Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah

AL-MISR

TO ALEXANDRIA.

A few Words concerning what induced me to a Pilgrimage.

IN the autumn of 1852, through the medium of my excellent friend, the late General Monteith, I offered my services to the Royal Geographical Society of London, for the purpose of removing that opprobrium to modern adventure, the huge white blot which in our maps still notes the Eastern and the Central regions of Arabia. Sir Roderick I. Murchison, Colonel P. Yorke and Dr. Shaw, a deputation from that distinguished body, with their usual zeal for discovery and readiness to encourage the discoverer, honoured me by warmly supporting, in a personal interview with the then Chairman of the then Court of Directors to the then Honourable East India Company, my application for three years’ leave of absence on special duty from India to Maskat. But they were unable to prevail upon the said Chairman, the late Sir James Hogg, who, remembering the fatalities which of late years have befallen sundry soldier-travellers in the East, refused his sanction, alleging as a reason that the contemplated journey was of too dangerous a nature. In compensation, however, for the disappointment, I was allowed the additional furlough of a year, in order to pursue my Arabic studies in lands where the language is best learned.