burton--1001-nights--sample

About the Author
Richard Francis Burton was a man of an exceptional range of interests
and achievements; traveler, explorer, adventurer, soldier, and diplomat.
Speaking 29 European, Asian and African languages, he was a linguist,
ethnologist and orientalist, as well as a writer and translator. Always
outspoken, notorious for his interests in all matters of sexuality, never
one to conform to conventional rules of social behavior, and, for what
is known, possessed by an irascible temper, he was surrounded by
rumors of scandal and violence, and thus never was promoted to
military or diplomatic rank that would have fully matched his merits.
Burton was born on March 19th, 1821, in Devon, as son of a British
army officer and his wealthy wife; during Burton’s childhood and
youth, the family traveled between England, France and Italy, during
which time Burton learned French, Italian, Latin, and several local
dialects.
In 1840 Burton enrolled in Trinity College at Oxford, from where
he was expelled two years later. Here is not the place to describe in any
detail the adventurous life on which Burton then embarked; it included
military service in India (1842–49), a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina
disguised as a Pakistani Muslim pilgrim (1853), an expedition to
Ethiopia where he was the first European to enter the town of Harar
(1854), army service in the Crimean War (1855), together with John
Hanning Speke an expedition, funded by the Royal Geographic
Society, into the depths of unexplored Central Africa, (1858), a travel
to America (1860), and, after entering the Foreign Service, appointments
as Consul to Fernando Po (Equatorial Guinea) from where he
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