Lord Haddington, being Head of the
Admiralty, did grant this scarce and astonishing
honour! Egypt actually beheld the man,
who had brought England within forty-seven
days of her sands, before any steam system
was in operation between the two countries,
permitted to write the letters R. N. after his
natural name!

In conjunction with others, partners in the
undertaking, Lieutenant Waghorn now
arranged for the carriage of passengers, the
building of hotels at Alexandria, Cairo, and
other places, and he soon familiarised the
Desert with the novel spectacle of harnessed
horses, vans, and all the usual adjuncts of
English travelling, instead of the precarious
Arab and his primeval camel. These, with
packet-boats on the Nile, and the canal (and
afterwards with steamers), duly provided with
English superintendants, rendered Eastern
travel as easy as a journey of the same length
in the hot summer of any of the most civilised
countries.

Lieutenant Waghorn had now every
prospect of making this hitherto undreamed-of
novelty as profitable to himself in remuneration
of his many arduous labours, as it was
serviceable and commodious to the vast
numbers of all countries, especially his own,
who availed themselves of it. But
unfortunately, just when his enterprise, industry,
capital, and his possession of Mehemet Ali's
friendship were beginning to produce their
natural results, the honourable English
Government and the honourable East India
Company "gave the monopoly of a chartered
contract to an opulent and powerful
Company!"  Lieutenant Waghorn had coupled
with his passenger system the carriage of
overland parcels, which was a source of great
profit, and through it there was a constant
accession to the comforts of the passengers in
transit. But it would seem as if the Government
and the India House regarded this man
only as an instrument to work out advantages
for them, in especial, and the world at large,
but the moment he had a prospect of obtaining
some reward for himself, it was proper to
stop him. Had he not been allowed to write
Lieutenant before his name, and R. N. after
it? What more would he have?

"This Company," says "Waghorn, "already
extensive carriers by water, gleaned from my firm
the secret of conducting my business, with an
alleged view to supply it on a much more
comprehensive scale, and to employ us in so doing;
but when nothing more remained to be learned
from us, we were forthwith superseded, though
with a useless and utterly unproductive expenditure,
on the part of our successors, of six times the
money we should have required to accomplish
the same end. Overwhelmed by the competition
of this giant association, I was entirely deprived
of all advantages of this creation of my own
energy, and left with it a ruin on my hands,
though to have secured me at least the Egyptian
transit would not only have been but the merest
justice to an individual, but would have been a
material gain to the British public, politically and
otherwise. In my hand the English traffic was
English, and I venture to say that English it
would have continued to this day, had I not been
interfered with. But my successors gave it up to
the Pasha."

The absence of all circumstantial descriptions
and all graphic details in the papers,
both printed and in manuscript, we have
previously noticed. We had at first made sure
of being able to present our readers with a
picturesque and exciting narrative of the Life
and Adventures of Lieutenant Waghorn—for
adventures, in abundance, both on the sea and
the Desert, he must assuredly have had; but
he does not give us a single peg to hang an
action or event upon, not a single suggestion
for a romantic scene. Once we thought we
had at last discovered among his papers a
treasure of this kind. It was a manuscript
bound in a strong cover, and having a patent
lock. Inside was printed, in large letters,
"Private: Daily Remembrancer: Mr. Waghorn."
It contains absolutely nothing of the
kind that was evidently at first intended. It
is crammed full of newspaper cuttings; and the
only memoranda and remembrances are two
or three melancholy affairs of bills and
mortgages made to pay debts incurred in the
public service. So much for his daily journal
of events while travelling. He was manifestly
so completely a man of action, that he could not
afford a minute to note it down. Had it not
been for the vexatious oppositions by which
he was thwarted, and the painful memorials
and petitions he was subsequently compelled,
as we shall find, to present in various quarters,
we verily believe he would have given us no
written records at all of a single thing he
did, and all that would have been left, in the
course of a few years after his death, would
have been the "Overland Route," and the
name of "Waghorn."

We must now take a cursory view of his
labours. To do this in any regular order is
hardly possible, partly from the space they
would occupy, but yet more from the desultory
and unmanageable condition of the papers
and documents before us.

During many years he sailed and travelled
hundreds of thousands of miles between
England and India, more particularly from the
year 1827 to 1835, inclusive; passing up and
down the Red Sea with mails, before the
East India Company had any steam system
on that sea. On one very special occasion, on
this side the Isthmus, in October 1839, when
the news arrived at Alexandria from Bombay,
of Sir John (late Lord) Keane's success at
Ghaznee, he managed to obtain the use of the
Pasha of Egypt's own steamer, the Generoso,
the very next day after Her Majesty's
steamer left Alexandria; and he personally
commanded this vessel, and conveyed the
mail to Malta, which was immediately sent
on by the Admiral there, to England. Of
such acts of special usefulness on occasions of