Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/103

Rh bright hopes that make the lives of other girls happy and warm and pleasant."

Burton did not stay long at Bombay after he rejoined his regiment. He was not popular in it, and he disliked the routine. Something of the old prejudice against him in certain quarters was revived. The East India Company, in whose service he was, had longed wished to explore Harar in Somaliland, Abyssinia; but it was inhabited by a very wild and savage people, and no white man had ever dared to enter it. So it was just the place for Richard Burton, and he persuaded the Governor of Bombay to sanction an expedition to Harar; and with three companions, Lieutenant Herne, Lieutenant Stroyan, and Lieutenant Speke, he started for Harar.

From her watch-tower afar off, Isabel, whose ceaseless love followed him night and day, notes:

"And now Richard has gone to Harar, a deadly expedition or a most dangerous one, and I am full of sad forebodings. Will he never come home? How strange it all is, and how I still trust in Fate! The Crimean War is declared, and troops begin to go out."

When Burton's little expedition arrived at Aden en route for Harar, the four men who composed it parted and resolved to enter Harar by different ways. Speke failed; Herne and Stroyan succeeded. Burton reserved for himself the post of danger. Harar was as difficult to enter as Mecca; there was a tradition there that when the first white man entered the city Harar would fall. Nevertheless, after a journey of four months through savage tribes and the desert,