Page:Arabia, Egypt, India - A Narrative of Travel.djvu/451

Rh expedition mapped, and planned, and sketched the whole country, and came back, bringing twenty-five tons of the various minerals for assay or analysis. The ancients had only worked forty feet, whereas, with our appliances, we may go down twelve hundred. Captain Burton is about to produce a most interesting work on this expedition, which is now in the hands of Mr. Kegan Paul.

To my great annoyance I was left behind, October 1877, to bring the first book through the Press, with leave to join the expedition as soon as my work was done. I accomplished it in January 1878, started and got as far as Suez, where I met with a check I was not prepared for. My readers will understand that the land of Midian is not in Egypt, but in the opposite land, Arabia, with the Red Sea running between, and I found it utterly impossible to get any farther. It is a desert place, where none go; there is no communication. The expedition was then working five or six days up country. To cross the Red Sea in an open Sambuk, with head winds blowing, and afterwards to fight my way across the desert alone upon a camel, would have been both dangerous for me, and infra dig. for my husband's position; nor was it exactly the moment to ask the Khedive to organize a second expedition to send me out with no definite object, except my own pleasure.

Once an Egyptian man-of-war was sent by the Khedive, but only to bring them back (there was to be a choice between two). I went down and inspected them both. The Captain received me with all honour, all hands were piped on deck, and a guard and everything provided for me. They would have liked to take me, would have done all to make me comfortable, and were most courteous, but I saw that the accommodation was of too public a nature; in short, it would be impossible for any woman to embark without her husband on an Egyptian man-of-war,—it would lower her in their eyes. Besides turning them out of their only quarters, when my husband came to re-embark the men of his Staff, I should be excessively in the way; so thanking them exceedingly for their courteousness, I returned to the town (much to the relief of the excellent energetic Governor, Said