Arabia Felix

by Thorkild Hansen

  His early life in these surroundings seemed to meet all the fairy-tale specifications for the poor orphaned boy who wins riches and fame. He had lost his mother before he was six months old and was brought up by a stepmother. As he grew older, he used to work on the farm; and it took many hours of persuasion before the elder Niebuhr reluctantly agreed to send the boy to school. Then the father died, and a guardian put a stop to such foolishness at a point where Carsten had scarcely even learned to read. Because his share of the inheritance was insufficient to enable him to buy the farm, he had to see to it that he somehow got a training which would enable him to support himself. It was essential to choose something that did not demand a great deal of previous schooling; this was why he took up music in the hope of becoming an organist. He learnt to play the violin and the flute, just as Frederick the Great is said to have done at his palace in Potsdam. After a time, however, his guardian decided that this form of instruction was also superfluous, and once again Carsten Niebuhr had to break off his studies.

  He was now sixteen, somewhat introspective, but strong and healthy, and with a useful pair of hands. What more natural than to send the lad out to work? He was given a job as a farm hand by his guardian, who had a marshland farm like his father’s in the neighbourhood of Altenbruch. There was no question of any merely temporary stay: he remained four years with his uncle, by which time he was no longer a minor and could dispose of his own future. He had noticed that every time there was any difference of opinion about land tenure out in the marshes, assistance had to be called in all the way from Hamburg, because the land was very inadequately surveyed. The district had no surveyor of its own. Niebuhr therefore decided in his practical and hard-headed way that he must set about becoming a surveyor. First, however, he had to acquire the necessary training. At the age of twenty-two, when von Haven had long since taken both his theological and linguistic degrees and when Forsskål was already occupied with the preparation of his thesis on Wolffianism, Carsten Niebuhr took his seat on a school bench in Hamburg to learn the alphabet and the multiplication tables.

  Thanks to his inheritance from his father, he was able to pay for the necessary private tuition; and after only one year he was able to enter the grammar school, where he nevertheless had to be content with a very restricted course of study. In 1757, the year after Michaelis had discussed the Arabian project with Bernstorff, Niebuhr gained admission to the University of Göttingen, where he studied mathematics under Professor Kästner. Kästner soon recognised him as a bright student and got him a scholarship to enable him to extend his studies to include astronomy, and also to acquire the necessary instruments. Niebuhr had not known such happiness was possible. After growing up in the marshlands, it seemed to him that the university was a world of sheer delight; the laws of mathematics and astronomy were revealed to him in all their pure and irrefutable clarity, things fell into place, phenomena were explained, and the space about them was filled with light. Such strokes of fortune rarely come singly; now he heard his name mentioned in connection with the unique expedition that was being planned in Denmark.

  Here is his account of the great day, as he himself related it to his children many years later. It is his son, the rather mawkish B. G. Niebuhr, who is writing:

  It was an afternoon in the summer of 1758. Professor Kästner had just been to a meeting at the Academy of Sciences, and he now entered my father’s room. “How would a trip to Arabia strike you?” he asked. “Why not, if somebody can be found to pay the expenses?” answered my father, who had no ties in his homeland and was possessed of a great urge to see the world.

  “The King of Denmark will pay the expenses,” said Kästner; and he told my father about the whole project. Father immediately made up his mind to join the expedition. The offer was exactly the sort of thing he had longed for. But as he had the highest esteem for science and true knowledge, he was doubtful whether he was equal to the task, and whether he would be any use on a journey of that kind. Kästner put his mind at rest by promising that he would be given good time to prepare, so that he could among other things study astronomy under Professor Mayer. Kästner was in no doubt that his industry and strength of will would be sufficient. As the only thing my father now lacked was Mayer’s agreement to instruct him, he went to see him that same evening. Mayer viewed the affair less optimistically than Kästner had done, and warned him against taking any irrevocable decision when he could not know what dangers and difficulties he would have to face. Nevertheless Mayer promised to give him the instruction he had asked for.

  The following day my father presented himself to Michaelis, who was inclined to view his swift decision as a sign of youthful frivolity. Michaelis compelled him to ponder the matter further by asking him to come back the following week with his answer. The week passed without my father being assailed by any further doubts; he held fast to his decision; and now Michaelis accepted it.

  Bernstorff also approved the choice of Carsten Niebuhr, promised him plenty of time in which to prepare himself, and allotted him an annual subsidy equivalent to the grant that von Haven had enjoyed for the past two years. From now on Carsten Niebuhr lived only for the expedition. He continued his mathematical studies to fit himself for carrying out geographical surveys; he attempted to improve his knowledge of history; and he trained himself in the practical aspects of mechanics in order to be able to service and repair his instruments himself. Most important of all, however, he took private tuition in Arabic from Michaelis, and in astronomy from Mayer.

  The Arabic proved heavy going. Niebuhr lost patience with the complicated grammar, and felt that Michaelis was too inclined to lose his way among small details of theory. When, after several months, he had got no further than the first passage in the text-book, he gave it up. With Mayer, on the other hand, who was a very considerable scholar and mathematician, he was delighted; and Mayer’s eagerness to teach Niebuhr seems to have been just as great as his pupil’s keenness to learn. Mayer had developed a new method for determining longitude by taking readings of the moon; and just as Linnæus had seen Forsskål’s participation in the Arabian expedition as a chance to augment his own collections of specimens, so Mayer found in Niebuhr an unexpected opportunity for putting his theories to the test. Niebuhr promised to do all his calculations of longitude by basing them on Mayer’s hitherto unpublished tables of the moon and by using Mayer’s methods. In exchange Mayer eagerly interested himself in all the details of Niebuhr’s equipment. Together they managed to acquire the quadrant with which Niebuhr was to measure the altitude of the sun and stars, and which he could also use for making angular measurements on the earth. Mayer even calibrated the instrument with his own hands, to try to make it as accurate as possible. We can imagine them bent over this task: Niebuhr earnestly looking on while Mayer with infinite care engraves the degrees on the scale of the new quadrant. Their brows are wrinkled; the light glows on the smooth brass scale and reflects in the small mirrors every time Mayer brushes against the instrument; neither speaks; the moment is, as it were, filled with reverence —as we should be at encountering for the first time the “astrolabe” which is so often mentioned later and with which Carsten Niebuhr was to survey Arabia Felix.

  Because of von Haven’s disappearance, Niebuhr’s period of preparation was longer than originally estimated. It was not until Michaelmas Day, 29th September, 1760, that he left Göttingen on the mail coach for Copenhagen. Shortly after his arrival he was to be introduced to the famous Peter Forsskål. He felt keenly embarrassed in the presence of this man who, though only a year older, had already achieved so much. Nor was their meeting particularly encouraging. Herr Forsskål seemed preoccupied, and had only time to exchange a few absent-minded remarks with his future colleague.

  Things went much better with the friendly Bernstorff, who took a fatherly joy in sitting and listening to him. When Niebuhr could not resist showing the Minister the new astrolabe, Bernstorff asked him why he had not sent in any bill for the cost of this
instrument. Niebuhr answered quite straightforwardly that as he was receiving a grant from the King of Denmark, he thought it only reasonable that he should pay for the astrolabe himself. We can picture Bernstorff standing there watching him, listening with his hand under his chin and nodding thoughtfully. Did he perhaps give some fleeting thought to the endless travelling expenses and grants that had gone to von Haven, and to Forsskål’s demand for a professor’s salary and a life pension? In any case, he informed Niebuhr that the King of Denmark would naturally cover the expenses connected with his instrument, just as it would please him, Bernstorff, personally if Herr Niebuhr would accept the position of treasurer of the expedition. He also mentioned that the Swedish botanist, Peter Forsskål, had at his own request been appointed professor; did Niebuhr desire to have the same title? Niebuhr replied, aghast, that he had not even taken his master’s degree. Bernstorff asked whether he would therefore prefer the title of captain. Niebuhr protested with embarrassment that he was too young, and ventured to say that he would be satisfied to be a lieutenant.

  “As a lieutenant, it will be an honour to carry out precise observations and measurements; but as professor or captain, I should feel ashamed if it became known that I had not delved adequately into the profundities of mathematics,” he said.

  Bernstorff looked at him for a moment in silence. Then he decided to appoint him engineer-lieutenant. That was about the same as surveyor. That would be in order. Carsten Niebuhr was to be permitted to remain a nobody.

  5

  Shortly after Niebuhr arrived in Copenhagen, two further members were selected for the Danish Expedition. Professor Ascanius and Professor Oeder had drafted a memorandum pointing out that the company might well be augmented by an illustrator to make reliable sketches of the specimens collected, and a physician who could assist Professor Forsskål and also serve as the expedition’s doctor.

  For the first of these posts, the newly established Academy of Fine Arts chose Georg Wilhelm Baurenfeind, artist and engraver. Baurenfeind was thirty-two years old, a South German born in Nuremberg and called to Denmark to do the engraving for the volume of Klevenfeldt’s history of the Danish aristocracy. In Copenhagen he had studied under the great Preisler, whose pupils included the later famous Clemens. In contrast to Clemens, who was influenced by the French, Baurenfeind adopted the heavier and somewhat coarser South German style. As an artist, he could hardly be called distinguished, but he was not without talent. As early as 1754 he had been awarded the smaller of the Academy’s gold medals, and five years later the larger. This last was for an engraving which he called “Moses and the Burning Bush,” without any suspicion that a few years later he himself would be travelling over the same ground. Otherwise, his works consisted mainly of portraits of eminent people, pictures of the Oldenborg kings in Frydensberg’s work, The Danish Royal Family, together with a somewhat larger work which portrayed Iver Rosenkrantz. Finally, he supervised the work on the portrait of A. G. Moltke; this work, which is generally regarded as his most successful, was not without influence in the matter of his appointment to the Danish expedition.

  As an artist and engraver Baurenfeind was a competent and conscientious craftsman, certainly nothing brilliant, and a peaceable and even-tempered soul. He was moderately musical, humorous and gay by disposition even when sober, though he seldom took things to such an extreme. The others soon recognised him as a pleasant fellow who never gave much trouble, although it occasionally happened that his gaiety turned to melancholy, homesickness, and a sense of isolation. Nevertheless, Baurenfeind was always very conscientious in doing whatever he was asked; he would work uninterruptedly for days, without ever pushing himself forward; he was the only one who was not drawn into the expedition’s inner drama.

  The first exchanges in this drama took place over the appointment of the man who, simultaneously with Baurenfeind’s appointment, was selected as the expedition’s doctor. He was a Dane, Kramer, who had read natural history and Medicine at the University of Copenhagen under the German Professor Kratzenstein. Of all the expedition’s members, Christian Carl Kramer is the one we know least about. He was born on 19th January, 1732, in Copenhagen, where his father, Johan Christopher Kramer, was butler in the house of Chamberlain von Plessen—who was no doubt able now and then to put in a word at court for the young medical student. His mother’s name was Sophie Kaas. Kramer did not go to university until he was over twenty-one; seven years later, in 1760, he took his final medical examinations. His doctoral dissertation was about insects, and it seems to have been a respectable but pedestrian piece of work without any conspicuous originality—something dashed off in haste to secure him a title for the Danish expedition. Kramer was awarded his doctorate on 29th December, 1760—only six days before the expedition left Copenhagen. Apart from this dissertation, his authorship is limited to a single book, published in 1759. We know nothing of its contents, nor are we greatly tempted to study it more closely—as we are, for example, Forsskål’s work on the freedom of the press. Its title is sufficient. It was called Canaries and Their Care.

  Like Baurenfeind, Kramer proved a decent and sociable man; but in other respects he was lazy and showed no marked ability in his chosen field. Because of his qualities, or more correctly his lack of qualities, he became the stone which, insignificant in itself, precipitates the landslide.

  To Peter Forsskål, the choice of Kramer was particularly unacceptable. When the Swede left Stockholm for Copenhagen, he had taken with him a countryman of his by the name of Falck. This Falck, his junior by a year, had also studied under Linnaeus and had made a reputation as a promising botanist and natural historian. After consultation with Linnaeus, Forsskål had asked Falck to come to Copenhagen so that he could try to get him appointed as assistant on the Danish expedition. Not only could Falck be of considerable personal assistance to him; he could also, being in a less official position than Forsskål, more easily take it upon himself to send botanical specimens direct to the eager Linnaeus.

  Immediately he arrived in Denmark, therefore, Forsskål sent a petition to Bernstorff, who had earlier shown himself ready to accede to the most excessive demands. This time Forsskål asked for four things; he wanted an assurance that the expedition would call briefly at Linnaeus’s favourite country, the Cape country of South Africa; he wanted permission to send seed, plants and other specimens to Linnaeus; he wanted an account opened to cover any special expenses; and he wanted an assistant—the Swedish student Herr Jonas Peter Falck.

  The last request was particularly audacious, since at the time Forsskål sent off his petition he knew perfectly well that the Dane, Christian Kramer, had already been selected as his assistant. This was clear from a letter to Linnaeus sent only four days after his arrival in Copenhagen, in which he discussed the difficulties of getting the Danish Government to accept Falck. “I have a difficult task,” he said. “It is hard on the one hand to avoid insulting them, and on the other to avoid saddling myself with an unreliable colleague. Meanwhile, I will play politics as best I can.”

  We have already seen Forsskål “playing politics,” both in his polemic against the critics of his doctoral dissertation and in his actions during the controversy about the freedom of the press. On both occasions he had had right on his side; on both occasions he had had to choose between offending his opponents and accepting their point of view; and on both occasions he had clearly preferred to offend. In the present matter, too, Forsskål was clearly in the right in that Falck was undoubtedly more capable than Kramer. On this occasion, too, he chose to give offence.

  The three most important points in his application to Bernstorff were rejected. Michaelis would not agree to the expedition stopping at South Africa, nor can he really be blamed; the expedition had been intended from the start to discover what it could about Arabia and not to go looking for botanical specimens in Linnaeus’s dream country. Furthermore, the Danish Government would not allow any results of the expedition—for which the King of Denmark was pay
ing—to be sent to any country other than Denmark. This was reasonable enough, but there is no doubt that with a little more diplomacy Forsskål could have secured both his requests, for the tolerant Bernstorff had shown himself to be more than accommodating. What ruined his chances was not so much the attitude of the Danish Government as his own, and particularly over Falck.

  One month after this petition to Bernstorff it was virtually settled that Kramer should accompany the expedition to Arabia Felix. Forsskål chose this moment to send Bernstorff another letter, in which he again asked for Kramer to be replaced by Falck. His argument was as follows: “Since the opportunities for studying natural history are so much better in Uppsala than they are in Copenhagen, where certain otherwise excellent institutions established for that purpose are still only starting operations, and since my colleague can demonstrate on the evidence of a written recommendation from Herr Linnaeus that he has received and profited from the latter’s instruction, my humble submission that I can expect great advantages from his presence on the expedition may confidently be accepted. If instead I am given a man who must first be instructed in most departments of natural history, then I can expect but small help from him.”

  If Forsskål still had a chance of converting Bernstorff it was now utterly thrown away. He could hardly have been clumsier or more wounding. In four or five lines he had succeeded in telling the Danish Government, which had just appointed him professor with a pension for life, that its university education in natural history was amateurish compared to Sweden’s, and that the Government’s nominee to accompany its own expedition was in comparison with the Swedish candidate an ass. Whereas Forsskål perhaps had reasonable academic grounds at first for preferring Falck, he now had only himself to blame if the Danes regarded his opposition to Kramer as an outburst of national arrogance.