methods for accomplishing these great objects,
and bringing home with him the testimonial
of thanks he had received from the Governor
in Council of Bombay, he returned to England.
Let his own words—homely, earnest, straight-
forward, full of sailor-like simplicity,
impulsive, and fraught with important results—
relate his reception.

"Armed with the record of the Governor's
thanks, I commenced an active agitation in India
for the establishment of steam to Europe. In
prosecution of this design, I returned to England,
expecting, of course, to be received with open
arms—at the India House especially. Judge of
my surprise on being told by the successor of Mr.
Loch (Chairman of the court), that the India
Company required no steam to the East at all!

"I told him that the feeling in India was most
ardent for it; that I had convened large public
meetings at Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, and, in
fact, all over the Peninsula, which I had traversed
by dawk; that the Governor-General, Lord
William Bentinck, was enthusiastic in the same
cause, and had done me the honour to predict
(with what prescience need not now, in 1849,
be stated), that if ever the object was accomplished,
it would be by the man who had navigated the
Red Sea in an open boat, under the circumstances
already named.

"To all this the Chairman made answer that
the Governor-General and people of India had
nothing to do with the India House; and if I did
not go back and join their pilot service, to which
I belonged, I should receive such a communication
from that House as would be by no means
agreeable to me!

"On the instant I penned my resignation, and
placing it in his hands, then gave utterance to the
sentiment which actuated me from that moment
till the moment I realised my aspiration—that
I would establish the Overland Route, in spite of
the India House."

How little must the public of the present
day be prepared to find such a condition of
affairs, or anything in the shape of antagonism
in such a quarter, now that the Overland
Route has become not only a practical thing
for the "mail " but for ordinary travellers
and tourists, and a matter of panorama and
pantomime, of dioramic effects and burlesque
songs—the sublime, and the ridiculous! But
how did it fare with our enterprising sailor,
after penning his resignation, and handing it
in with such a declaration and defiance?

"This avowal," says Lieutenant Waghorn,
"most impolitic on my part as regarded my
individual interests, is perhaps the key to much of
the otherwise inexplicable opposition I
subsequently met with from those upon whose most
energetic co-operation I had every apparent
reason to rely. I proceeded to Egypt, not only
without official recommendation, but with a sort of
official stigma on my sanity!

"The Government nautical authorities reported
that the Red Sea was not navigable; and the
East India Company's naval officers declared, that,
if it were navigable, the North-Westers peculiar to
those waters, and the South-West monsoons of
the Indian Ocean, would swallow all steamers up!

And, as if there were not enough to crush me in
the eyes of foreigners and my own countrymen,
documents were actually laid before Parliament,
showing that coals had cost the East India
Company twenty pounds per ton, at Suez, and had
taken fifteen months to get there."

Notwithstanding all these apparently overwhelming
allegations, Mr. Waghorn succeeded
in convincing the Pasha of the entire
practicability of his plans; and having fully gained
the confidence of that potentate, he obtained
permission to proceed according to his own
judgment. By means of his intimate
knowledge of the whole route and all its
contingencies, Mr. Waghorn saw that coals might
be brought readily enough to Alexandria—
then up the Nile—then across the Desert on
camels—for not more than five pounds per
ton. He immediately hastened back to
England, and was "fortunate enough" to
impress his conviction on this point on a very
able public servant, Mr. Melville, Secretary
to the East India House; and through his
instrumentality one thousand tons of coals
were conveyed by the route, and by the
means above-mentioned, from the pit's mouth
to the hold of the steamer at Suez, for four
pounds three shillings and sixpence.

"From that hour to this (June, 1849), the
same plan, at the same, and even a smaller cost,
has been pursued in respect of all the coals of the
East India Company,—the saving in ten years
being three quarters of a million sterling, as between
the estimated, and the actual cost of coal."

Having now most deservedly obtained the
friendship of the Pasha, Mr. Waghorn was
enabled to establish mails to India, and to
keep that service in his own hands during
five years. On one occasion he actually
succeeded in getting letters from Bombay to
England in forty-seven days; and immediately
afterwards both the English Government and
the Honourable East India Company, at the
pressing solicitations of the London, East
India, and China Associations (Mr., since Sir
George Larpent, Chairman) started mails of
their own—taking from Mr. Waghorn the
conveyance of letters, without the least
compensation for the loss, from that time to this
(1849); these authorities having, till then,
repeatedly declared that they had no intention
of having mails by this route at all.

It should not be omitted, that, during
these efforts, Mr. Waghorn feeling that his
position in India would be much advantaged,
and therefore his means of utility, if he could
receive the rank of Lieutenant in the British
Navy, made repeated applications to this
effect, from 1832 to 1842. But in vain. He
thought that his great services might have
obtained this reward for him, especially as it
would add to his means of usefulness. But
no. Government, like the serpent, is a
wonderful "wise beast," and the ways of
Ministers are inscrutable. All spoke of his merits,
but none rewarded them. At length, in 1842,