[6] "Lacerda's Journey to Cazembe in 1798," Richard translated and annotated, and "The Journey of the Pombeiros," by P. J. Baptista and Amaro Jaso, "Across Africa from Angola to Tette on the Zambesi," translated by B. A. Beadle, and a résumé of the "Journey of MM. Monteiro and Gamitto," by Dr. C. T. Beke, published by the R.G.S. (London, John Murray, 1873).
[7] A good pendant to this is Mr. Gilbert, to whom an aggressive masher said, "Aw—call me a four—wheelah." "Call you a four-wheelah? Of course, I will call you a 'four-wheelah' if you wish. I would call you 'a hansom' if I could."
[CHAPTER II.]
INDIA.
We embarked at once for India. Baron D'Alber, my husband's best friend, the local Minister of Finance in Trieste, and the Captain of the Port, came in the Government boat to take us to the Austrian-Lloyd's Calypso, Captain Bogójevich. H.R.H. the Duke of Wurtemburg, who was our Commander-in-Chief, so distinguished in the Bosnian campaign; Baron Pascotini, a kind, clever, philanthropic old gentleman of eighty-four, and all the great people, came to see us off, to do honour to Richard. How touched we were at so much kindness! We steamed down the Adriatic with a fresh breeze. The day after, Richard began to dictate to me the biography which forms the beginning of this book. We read the life of Moore and the "Veiled Prophet of Khorassán," called by Moore Mokanna, whose real name was Hassan-Sabah, or Hassan es Sayyah. When we got to Zante it blew very hard. Our chairs were lashed on deck, and we read daily "Lalla Rookh," the "Light of the Haram," and Smollett's "Adventures of Roderick Random" and "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality." At Port Sáid, which is a sort of an Egyptian Wapping, we ran over the sands to see an Arab village. We met a lot of old friends, Consul and Mrs. Perceval, Mr. Buckley, F.O., Colonel Stoker, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Cave, and the grand old Baron de Lesseps, and Salih Beg, Mr. Royal, Mr. Webster, Mr. Fowler, and other gentlemen at dinner at the Consulate. We much enjoyed the Canal, seeing once more an Eastern sunrise over the desert, but it made us sad contrasting our old days with our present. We had a glorious moonlight, blue sky, clear green water, cool balmy air, golden sands to the very horizon, troops of Bedawi camels and goats. It is a wild and dangerous track.
We had the north-east monsoon dead against us the whole way after going out of the Canal, which made the ship pretty lively. In the Red Sea there is much to be seen for those who know the coasts, and my husband pointed out the far-off sites of his old Meccan journey, and the land of Midian and Akabeh, which would be a future journey. On the thirteenth day we serpentined through twenty miles of mostly hidden reefs and slabs to Jeddah, the Port of Mecca, which can only be done in broad daylight, one ship at a time, and no lighthouses. We collided with an English ironclad ship, which did us considerable damage, so we had to remain some time, before we were repaired, and our pilgrims continued to arrive from Mecca, as we were a pilgrim-ship about to carry eight or nine hundred to Bombay.
To the far east we had a gladdening glimpse of the desert, the wild waterless wilderness of Sur on the Asiatic side, which looks like snow under the moonlight. I have not enjoyed myself so much with Nature for four and a half years as now, once more smelling the desert air and the usual Eastern scenes. The Nizam (regular soldiers), negroes, Bedawi draped in usual cloak and kuffíyeh, and women in blue garments, not changed a hair since the days of Abraham, except that they now carry matchlocks instead of spears; the tawny camels squat upon the ground; the black sheep and goats huddle in knots, vainly attempting to shade their heads from the sun; the seedy dahabíyyeh rolls past, and is hustled aside by the fussy high-pressure mouche, which carries the mails daily to Ismailiyyah, a pretty mushroom town with palaces, Consulates and gardens, with telegraph and railway. It contained then two thousand souls, and hoisted nine various national flags. The land of Goshen is immediately north-west. There are plenty of foxes on the Asiatic side, and one sat like a dog on the sandbank and stared at us. We passed the village called Serapeum, which communicates with a Bedawi village in Asia. To the south and westward rise the sandy cliffs of Jebel Jeneffeh, and towering above all, Jebel Atakeh. As we got near Suez, the children run along, crying, "Bakshish!" The soldiers threw them a bit of bread, but as we threw them nothing the petition changed to the curses with which the Orientals are so familiar, "Na'al Abukum ya Kilab!" ("Drat your fathers, O ye dogs!")
At Suez, if you leave your ship—and it is only going to anchor for a few hours in the bay, an hour's steam from the town, and much more by sail—there is a great danger, if a contrary wind springs up, that you are not able to join it. From being a town of importance, Suez was ruined by the opening of the Canal. She has become a big village of three thousand natives, and about seventy-five Europeans, employed in telegraph, post-office, steamers, and railways. She sits solitary under the sky in the sand on the borders of the sea, far from all civilization or progress. She has had a past, and Richard says she will have a future. The troops were then collecting at Masáwwah; three thousand camels were being shipped. One would think that this regular wall of Asiatic mountain, now painted pink and plum blue by the last flood of sunlight, which begins far north of the Lebanon, and which extends southwards to Aden, a counterpart of the Moab range, would have served Holman Hunt for a background to his famous "Scape-goat." Richard knew all this ground twenty-five years before, and he showed me where the Israelites are supposed to have crossed the Red Sea, and where they did cross. Christians have three places, and the Arabs two.