Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/389

 axles, oiling and putting them on again; and lessons in taking her own guns and pistols to pieces, cleaning and putting them together again. Then she had to buy a heap of useful and necessary things to stock the house at Damascus with. One of her purchases almost rivalled her famous "jungle suit." She invested in a pony-carriage, a thing unheard of in Syria; and her uncle, Lord Gerard, also made her a present of an old family chariot. This tickled the late Lord Houghton immensely, and he made so many jokes about "Isabel driving through the desert in a chariot drawn by camels" that she left it. But she took out the pony-carriage; and as there was only one road in the country, she found it useless, though she was lucky enough to sell it to some one at Damascus, who bought it not for use, but as a curio.

Other work of a different nature also came to her hand, the work of vindicating her husband and defending his position. At a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, at which she was present, Sir Roderick Murchison, who was in the chair, spoke of "Central or Equatorial Africa, in which lie those great water-basins which, thanks to the labours of Speke, Grant, and Baker, are known to feed the Nile." After the meeting was over she went up to Sir Roderick and asked him why Burton had not been mentioned with the others. He replied it was an oversight, and he would see that it was rectified in the reports to the press. It was not. So she wrote to The Times, protesting against the omission of her husband's name, and to The Athenæm. These letters have been