The Gold-Mines of Midian

by Richard F. Burton

Release Date: 13 October, 1995

Edition: Paperback

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Troubled, Mistitled, Schizophrenic

For the first time in my readership of Burton, the author avoids criticizing, belittling or scorning his travel companions, largely because his travel companions are little to the purpose.

Unfortunately, most of what Burton writes is little to the purpose. Like his other works, I expected this to be a knowledgeable travelogue and journal of discovery, but a discovery of what? Burton spends the first quarter of the book discussing Alexandria and Cairo before he gets underway (this last detail almost lost in the maze of other irrelevant observations). He names every sedimentary formation and every flower on his route, and then disputes or corrects every historical observation on Midian -- Biblical, Greek, Latin and Arab. When someone washes a handful of sand and exposes a tiny nugget of gold (presumably the intended core of this book), the detail itself appears as a small nugget amidst so much worthless sand.

From time to time, a promising anecdote or observation on a Biblical place or event raises clarity above the labyrinth, only to plunge again and at length.

Glutted with learning, too heavy for the non-scholarly reader, thick with observations of questionable relevance, and fraught with meaningless, private anecdotes, the book taxes the reader considerably. Use caution.