"MY DEAR CAPTAIN BURTON,
"1,600 pounds or indeed 16,000, would never compensate a man for a year
spent actively in Darfur. But I considered you, from your independence,
one of Nature's nobility, who did not serve for money. Excuse the
mistake--if such it is.
"I am now going to Dongola and Assouan, and thence to Massowah to see
Johannis,[7] and then to Berberah _vis-a-vis_ Aden, near your old
friends the Somalis. (Now there is a government which might suit you,
and which you might develop, paying off old scores by the way for having
thwarted you; it is too far off for me to hope to do anything.) I then
return to Kartoum, and then go to Darfur and return to Kartoum, and then
go to the Lakes. Why do people die in these countries? Do not you, who
are a philosopher, think it is due to moral prostration more than to the
climate? I think so, and have done so for a long time. My assistant,
Prout,[8] has been lingering on the grave's brink for a long time, and
I doubt if he will go up again. I have no fear of dying in any climate.
'Men now seek honours, not honour.' You put that in one of your books.
Do you remember it? How true it is! I have often pirated it, and not
acknowledged the author, though I believe _you_ stole it. I see Wilson
is now Sir Andrew. Is it on account of his father's decease? How is
he? He wanted to come out, but he could not bear the fatigue. All
these experiments of the King of the Belgians will come to grief, in
spite of the money they have; the different nationalities doom them.
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