Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/271

 us. vm. OCT. 4, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

265

" He makes his Will in forme of a law case, full of quiddits, that his Friends after his death (if for nothing else) yet, for the vexation of Law, may have reason to remember him." ' A Meere Petifogger,' Rimbault, p. 130.

At the end of the play, Julio, on hearing Ariosto deliver sentence upon Romelio (directing him to surrender the bonds Julio has given him. receiving only the principal of his debt), remarks that he has " an humour to go to sea against the pirates " and that his only ambition is to furnish his ship with " a rare consort of music," upon which Sanitonella observes : You must lay wait for the fiddlers ; They '11 fly away from the press like water-men. ' D.L.C 1 .,' V. vi. (Hazlitt, iii. 121).

The appearance of the title ' A Water- man ' amongst the ' New Characters ' at once excited my curiosity. On turning to the text. I found that my anticipation that it would throw some light upon Sanitonella's remark was justified :

" London Bridge is the most terriblest eye- sore to him that can be. And to conclude, nothing but a great Prtesse makes him flye from the Kiver ; nor anything but a great Frost can teach him any good manners." ' A Water-man,' Rimbault, p. 136.

H. D. SYKES. (To be continued.)

SIR SAMUEL WHITE BAKEB. Desirous of learning when this famous traveller and hunter was knighted, I turned to the ' D.X.B.,' but the account of his life in that work (Supplement, i. 1901 101-5,) omits mention of this honour. Messrs. T. Douglas Murray and A. Silva White (' Sir Samuel Baker : a Memoir,' London, 1895, p. 125) print a letter from the Earl of Derby, dated Downing Street, 15 Aug., 1866, conveying the Queen's offer of knighthood should it be agreeable to him to accept it ; but they do not say when the honour was actually conferred. ' The Encyclopaedia Britannica ' (llth ed., 1910, vol. iii.), probably relying on this offer (which, of course, was only pre- liminary), states that Baker was knighted in August, 1866. 'Men of the Time,' 8th ed., 1872 (which contains some geographical inaccuracies), states that he "received the honour of knighthood Nov. 10, 1866." The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxxvi., dated on the title-page " 1866," but we are told on p. 1 "published April 27th, 1867," opens with a paper by Baker on ' The Discovery of the Second Great Lake of the Nile, Albert Nyanza,' read at the meeting of the- Society 13 Nov.. 1865

and although this was, as indicated above,, published, and presumably printed, in 1867, the author there appears as " Samuel White Baker, Esq.," without any indication of the knighthood. What, then, is the actual date of the conferment of the honour ? It seems curious that Baker's biographers should not have cleared this up.

Messrs. Murray and White, with correspond- ing vagueness, state in their ' Memoir ' that Baker was born " in London." Surely the house where he was born is ascertainable r and, if still in existence, would be worthy of indication by one of those plates by which the London County Council commemorates- London's famous men. The biographers add that Baker's parents had " settled at Enfield, in a house called Ridgeway Oaks '" ; also that his father " spent much of his time in London, where he owned a house in White- hall Yard." It was, then, probably in Whitehall Yard that Baker first saw the light.

Messrs. Murray and White, in an Appendix to their work (p. 437), make the slip of speaking of Baker's " journey to Abys- sinia " in 1861-2. They evidently kiiew better, for they head their chap, vii., which records this " journey," * A Reconnaissance towards Abyssinia. ' In strict accuracy Baker never visited Abyssinia, but only reached that desolate and wasted No -Man's -Land, inhabited by wild beasts and a few equally wild savages and outlaws, which divided the realms of the Emperor of Ethiopia (or Abyssinia) from the territory at that time under the dominance of Egypt. It is some- what unfortunate that Baker entitled his book relating these travels ' The Nile Tribu* taries of Abyssinia. ' By this he undoubtedly meant the tributaries of the Nile which come from Abyssinia ; but the title of the book has led most of our librarians to catalogue- it under Abyssinia a country with which it has nothing to do instead of under the- Egyptian Sudan, to an outskirt of which it really relates.

The ' D.N.B.' notice of Baker contains an inaccurate sentence :

" On his return to Faliko [should be Fatiko] he was attacked by Aba [should be Abu] Baud, the slave-dealer, whom he defeated and captured after a pitched battle, and by this suceess again established his authority." SuppK, i. 104k As a matter of fact Abu Saud was not pre- sent at the fight in question. He went to Cairo, where he was afterwards arrested at the instigation of Baker on his return to. Egypt, only to be released and employed for a short time by Gordon, till the latter