Book Description

Excerpt from Illustrated Travels, Vol. 1: A Record of Discovery, Geography and Adventure; With Engravings From Original Drawings The causes which led to the dispatch of Mr. Rassam's mission are so well known that it is almost needless to recapitu late them here. The barbarous monarch of a far-distant country had ventured to ill-treat and imprison a Consul, and, in the person of her representative, to insult the Queen of England. So much was certain, but the course which Her Majesty's Government had to pursue under these embarrassing circum stances was not equally clear. A line in a short note, which the Consul contrived to send to Massawa, affirmed, by implica tion, that it was on account of the non-arrival of an answer to a letter which King Theodore had, some fifteen months before, forwarded to the Queen, that the present (mineral/p5 had occurred. The line ran, No release till civil answer to King's letter comes. Acting on this hint, after due deliberation, the Foreign Office determined to dispatch an accredited envoy to the court of King Theodore, with an autograph letter from Her Majesty, and for this duty they selected Mr. Rassam. Mr. Iiormuzd Kassam is a native of Mosul. In Mesopo tamia, where he was born about the year 1826. His brother, Mr. Christian Kassam, had filled the post of interpreter to Colonel Chesney during the Euphrates expedition, and, in re ward for his valuable services, had been appointed British Vice Consul at his native town. During Mr. Layard's explorations in the neighbouring ruins of Nineveh, he found the services of Mr. Ilormuzd Rassam, then quite a young man, so useful that on his return to England he had no hesitation in recommending him to the authorities at the British Museum as entirely fit to take charge of the works dttring his absence. Mr. Kassam subsequently visited England, and through the in uence of Sir James Outram and Captain W. J. Eastwick, of the Board of Directors, he was appointed interpreter at Aden, where, in the course of a few years, he had shown such zeal and ability in various negotiations, and had so far gained the confidence of his superiors, that at the beginning of1863 he had risen to the post of First. Assistant to the Political Resident. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."