebuhr's journey. When this became generally known, the Count was solicited to allow him to visit Cyprus, for the purpose of copying again the Phoenician inscriptions at Citium, which might be supposed to be at least as incorrectly copied by Pococke as the Greek ones which he has given. He found no such inscriptions; and was inclined to suspect that those in question were only old Armenian inscriptions, (like some which he himself met with at Saline near Larneca,) badly copied by Pococke. It appears more probable that the stones had, in the interval, been removed,

An opportunity of going to Jaffa tempted him to visit Palestine, the geography of which was entirely undetermined by any astronomical observations, while no authentic ground plan existed of the topography of Jerusalem. In this he had made as much progress as the time permitted, in the beginning of August, 1766, when he retraced his steps to Jaffa, made an excursion from Sidon over Mount Lebanon to Damascus, and then returned to Haleb.

Five months and a half after his first arrival at Haleb, on the 20th of November, 1766, he set out to return directly home. He went with a caravan as far as Brusa. Lesser Asia, the land on the coast lying open to the south, excepted, is very cold in winter; and on the table-land of Mount Taurus our traveller suffered as much from frost, piercing winds and snow drifts, as he could have done in a winter journey in northern regions. In the warm and beautiful Brusa he reposed from this suffering, to which he had long been a stranger, einploying his leisure, as usual, in working at his journal and charts. He reached Constantinople on the 20th of February, 1767.

He passed between three and four months in the capital of the Turkish empire, with which six years before, sick and a stranger in the east, he had been able to make himself but imperfectly acquainted. He had now seen many Turkish provinces, and knew their institutions and the revolutions which had taken place in them. In the capital he sought and gained information as to the general government and military establishments of the whole empire. His treatises on these subjects, remarkable for their solidity and completeness, are printed. Turkey in Europe can furnish attractive occupation only to scholars, to whom it is not Turkey, but Greece and Macedonia, and whose eye and imagination are ever in search of vestiges of past glory and greatness. Niebuhr travelled rapidly, through insecure and almost impracticable roads, to the Danube, and but little more slowly through Wallachia and Moldavia, in the capital of which latter the plague was then raging. About the middle of July he once more set foot on Christian ground at Zwanick.

King Stanislaus Poniatowsky, a man of refined and literary tastes, and imbued in the highest degree with that veneration for knowledge and science

which characterized his age, had made known to the Danish government his wish that Niebuhr should direct his course homeward through Poland. He received the distinguished traveller with the manners of a polished gentleman, who takes the utmost care that his guest should not feel that he was invited as a curiosity. He effectually succeeded in winning our traveller's heart, and for many years a correspondence was carried on between them. Niebuhr, who had been so long without any intelligence from Europe, and knew nothing of what had been going on there, when civil war broke out in Poland, regarded the confederates as rebels, and his royal friend as a persecuted, but legitimate and excellent monarch.

On the way from Warsaw he visited Göttingen and his beloved native place, where the death of his mother's brother, during his absence, had left him in possession of a considerable marsh-farm. He reached Copenhagen in November, and was received by the court, the ministers, and men of science with the greatest distinction. Count Bernstorf, who knew how to appreciate him in every respect, and who moreover considered his own honour, as projector of the expedition, implicated in the manner in which it was achieved, appeared to wish to prove his gratitude to him by the most friendly and cordial reception. Niebuhr was intimately acquainted with him, and through him with his immortal nephew, the second Count, and with the Dowager Countess Stollberg, and her sons, then boys *.

Klopstock and the domestic friends of the minister were also in habits of intimacy with him. His own dearest and most confidential friends were Professor Krazenstein and his excellent wife.

His first business was to submit his accounts for inspection. From these he could not himself ascertain the whole cost of the expedition, since they did not include all the preparatory expenses; and it appears that he had neglected to procure for himself a copy

storf used to communicate Niebuhr's letters to their The Counts Stollberg remembered how Bern. mother, and what a treat the reading of them was to themselves. These letters contained many lively traits which their author either did not think proper to insert in his journal, or omitted in writing his description of his journey, regarding them perhaps as trivial and of no importance to science. much to be regretted that we have not been enabled to avail ourselves of them for this biography. C

It is

of the general account. None at least was found among his papers, and he quotes another authority to prove that the whole expedition cost only 21,000 reichsthalers (3,780. sterling.) We recollect having heard another sum stated at Copenhagen, but it was very little higher; probably some information on the subject may be found in the Kiel journals of the time. The expense, on any calculation, was so extremely small as to excite the greatest astonishment. It would necessarily have been much greater had not Niebuhr been the sole survivor for nearly the whole of the last four years; but, although the sources of expense were thus greatly diminished, they were still more so by his scrupulous integrity;-not only in avoiding every outlay not essential to the object, but in paying out of his private pocket for everything which could be regarded as a personal expense.

"A far heavier account," says he, in the notes of his life which he wrote for his immediate friends, "was that which I had now to render to the public concerning my travels." The materials in his journal and papers were extraordinarily rich and various. That he now laboured at their arrangement and completion with all the truth and simplicity natural to him, will readily be believed; his distrust of his ability, however, amounted almost to despondency. We have already seen how he had grown up to manhood almost entirely without acquaintance with literary pursuits: nor was this all; he had read little connectedly, especially in German. The high German, or written language of Germany, was not his mother tongue; it was only as a young man that he had familiarized himself with it, nor was he ever master of it in all its extent and richness. But he was still more afraid lest, from want of learning, he should state facts in an erroneous or incongruous manner, and consequently be misunderstood and unfairly judged.

His first notion was to publish two works before he published his travels, the one consisting of replies to the que ries addressed to the members of the expedition, to be extracted from his own and Forskaal's papers, the other of a collection of all his astronomical observations.

It might certainly have been expected that some queries would have been digested and given to men wnom Michaelis

was sending to explore new countries, and that a solution of them would have been demanded. So far, however, was this from being the case, that more than four years after the first conception of the project, when the expedition sailed from Copenhagen, he had prepared only two very insignificant questions; the remainder they received, at three several times, on the journey.

Incomparably more important than any of these, was the paper containing topics of inquiry concerning the history of Yemen, compiled by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, with that true oriental erudition for which France had long been distinguished. A translation of them is to be found in Niebuhr's works, after the queries of Michaelis. As the latter are well known, the public can judge whether they deserved answers, and whether it was possible to answer such questions satisfactorily. The philologist of the expedition was, at all events, totally incompetent to the investigation; it was Forskaal, indeed, who took it upon himself, and who, from the diversity of his talents and knowledge, was the only person at all fitted to it. As long as he lived, Niebuhr, who understood nothing of Hebrew, regarded these inquiries as only indirectly connected with his pursuits; though, indeed, he neglected nothing which could be of the slightest utility to science. When, however, he remained the solitary survivor, he spared no labour in collecting answers to the queries. He thus fulfilled, to the utmost extent, all that could be required of him. To him, what was accomplished appeared very little, and the extreme modesty of the expressions in his preface ought to have disarmed even such enmity as that displayed in the attack upon him in Michaelis's biography.

As he now thought, and with justice, that these answers were too insignificant to form a work distinct from his great one, there were other causes which decided him not to publish the astronomical observations separately.

His fears concerning the accuracy of his lunar observations, and the calculations founded upon them, have already been mentioned. Had Mayer lived, he would have examined them, and, once assured of their accuracy by him, Niebuhr would certainly have published them with perfect confidence. He, however, could now find nobody on the continent who was master of Mayer's