Lot Essay
The present drawing is presumably that which Burton intended to be used as the frontispiece for his proposed second edition of Abeokuta and The Camaroons Mountains, replacing Burton's portrait in the first edition. This amendment and others for the proposed second edition are noted by Burton in his own copy of volume I, now in the British Museum (N.M. Penzer, An annotated bibliography of Sir Richard Francis Burton, K.C.M.G., New York, 1923, pp. 70-1)
'Below [the Rock Olumo] lies the town, neat, rural, pretty, white walled and red-tiled, built with all the symmetry of Clapham, and backed by a glorious lake-like river with little green islets - and, doubtless, eel-pie houses; - whilst in the distance a fair expanse of rolling hills, green and blue, fills up the scene.
Let me decribe what I saw and sketched. Beyond the barren mass of stern grey stone - filthy dirty - which afforded me a standing-place, there was a perpendicular drop of some fifty feet, disclosing part of the city below and in front. It was a grisly mass of rusty thatching and dull red-clay wall, with narrow winding lanes and irregular open spaces, a ragged tree rising here and there. The only comparison which the scene suggested was that of a large ant-hill scattered over with dead leaves and dwarf shrubs. On the left was a high tongue of land, with top sinking towards the foreground; it supports Bagura, one of the most populous townships; and here the houses that crowd one another prevent the ground from being seen. It is separated by a stony stream-bed, the usual fence in this part of Africa, from the neighbouring settlements, Ikereku and Ikejá, Iláwo and Ikporo. In the distance is a narrow line representing the Ogun River above the rapids and the horizon is shut in by rising ground which appears barren and sterile' (Abeokuta, I, pp. 167-8)
'Below [the Rock Olumo] lies the town, neat, rural, pretty, white walled and red-tiled, built with all the symmetry of Clapham, and backed by a glorious lake-like river with little green islets - and, doubtless, eel-pie houses; - whilst in the distance a fair expanse of rolling hills, green and blue, fills up the scene.
Let me decribe what I saw and sketched. Beyond the barren mass of stern grey stone - filthy dirty - which afforded me a standing-place, there was a perpendicular drop of some fifty feet, disclosing part of the city below and in front. It was a grisly mass of rusty thatching and dull red-clay wall, with narrow winding lanes and irregular open spaces, a ragged tree rising here and there. The only comparison which the scene suggested was that of a large ant-hill scattered over with dead leaves and dwarf shrubs. On the left was a high tongue of land, with top sinking towards the foreground; it supports Bagura, one of the most populous townships; and here the houses that crowd one another prevent the ground from being seen. It is separated by a stony stream-bed, the usual fence in this part of Africa, from the neighbouring settlements, Ikereku and Ikejá, Iláwo and Ikporo. In the distance is a narrow line representing the Ogun River above the rapids and the horizon is shut in by rising ground which appears barren and sterile' (Abeokuta, I, pp. 167-8)