Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/554642
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 0 0 killing a massive stag in the Scottish highlands with a knife after it had been brought to bay by hounds. T he real breakthrough in Baker's career, however, came when he joined the fabulously wealthy and libertine Maharajah Duleep Singh for an extended float-hunting trip down the length of the Danube River during the winter of 1858 and '59. In the course of this adventure, the men enjoyed all sorts of escapades, many of them of a risqué nature that had nothing to do with hunting. These culminated with Baker outbidding a Turkish sultan at a white-slave auction and literally buying a woman named Florence Barbara Maria Finnian von Sass. Although her origins always remained a mystery, she was likely of noble birth and part of the human flotsam washed up across Europe in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions. Once he had purchased this lovely companion, something sure to scandalize proper Victorian society, Baker acknowledged to family members he had long harbored "a secret determination to make a trip to the unknown," and forthwith set out for the heart of Africa, "ever pushing for the high ranges from which the Nile is supposed to derive its sources." He would later describe his experiences in a two-volume work, The Albert Nyanza, Great Basin of the Nile (1866) and in The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia and the Sword Hunters of the Hamran Arabs (1867). The former effort stands pre-eminent among the great narratives of exploration produced during the Victorian reconnaissance of Africa, while the latter title, with tales of hunting elephants and other big game from horseback by hamstringing the animals, thrilled audiences eager for tales of daring. Baker was knighted sometime after his long journey, assuring himself of lasting fame as an as an explorer of exceptional literary ability. Shortly after returning to England, Baker of the Nile, as he would henceforth be known, shocked proper society by marrying the woman he had bought. He had discovered, in the ceased. Then came a spot of hunting in the Balkans, sporting weekends at country estates in the British Isles, and a growing desire to become part of the quest to explore the unknown regions of the Dark Continent. He avidly read the accounts of explorers such as Dr. David Livingstone, Richard Burton, and John Speke along with the sporting travelogues of Cornwallis Harris, Gordon-Cumming, and Cotton Oswell. He also performed some incredible feats of strength such as his wife, Henrietta, died as well. The widower was left with four motherless daughters, and for whatever reason (likely a mixture of a sense of guilt, unbearable sorrow, passionate devotion to sport, and a desire to escape life's burdens), he gave charge of his offspring to a sister-in-law and a host of his aunts and uncles and filled the ensuing decade or so with one daredevil adventure after another. Baker set out for the Crimea to fight in that war but arrived just as hostilities