[Henry Baker]. English traveler and author, born on the 11th of May 1822, and educated at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was a curate in Devonshire and later rector in Durham, but was obliged to give up pastoral work on account of ill-health. The winter of 1855 he spent in the city and neighborhood of Algiers, making several excursions into the northern Sahara. The second winter of his stay was occupied in traversing the Sahara beyond the range of the Atlas Mountains. The third winter, spent in the Mediterranean, afforded him his first opportunity of visiting Palestine. On the conclusion of his tour through Palestine he returned to England, being appointed, in 1860, master of Greatham Hospital and vicar of Greatham, Durham. In 1863 he again visited the Holy Land, directing his attention particularly to the basin of the Dead Sea and to the districts east of the Jordan. In 1872 he made a tour in Moab; in 1881 in Mesopotamia and Armenia; in 1874 he was made a canon of Durham, and in 1879 the Earl of Beaconsfield offered him the bishopric of Jerusalem, which he declined. In 1891 he made a tour around the world, and spent some months in Japan. Among his works are The Great Sahara (1860); The Land of Israel (1865); Natural History of the Bible; Ornithology of Palestine (1867); Daughters of Syria (1874); Topography of the Holy Land (1871); and Fauna and Flora of the Holy Land (1884).
