Bauchi is a province of special importance from the European point of view because, with free communication from the Benue assured, it is probable that on the Kibyen and Sura plateaus, which are the healthiest known in the protectorate, a sanatorium and station for a large civil population might be established under conditions in which Europeans could live free from the evil effects of a West African climate.
The emirate of Gombe, which is included in the first division of the Bauchi province, is a Fula emirate independent of the emirs of Bauchi. It forms a rich and important district, and its chiefs held themselves in a somewhat sullen attitude of hostility to the British. It was at Burmi in this district that the last stand was made by the religious following of the defeated sultan of Sokoto, and here the sultan was finally overthrown and killed in July 1903. Gombe has now frankly accepted British rule. (F. L. L.)
BAUDELAIRE, CHARLES PIERRE (1821-1867), French poet, was born in Paris on the 9th of April 1821. His father, who was a civil servant in good position and an amateur artist, died in 1827, and in the following year his mother married a lieutenant-colonel named Aupick, who was afterwards ambassador of France at various courts. Baudelaire was educated at Lyons and at the Collège Louis-le Grand in Paris. On taking his degree in 1839 he determined to enter on a literary career, and during the next two years pursued a very irregular way of life, which led his guardians, in 1841, to send him on a voyage to India. When he returned to Paris, after less than a year's absence, he was of age; but in a year or two his extravagance threatened to exhaust his small patrimony, and his family obtained a decree to place his property in trust. His _salons_ of 1845 and 1846 attracted immediate attention by the boldness with which he propounded many views then novel, but since generally accepted. He took part with the revolutionaries in 1848, and for some years interested himself in republican politics but his permanent convictions were aristocratic and Catholic. Baudelaire was a slow and fastidious worker, and it was not until 1857 that he produced his first and famous volume of poems, _Fleurs du mal_. Some of these had already appeared in the _Revue des deux mondes_ when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet Malassis, who had inherited a printing business at Alençon. The consummate art displayed in these verses was appreciated by a limited public, but general attention was caught by the perverse selection of morbid subjects, and the book became a by-word for unwholesomeness among conventional critics. Victor Hugo, writing to the poet, said, "Vous dotez le ciel de l'art d'un rayon macabre, vous créez un frisson nouveau." Baudelaire, the publisher, and the printer were successfully prosecuted for offending against public morals. The obnoxious pieces were suppressed, but printed later as _Les Épaves_ (Brussels, 1866). Another edition of the _Fleurs du mal_, without these poems, but with considerable additions, appeared in 1861.