What do you think?
Rate this book
City of the Saints: And Across the Rocky Mountains to California
Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text.
578 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1861
About the author
Richard Francis Burton
1,634 books252 followersCaptain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.
Burton's best-known achievements include travelling in disguise to Mecca, an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights (also commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after Andrew Lang's adaptation), bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English, and journeying with John Hanning Speke as the first Europeans led by Africa's greatest explorer guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, utilizing route information by Indian and Omani merchants who traded in the region, to visit the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. Burton extensively criticized colonial policies (to the detriment of his career) in his works and letters. He was a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including human behaviour, travel, falconry, fencing, sexual practices, and ethnography. A unique feature of his books is the copious footnotes and appendices containing remarkable observations and unexpurgated information.
He was a captain in the army of the East India Company serving in India (and later, briefly, in the Crimean War). Following this he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa and led an expedition guided by the locals and was the first European to see Lake Tanganyika. In later life he served as British consul in Fernando Po, Santos, Damascus and, finally, Trieste. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) in 1886.
Burton's best-known achievements include travelling in disguise to Mecca, an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights (also commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after Andrew Lang's adaptation), bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English, and journeying with John Hanning Speke as the first Europeans led by Africa's greatest explorer guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, utilizing route information by Indian and Omani merchants who traded in the region, to visit the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. Burton extensively criticized colonial policies (to the detriment of his career) in his works and letters. He was a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including human behaviour, travel, falconry, fencing, sexual practices, and ethnography. A unique feature of his books is the copious footnotes and appendices containing remarkable observations and unexpurgated information.
He was a captain in the army of the East India Company serving in India (and later, briefly, in the Crimean War). Following this he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa and led an expedition guided by the locals and was the first European to see Lake Tanganyika. In later life he served as British consul in Fernando Po, Santos, Damascus and, finally, Trieste. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) in 1886.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 22, 2024
Burton is always worth reading, although he is also a challenge – and here he exhibits some of his best and worst features. At his best he is deeply engaged with everything and everyone he sees, exhibits a profound knowledge and desire to get to the heart of things, is brutally honest and frequently outrageously funny, and willing to endure any amount of discomfort – seasoned explorer that he is – to make places distant in time and place come alive for those of us sitting with his book by the fireside in a comfortable armchair.
He is more sympathetic to the Mormons than I expected. He was impressed by Brigham Young, and notes the Mormons treated Indians (to use his term) more fairly and generously than other white men, whom he says “will shoot an Indian as he will a coyote.” He believes the prejudice against Mormon polygamy is on grounds of custom, and therefore he has no moral objection to it himself, seeing it as a sign of freedom (which I suppose it is – if you are a man). He discusses many aspects of unjust anti Mormon prejudice, and he notes the Mormon complaint that of the $40,000 budget allocated to Utah by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, $39,000 was embezzled. But he also includes far too many boring and lengthy extracts from the Book of Mormon, and – what is even worse – copious extracts from tedious sermons of Brigham Young’s.
It is hard to take him seriously when he is being spectacularly offensive about other people (e.g. on the Irish – “There are three orders of physiognomy in that branch of the Keltic family, viz, the porcine, the equine, and the simian.”) That is obviously tongue in cheek. But he is genuinely and offensively racist about Indians and seems to think genocide – of which, alas, there was all too much – is only what they deserve. This is Burton at this very worst and hard to forgive him for this, even though he does also – in a rare positive passage – praise the Sioux for their “fortitude, endurance of hardship, and fondness for their children.” So all in all this is a mixed bag, and for his cruel indifference to Indian suffering, as well as his over lengthy quotations of tedious and absurd Mormon guff, I can’t give more than two stars.
He is more sympathetic to the Mormons than I expected. He was impressed by Brigham Young, and notes the Mormons treated Indians (to use his term) more fairly and generously than other white men, whom he says “will shoot an Indian as he will a coyote.” He believes the prejudice against Mormon polygamy is on grounds of custom, and therefore he has no moral objection to it himself, seeing it as a sign of freedom (which I suppose it is – if you are a man). He discusses many aspects of unjust anti Mormon prejudice, and he notes the Mormon complaint that of the $40,000 budget allocated to Utah by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, $39,000 was embezzled. But he also includes far too many boring and lengthy extracts from the Book of Mormon, and – what is even worse – copious extracts from tedious sermons of Brigham Young’s.
It is hard to take him seriously when he is being spectacularly offensive about other people (e.g. on the Irish – “There are three orders of physiognomy in that branch of the Keltic family, viz, the porcine, the equine, and the simian.”) That is obviously tongue in cheek. But he is genuinely and offensively racist about Indians and seems to think genocide – of which, alas, there was all too much – is only what they deserve. This is Burton at this very worst and hard to forgive him for this, even though he does also – in a rare positive passage – praise the Sioux for their “fortitude, endurance of hardship, and fondness for their children.” So all in all this is a mixed bag, and for his cruel indifference to Indian suffering, as well as his over lengthy quotations of tedious and absurd Mormon guff, I can’t give more than two stars.
March 23, 2019
Sir Richard Burton, that intrepid Victorian explorer, naturalist, and anthropologist, added the American West to his repertoire in his mid-19th century overland journey to Salt Lake City, aka “The City of the (Latter-Day) Saints.” No doubt piqued by the rise of Mormonism in the UK – its chief recruiting ground – Burton decided to follow their exodus to this new Promised Land, hoping to see a recreation of ancient myth in a new world. To an extent he was right.
But under cover of meeting and analyzing the Mormons, Burton had much to say on American society, the physical aspect and culture of Western Americans and the native Indian tribes. The latter are preserved in still-fascinating portraits – not always flattering – of now-vanished peoples. In his pages one can smell the fresh-cut wood of frontier structures, their plank floors echoing underfoot; the creak of mule-drawn wagons across the dry-baked thirst of alkali plains; the threat of death lurking along seemingly-empty wilderness trails. Being a naturalist he gives detailed geologic descriptions of terrain and climate; a slog to read, but have their value to those interested in local natural environment, and might even prove useful in tracking the rate and scope of climate change through the generations.
Burton’s take on the Mormons is objective, and “liberal,” seeking to meet the real people at home among themselves rather than accept the self-interested hostility of neighbors. The Mormons did seem like Wandering Jews, expelled from pillar and driven from post across North America. To Americans it was their own fault for rejecting mainstream religion and falling into a fanatic cult, where polygamy was just a religious cover for lust and prostitution. Burton had no use for the petty shopkeeper’s morality of 19th century America – nor much use for its professed democracy, either; one suspects his “pro-Mormonism” is an aspect of “anti-Americanism.” Mormons were the “Commies” of their era, and Burton tries to write sympathetically like a Western cold war tourist traveling to China or Cuba. The “regime” and its “chairman” are given their due rather than judged by mainstream American powers-that-be.
The politics of the time are briefly touched on. To the Mormons, the divisions and impending war of 1860 are only the United States’ just, latter-day punishment for persecuting the Saints. To Burton, the talk of religion as cause of conflict was like slavery in the eastern states or opium in China: “the root of the quarrel must be sought deeper” in “interest, and interest only.” (Page 172.) As to the bogus nature of Mormonism and the charlatanism of Prophet Smith and Chairman Young, Burton holds concede that “great events” aren’t brought about by “mere imposture, whose very nature is feebleness”; genuine belief and fanaticism “better explain the abnormal action of man on man.” (P. 291.)
In giving detailed outlines of Mormon belief and culture, Burton draws many parallels with Islam; and is continuously invoking comparisons with his life and travels in Africa, India, Australia, etc. This sometimes seems pretentious, but no more so than the American society in which he travelled, seeing itself as the best of all possible worlds. And it would seem little has really changed in 150 years: “fanatics” are still burned out of house and home in the name of “law and order,” as in Waco, to save the innocent; and one may be sure, if Young’s Holy City existed on the fringes of modern America, there would be inspired regime change to “liberate” women and girls from polygamy, and restore “civil society” to its proper place on the bombed ruins of the Great Temple.
But under cover of meeting and analyzing the Mormons, Burton had much to say on American society, the physical aspect and culture of Western Americans and the native Indian tribes. The latter are preserved in still-fascinating portraits – not always flattering – of now-vanished peoples. In his pages one can smell the fresh-cut wood of frontier structures, their plank floors echoing underfoot; the creak of mule-drawn wagons across the dry-baked thirst of alkali plains; the threat of death lurking along seemingly-empty wilderness trails. Being a naturalist he gives detailed geologic descriptions of terrain and climate; a slog to read, but have their value to those interested in local natural environment, and might even prove useful in tracking the rate and scope of climate change through the generations.
Burton’s take on the Mormons is objective, and “liberal,” seeking to meet the real people at home among themselves rather than accept the self-interested hostility of neighbors. The Mormons did seem like Wandering Jews, expelled from pillar and driven from post across North America. To Americans it was their own fault for rejecting mainstream religion and falling into a fanatic cult, where polygamy was just a religious cover for lust and prostitution. Burton had no use for the petty shopkeeper’s morality of 19th century America – nor much use for its professed democracy, either; one suspects his “pro-Mormonism” is an aspect of “anti-Americanism.” Mormons were the “Commies” of their era, and Burton tries to write sympathetically like a Western cold war tourist traveling to China or Cuba. The “regime” and its “chairman” are given their due rather than judged by mainstream American powers-that-be.
The politics of the time are briefly touched on. To the Mormons, the divisions and impending war of 1860 are only the United States’ just, latter-day punishment for persecuting the Saints. To Burton, the talk of religion as cause of conflict was like slavery in the eastern states or opium in China: “the root of the quarrel must be sought deeper” in “interest, and interest only.” (Page 172.) As to the bogus nature of Mormonism and the charlatanism of Prophet Smith and Chairman Young, Burton holds concede that “great events” aren’t brought about by “mere imposture, whose very nature is feebleness”; genuine belief and fanaticism “better explain the abnormal action of man on man.” (P. 291.)
In giving detailed outlines of Mormon belief and culture, Burton draws many parallels with Islam; and is continuously invoking comparisons with his life and travels in Africa, India, Australia, etc. This sometimes seems pretentious, but no more so than the American society in which he travelled, seeing itself as the best of all possible worlds. And it would seem little has really changed in 150 years: “fanatics” are still burned out of house and home in the name of “law and order,” as in Waco, to save the innocent; and one may be sure, if Young’s Holy City existed on the fringes of modern America, there would be inspired regime change to “liberate” women and girls from polygamy, and restore “civil society” to its proper place on the bombed ruins of the Great Temple.
April 24, 2020
Victorian polyglot adventurer and rake takes a stagecoach from the Mississippi to Carson City, NV, stopping in Salt Lake City to visit Brigham Young. Stunning. You must read this.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews