Richard Burton and the Somali Spear
The modern image of an intrepid Victorian explorer – titled, educated, urbane but fearless, and certainly a gentleman – was born in Sir Richard Burton. Fluent enough in Arabic to disguise himself as a pilgrim and enter Mecca, as at ease in the Palace of Windsor as the wilds of Central Africa, Burton really was the utterly quintessential explorer. In most photographic portraits, a deep scar is visible on the left side of his face, and of all of the anecdotes of career, how he came by that is probably the best.
Born in 1821, Richard Burton was the son of a British Army Colonel, and so he became accustomed to travel from a young age. His father saw a great deal of service in India, and young Richard grew up fascinated by Oriental studies. He was expelled from Oxford’s Trinity College, for misdemeanors many and varied, and in 1842 he joined the British Indian Army. By the time he was thirty, he could speak 29 languages, and as he handled live cobras, so he also mediated. It was his interest in eastern religions that led him to Mecca, and a growing interest in fame that eventually directed him into African exploration.
Richard Burton was central to the Source of the Nile debate, and that is perhaps what he is best known for, but in 1855, he was among a small clique of scholars and explorers attempting to penetrate the notoriously closed societies of the Horn of Africa. Today, these are the states of Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia. Disguised as an Arab merchant, he entered the holy city of Harar in what would today be northern Ethiopia.
Burton happened to be traveling with a fellow explorer by the name of John Hanning Speke. Their encampment near Berbera, on the coast of Somalia, was attacked by Somali Tribesmen. In the melee that followed, Burton took a speak in the face, and Speke was captured, escaping only later with fearsome injuries. The spear cut through both cheeks, knocked out four teeth and ‘transfixed’ his palate.
Burton fled into the night, breaking off the shaft of the spear, but with its blade still in his face. All night he was hunted down, but he evaded capture. The following morning he was able to identify two friendly boatmen, who took him across the Red Sea to the British port of Aden, and there at last, after two days, the blade of the spear was removed.
The scar that remained, however, was deep and livid, and thereafter it became Richard Burton’s signature.