At last the business for which I was left behind permitted me to start, and I wished my dear father good-bye, as my husband had done; but, though I left with a great misgiving, I entertained a strong hope that I should see him again—as the doctors assured me I should. I went down to Gravesend, and embarked on one of the floating palaces, the P. and O. Ballarat. The Bay was bad, and I was delighted with the pluck of my Italian maid Lisa, who had never been at sea before. Her eyes got bigger and bigger as she looked through the closed porthole, and she kept saying, "There is such a big one (wave); we must go down this time." She would hardly believe my laughing and saying, "Oh no, you won't! You will float like a duck over it in a minute—we always do that here." The amusing part was her scorn of the Triestines when she got back, when she used to say, "Sea! do you call that a sea? Why, the waves are no bigger than the river in England."
About four days from England the weather was delightful. We steamed into "Gib." at seven a.m. Richard came off in a boat, wearing a fez, and Captain Baker kindly came for me also with a Government launch, into which Richard changed. We called on Sir John Adye to thank him, and on a great many other friends, and we went to S. Rocca. We had a delightful dinner at Sir John Adye's, and met everybody.
I was very glad to arrive at Gibraltar, and to be with Richard, for in my opinion he did not look at all well, being very puffy in the face, and exceedingly low-spirited; but he got better and better, as he always did as soon as he was with me.[1]
We winter in Marocco—Richard made a K.C.M.G.
On the 5th of February, 1886, a very extraordinary thing happened—it was a telegram addressed "Sir Richard Burton." He tossed it over to me and said, "Some fellow is playing me a practical joke, or else it is not for me. I shall not open it, so you may as well ring the bell and give it back again." "Oh no!" I said; "I shall open it if you don't." So it was opened. It was from Lord Salisbury, conveying in the kindest terms that the Queen, at his recommendation, had made him K.C.M.G. in reward for his services. He looked very serious and quite uncomfortable, and said, "Oh! I shall not accept it." I said, "You had better accept it, Jemmy, because it is a certain sign that they are going to give you the place" (Tangier, Marocco).
On the 28th of January, having been co-founder and President of the Anthropological Institute, he was now made Vice-president, in consequence of being always absent abroad.
This is the account he gives of Tangier in his journal:—
"It is by no means a satisfactory place for an Englishman. The harbour town was in the same condition as Suez was during the first quarter of the nineteenth century; and it was ruled by seven diplomatic kinglets, whose main, if not sole, work or duty was for each and every one to frustrate any scheme of improvement, or proposal made by any colleague or rival ruler. The capabilities of the place were enormous, the country around was a luxuriant waste awaiting cultivation, and all manner of metals, noble and ignoble, abounded in the adjacent mountains—the maritime Atlas. The first necessity was a railroad connecting the seaboard with Fez, the capital; but even a telegraph wire to Gibraltar, although a concession was known to have been issued, had not been laid, apparently because the rate of progress would have been too rapid. The French were intriguing for a prolongation of the Algerine railways; the Spanish sought possession of one or two more ports, as a basis of operations. The Italians kept their keen eyes ever open for every chance. Even Portugal remembered his Camoens, and his predictions about this part of the world. The Germans were setting all by the ears, and we English confined ourselves to making the place a market for supplying Tommy Atkins with beef. The climate in winter is atrocious for one seeking dry desert air. More than once it has rained three days without intermission; once it has snowed. Tangier is but the root of a land-tongue projecting north between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, hence both east wind and west wind are equally disagreeable. It is a Sommer-Frisch for Gibraltar; briefly, it is a Desert within cannon-shot of Civilization."
We crossed over to Marocco in the Jebel Tarik, and a very curious journey it was. It was a flat-bottomed cattle tug, only fit for a river. The sea was exceedingly heavy. The machinery stopped, they said, for want of oil; seas washed right over, and she rolled right round in the water, so that it was a passage of five hours instead of two. It actually snowed—a thing that the natives had never seen within the memory of man, and quite alarmed them. The Sharífah called on me; she was the Englishwoman who married the Sheríf some years ago.