I had one little thing to amuse me. A P. and O. arrived and touched there, and on these days, unless you had friends on board, the passengers seemed to turn you out of house and home, and there were generally a quantity of Indian military ladies. The ladies' toilette-room for these passengers was near my room, and coming out I saw them struggling on very uncomfortably, almost in the dark; so I good-naturedly fetched a candle from my room, and said, "I am afraid you are very uncomfortable in there—will you have a candle?" They stared me up and down for a minute, and then said, "Why, of course. Go and get us a comb and some hot water, will you?" I began to be amused. I was in hopes they would give me a shilling—but they did not. I called my maid and told her in German to go and tell the landlady that they wanted a comb and some hot water. "Oh," they said, "do you all speak German in this hotel?" I said, "I don't know—but that girl is an Austrian." I then went back to my room.
The poor landlady had seen better days, and she used to feel quite crushed when they said, "Send the woman with the boots, will you? and look sharp," or some equivalent speech; and she used to take to her bed after every steamer, which, however, fortunately I think, was only once a fortnight; but as soon as she heard that they had done it to me, she got quite well, and did not mind it a bit; so it did some good. The fun was that in the evening they were so puzzled to see me sitting at the top of the table with all the best people round me, and amongst them two friends, a married couple, whom they had snubbed tremendously on board, and whom I held in high honour, and who were awfully amused at the way the ladies had treated me. Then in the evening I had a tea-fight, to which all Suez came. Subsequently, a year after, I met the very lady who had ordered me to get the comb at a dinner-party. She sat opposite to me. I recognized her, but she did not recognize me. I could not help telling the story to my next-door neighbour, who appreciated the joke immensely, and said, "Do say 'how-do-you-do' to her, and tell her where you last met her." But I would not have spoilt her pleasure for the world.
During my stay in Suez a remarkable event occurred, of dumb madness in dogs. It was an epidemic in the air, as dogs separately confined and well cared for died just the same. I lost two of Richard's. The pariahs had it very bad. I have seen them running into the sea to drown themselves, and out of three thousand, there were only about forty left. At last, on the 20th of April, 1878, whilst I was in the church during the "Office" for Holy Saturday, a messenger from the Governor put a slip of paper into my hand—"The Senaar is in sight, the Emetic will await you later on to meet the ship." I found Richard looking ill and tired. Before the ship had been anchored half an hour, every soul had deserted, and he was left in sole charge, and could not come off till the following morning. The Khedive sent a special train for him and the Expedition, which left at eight in the morning. Halfway, at Zagazíg, a beautiful dinner had been prepared for us by Monsieur Camille Vetter, a French cotton-merchant from Ettlingen, the Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany. We dined in an arbour, and there was a profusion of champagne and delicacies galore. Our train caught fire four times, and we had to get out and pour buckets of sand over it, there being no water.
An Englishman who happened to be at Suez wrote to the Home News, June 1st, 1878: "I had occasion to be at Suez on the return of Haji Abdullah (Dick Burton) from Midian last month, and I noted the sensation his arrival created. His name is as well known amongst the natives in Egypt as if he had passed all his days amongst them. Pashas and other great personages from Europe are continually passing to and fro almost unheeded. How different was the case when it became known that Haji Abdullah was leaving for Cairo! The platform was crowded with Europeans and natives. The rumour had got abroad that 'that wonderful man' was at Suez on his return from the exploring trip to Midian."
Richard was received with great distinction by the Khedive; it was a sort of triumphal entry. The Khedive wished for an exhibition of the minerals, which he opened in person, Richard and Mr. Frederick Smart attending him, and I attended a good deal upon the harem. We had three weeks of that sort of work, and writing reports in French and English, made excursions to the Pyramids, and received a great deal of hospitality from our friends, Mr. Frederick Smart, the Michells, General Purday, the Romaines, the Bairds, the Barings, Abate Bey, Artin Yakoob Pasha, the Tennants, the Vivians, the Lesseps, Barrot Bey, General and Mrs. Stone, the Kremers, and very pleasant were the dinners by moonlight on the Bairds' dahabeeyah, enhanced by the stillness, the view, the distant singing. The Khedive made a contract that Richard should have the concession of the discoveries, or to have five per cent. upon the whole gross profits.
We left on the 10th of May for Alexandria, dined out at Ramleh, and left on the 12th in the "Austria," Captain Rossol. We were eighty-five passengers in a small steamer, so we were not very comfortable; but we were very merry, and we had with us Mr. Frederick Smart, Safvet Pasha, Mohammed Bey, Baronne de Saurmà, née Comtesse de Hatzfeldt, Lord Talbot de Malahide and his daughter Frances, and General Stranz. At Corfú we saw Sir Charles Sebright, and dined all together at St. George's Hotel. We had one man ill with typhus, who was shut away for fear the passengers should know, and I got awfully scolded for going in to nurse him, and as two sharks followed under our bows, they made an unpleasant impression. When we arrived at nine o'clock at night, as we steamed in, our faithful friends, the Governor, Baron Pino, and his wife, rowed up to the side of the vessel, and sent a man to tell Captain and Mrs. Burton to come to their boat directly; and they took us away in less than two minutes, fearing the steamer would be sent in quarantine, and afterwards our belongings followed us. The man died two days after landing in his own home, but no harm resulted to any one. An untoward and melancholy incident also occurred. A poor lady was coming to Austria to see which of the baths would make her a little more blood, as she was anæmic. The exertion of landing from the ship to the hotel caused her to faint; a young doctor was called in, who, mistaking her case, bled her, taking out the little drop she had, and she died that night.
We now went up to Opçina to rest. Richard was detained at his post on account of the then expected war, but was released in a few weeks and allowed to come to London to arrange matters for the further working of Midian. We embarked on the 6th of July in a Cunard steamer which occupies from twenty-one to twenty-six days from Trieste to Liverpool, going first to Venice. On the way we read Dellon's "Inquisition" in Portuguese. We touched at Brindisi; went through the Straits of Messina to Palermo, where we found it very, very hot. We landed, and went to see everything worth seeing, not forgetting the Capuchins, who have large underground crypts, where the dead monks are not buried, but tied up, as if drying. It is very curious, but rather gruesome. I went to visit a relation there, who had been one of the members. The Capuchins gave me a huge blue pottery jar, with a tap, which the priests used to wash their fingers after Mass, and for which I had taken an immense fancy; it bears the Franciscan arms. Richard had gout very badly a great part of the way, but not gout in the exaggerated sense of later years. We landed again at Gibraltar, and had bad weather across the Bay, and all the way home, reaching London on the 27th of July, 1878.