AN ADVENTUROUS ENGLISHMAN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 95, 30 July 1910, Page 9

AN ADVENTUROUS ENGLISHMAN.

HEAD OF AN ARAB TRIBE. Probably the only Englishman who has ever been chosen chief of an Arab tribe is Mr. George Bury, who was at one time a subaltern in the British Army, and resigned his appointment in order to "see some fighting" in Northern Africa. After spending several years in Morocco and Somaliland he established his headquarters of an independent patriarchal government twenty miles from Aden. The wild .Arab life fascinated him, and after he had mastered several dialects of the* language he made an expedition two hundred miles up country in a northeasterly direction, in order to collect inscriptions and pick up information about the tribes. He spent some weeks on the site of the ancient Safooean Empire, of which the Queen of Sheba was the fortyseventh ruler. In 1898 he was placed in charge of the Arab of an Austrian archaeological expedition, and a little later he guided two naturalists who were sent into the Aden hinterland by the British Museum. His next venture was a long journey north-east lrom Aden, and during that expedition he and his Arabs became etigaged in warfare with several inhospitable tribes. Early in 1901 he was asiked by the British, authorities to ascertain the exact position of a fortress erected 'by the Turks near the British-Turkish frontier. The result of his investigations was that the Ambassador at Constantinople represented to the Turkish Government that the •fort was on the British side of the frontier, and demanded its demolition. No action was taken, and in consequence a British column went up from Aden and dismantled the fort, after some little fighting that was not reported in the; newspapers. Mr. Bury has been formally erected chief of an Arab tribe in fehe Aden hinterland, and' his visits to civilisation are extremely rare. I