Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/151

 10 s. VIIL AUG. 17, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

121

LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1907.

CONTENTS.-NO. 190.

NOTES : T. L. Peacock and the Overland Route, 121 Jubilee of ' The City Press,' 122 Dodsley's Famous Col- lection of Poetry, 124 Lord Byron's Antidote against Misanthropy, 126 Devonshire Witchcraft Door-shutting Proverb " Fife-boy " Maypole at Huby, Yorkshire Exeter Hall : its Closing, 127 Earl of Westmoreland's Installation at Oxford, 1759, 128.

^QUERIES : " Precursors "Bishop Porteus: Painting of his Birthplace Dr. Good of Balliol Constant's Memoirs, 128 Baxter Family of Shropshire Garden Song in ' Quality Street' Deodands : their Abolition Raven- shaw, Raynshaw, or Renshaw Family " Primrose "= Prime, of Age Sir William Temple's Swiss Visitor, 129 Dominoes : their Origin " Rone," Rainwater Gutter Ancaster Sir Thomas Browne's Medicinal Waters Chip- pingdale of Blackenhall, Staff sBede's Translation of the Fourth Gospel Public Speaking in Shakespeare's Day, 130 Antony Gilby " Gowdike "Washington, U.S.A. Harriet Lee Elder-bush Folk-lore, 131.

REPLIES: "Maru," 131 Sir George Monoux, 133 Wils- combe Club " Mareboake " : " Viere "Pie : Tart Authors of Quotations Wanted, 134 "Nit behamey,' Yiddish Phrase "Dowb" Napoleon's Carriage ; Joseph Bonaparte's Carriage Highlanders "barbadosed,* 135 " Lombard Street to a China orange " Two Old Proverbs, 136 Coffinsand Shrouds "Neither my eye nor my elbow " ' ' Pretty Maid's Money," 137" Herefordshire Window " " Mite," a Coin, 138.

TSOTES ON BOOKS : ' Aberdeenshire Epitaphs and In- scriptions,' Skeat's Edition of ' The Proverbs of Alfred ' "The World's Classics ' Jubilee of 'The Cornish and Devon Post.'

.Booksellers' Catalogues.

".Notices to Correspondents.

T. L. PEACOCK AND THE OVERLAND ROUTE.

ONE of the most important facts relating to the life of Peacock which has still to be written by some friend of literature is his connexion with the Euphrates route to India. Attention was first called to this in General Chesney's ' Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition.'

While on a political mission to Egypt in 1829 General Chesney consulted a documem drawn up by Peacock dealing with th -question of the overland route to India His application to the Government for per mission to consider the several routes was th< outcome of its perusal. This having been granted, his extensive investigations followed among which the famous Euphrates ex pedition was the most notable. A memoi of the undertaking was afterwards publishec by him at Peacock's request. M. d Lesseps has called Chesney " the father of the Suez Canal," because he was induced t undertake his own great engineering fea through Chesney's plans, which showed the practicability of carrying out a schem

hat the French surveyors had already

Abandoned as impossible. As Chesney,

iccording to his own admission, first grappled

with the whole subject through Peacock's

.gency, the latter is thus indirectly asso-

iated with the origin of one of the greatest


 * ommercial and engineering enterprises of

modern times.

Much information bearing on Peacock's activity in advocating the Euphrates route >efore different private committees of the louse of Commons. He was one of the principal witnesses before three committees lealing with this subject. In 1832 he sup- plied the East India Finance Committee with prise. He was the first witness, and General
 * an be obtained by consulting his evidence
 * he particulars of the voyage of the Enter-

hesney the second, before a Select Committee of the House of Commons on Steam Naviga- tion to India, under the presidency of the Right Hon. Charles Grant, in 1834. He gave evidence on this occasion as to re- opening the canal from Suez to the Mediter- ranean, and information about the French urvey which had been made. He pro- posed the Government's navigating the Red Sea with steam vessels at an estimated annual cost of 100,OOOZ. The evidence is contained in the Report and Minutes of the Committee, pp. 1-12 and 95. He laid the following papers before this Committee, which are mostly from his own pen, and are printed in the Appendix to the Report : Memorandum respecting the application of steam navigation to the internal and external communications of India, dated in Septem- ber, 1829 ; another Memorandum on the same subject, dated in December, 1833 ; Extracts respecting the Euphrates, the Orontes, and Bagdad ; Extracts respecting the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf ; an Account of the ancient Canal from the Nile to the Red Sea ; a Paper intitulated, Reasons for preferring the Euphrates ; A Log of a Dutch West India Steamer. He was further one of three witnesses before a Special Committee of the House of Commons, under the chair- manship of Lord William Bentinck, in 1837. His evidence is to be found in the Minutes, pp. 38-61. He handed in before this Com- mittee a table of the relative distances of the various routes to India, which was read, and also included in the Report.

Very instructive, in his evidence, is a view as to the advisability of opening up the Euphrates in order to counteract Russia. Peacock already foresaw the policy of Lord Beaconsfield that a consolidated