In 1866, while British Consul in Brazil, Sir Richard Burton delivered a series of lectures on his most daring and dramatic expeditions: his pilgrimages to Mecca and Medinah and his travels to East Africa. The first two lectures record the journey Burton made to Mecca and Medinah disguised as a Moslem pilgrim. The rites of pilgrimage, framed by the drama of Burton's disguise and its attendant dangers, are described in extensive and sympathetic detail. The accounts of the visits to Harar and Dahomey, which Burton undertook as a (not always official) representative of the British government, mix the perspectives of the traveler and the ethnographer.