Its my opinion that though he wrote an amazing number of books none of them are really 5 star classics though there are some flawed masterpieces in there. He just wrote too fast to care about polishing his works. As for racism, a charge that could be brought up against all Imperial Englishman, he is no doubt as guilty as his fellows. Not to excuse him for it but though writing within an anglo tradition and to a strictly anglo public he perhaps overstates his own anglo bias just to assure his readers he has not gone native, a charge which would be ruinous to any career, military or literary. I won't try to convince you one way or the other but any man who learns another mans language and his religion and his literature and pays so much mind to him that he can even drink a glass of water using his exact manner is paying that man and his culture some kind of compliment. I won't pretend to understand what exactly Burtons motives were from one moment to the next and one adventure to the next but his relation to all these cultures certainly cannot be reduced to a one word description. Burton is a man of immense learning , his enthusiasms are infectious and his appetites as well as his humor are outrageous. With Burton you always get more than you bargained for, you get the country he is in and all manner of localised detail but also you get Burton, his way of writing, his manners, and his customs.
Under the veneer, too, there is a hard core layer of reality, and a surprising number of his observations are true even today. The thing that gets me is that he was able to pull off the pilgrimage at all! As a sometime traveler and student of languages, I have been in situations where I have tried to pass for a native, and regardless of where you go it is a difficult act to pull off for more than five minutes. How Burton got all the way to Mecca without being stoned to death is beyond me.
Which makes it a good adventure story as well as good travel literature. One of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. I recommend it highly.
While Burton keeps his condescension and moral superiority (if not sublimity) in check, he will occasionally weary the reader and try their patience with such observations as "the pigeons of Mecca resemble those of Venice" -- and who is to say that differences exist in those that seasonally appear in downtown Cleveland?
Altogether, along with the first volume, an enjoyable read and an intriguing catalog of relevant observations, historical detail, biblical anecdotes and legends, and at the end of the volume, excerpts from earlier European "Hajis" (a "Gentleman of Rome" in 1503 and a semi-educated English youngster in 1680).
A first-rate travelogue, peppered at times with overbearing detail.
