Chapter I. Introduction to the Journal.

Projects and Hobbies--life in India--lord Clyde and Sir James
Outram--the Position and Physical Geography of the Somali Country--the
Nogal Country, and Historical Sketches--Costume and Customs.



It was in the year 1849, at the expiration of the Punjaub campaign,
under Lord Gough, where I had been actively engaged as a subaltern
officer in the (so-called) fighting brigade of General Sir Colin
Campbell's division of the army, adding my mite to the four successive
victorious actions--Ramnugger, Sadoolapore, Chillianwallah, and
Guzerat--that I first conceived the idea of exploring Central
Equatorial Africa. My plan was made with a view to strike the Nile at
its head, and then to sail down that river to Egypt. It was conceived,
however, not for geographical interest, so much as for a view I had in
my mind of collecting the fauna of those regions, to complete and
fully develop a museum in my father's house, a nucleus of which I had
already formed from the rich menageries of India, the Himalaya
Mountains, and Tibet. My idea in selecting the new field for my future
researches was, that I should find within it various orders and
species of animals hitherto unknown. Although Major Cornwallis Harris,
Ruppell, and others had by this time well-nigh exhausted, by their
assiduous investigations, all discoveries in animal life, both in the
northern and southern extremities of Africa, in the lowlands of
Kaffraria in the south, and the highlands of Ethiopia in the north, no
one as yet had penetrated to the centre in the low latitudes near the
equator; and by latitudinal differences I thought I should obtain new
descriptions and varieties of animals. Further, I imagined the