IV.

Later Travels

Burton’s later travels seem almost incidental to his dramatic, earlier journeys. He visited the United States in 1860, writing about the Mormon center of Salt Lake City in The City of the Saints (1861). Then in 1861, following his marriage to Isabel Arundel, Burton entered the service of the British Foreign Office and occupied a succession of consular posts. His first post was on the island of Fernando Póo (now Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea), and Burton’s subsequent travels in West Africa resulted in his publication of nine volumes, including Wanderings in West Africa (1863). His position in Santos, Brazil, led to travels in Paraguay, Argentina, and Peru, partly described in The Highlands of Brazil (1869). He served at Damascus in Syria, from which he wrote Unexplored Syria (1872), and finally at Trieste (now in Italy), where he served from 1872 until his death in 1890. Burton was knighted in 1886.