On the 4th of October, 1817, Burckhardt, who had so long waited in
vain for an opportunity of penetrating with a Moggrebin caravan into
Africa, was attacked with violent dysentery. The best medical advice
which an eminent English physician (Doctor Richardson), then at Cairo,
could afford was found unavailing. The disease prevailed, and on the
15th of the same month our able, adventurous, and lamented traveller
breathed his last. As he had lived while in the East as a Mussulman,
the Turks, he foresaw, would claim his body, “and perhaps,” said
he to Mr. Salt, who was present at his death-bed, “you had better
let them.”--“The funeral, as he desired,” says this gentleman, “was
Mohammedan, conducted with all proper regard to the respectable rank
which he had held in the eyes of the natives.” This was honourable
to his Cairo friends; and to those who are interested in the history
of his manly career it is gratifying to discover how highly he was
valued. I have closed the lives of few travellers with more regret.
It would have given me extreme pleasure to have followed him through
those undiscovered regions whither his ardent imagination so anxiously
tended; and, instead of thus recording his untimely death, to have
beheld him enjoying in the first capital of the world the reward
of his courage and enterprise. That I cannot enter into all Mr.
Burckhardt’s views, either of men or things, is no reason why I should
not be sensible of his extraordinary merit. His character, upon the
whole, admirably fitted him to be a great traveller. He was bold,
patient, persevering, judicious. He penetrated with admirable tact
into the designs of his enemies, and not only knew how to prevent
them, but, what was more difficult, to turn them to the confusion
of their inventors. Upon this very excellence, however, was based
one of his principal defects; he interpreted men in too refined and
systematical a manner, and often saw in their actions more contrivance
than ever existed. He was too hasty, moreover, in believing evil of
mankind, which, with too many other able speculators, he supposed to
be the necessary consequence of a philosophical spirit. But he was a
young man. His mind, had he lived, would unquestionably have purified
itself from this stain, as truth, which he possessed the courage and
the ability to search for with success, was his only object. The
works which he has left behind him, exceedingly numerous considering
his brief career, are an imperishable monument of his genius and
enterprise, and, when the fate of the writer is reflected on, can never
be read without a feeling of deep interest almost amounting to emotion.
Fortunately for his fame, their publication has been superintended
by editors every way qualified for the task, who, without in the
least dissipating their originality, must in very many instances have
infinitely improved their style and arrangement. A popular edition of
the whole would at once be a benefit to the public and an additional
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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