THE LIFE AND LABOURS OF LIEUTENANT WAGHORN.

The great benefactors of our species may be divided into two grand classes—the men of thought, and the men of action; the men whose genius was chiefly in the realm of mind, and those whose power lies in tangible things. Let no one set up the idle and invidious comparison as to which of the two is the nobler, since both are equally needful to the world’s progress; all great thoughts and theories, dreams and visions (let us never fear the truth, but honor it even in using terms of vulgar and shortsighted opprobrium) of men of genius and knowledge, being the germ and origin of great actions,—and all great actions being the practical working out of the former, without which no good to mankind at large can be accomplished. To set thought and action, therefore, in opposition to each other, is like setting the arms and legs of Hercules to quarrel with his head while performing his labours. Nor can the distinction, thus broadly stated, be drawn at all times with any definite precision, since the man who conceives and developes a new principle, is sometimes able to carry it out himself. This combination of powers in the same individual is very rare, and is obviously one reason why, in most cases, the originator of a new thing is neglected as a visionary, and a madman. But the energy of thought to conceive and design displayed by Lieutenant Waghorn, was more than equalled by the energy of character and action required to carry out his stupendous plans. Sometimes with the best assistance—sometimes with none—sometimes in defiance of contest, opprobrium, and opposition—the vigour of mind and body of this man caused him to undertake and to succeed in projects which are among the most prominent of those which especially characterise the genius of the present age.

We have intimated that Mr. Waghorn was both a man of thought and action, but this must be understood with certain marked limitations. Mr. Waghorn’s mind was of that peculiar construction, which appears never to think earnestly except with a view to action. Even that quality, which in other men is of the most ideal kind, and commonly exerts itself in matters of little or no substantiality of fact and purpose, with him partook of the physicality of his strong nature as much as the admixture was possible,—so that he may be said to have had a practical imagination. His objects and designs were welded into all the materials of his understanding and knowledge; his ambitions and hopes were fused with the generation of the mighty steam-forces that were to drive his ships across the ocean and inland seas; the elasticity of his spirit was identified with the flying speed of Arab horses, and dromedaries carrying the “mail” across the desert; and when he projected a wonderful shortening of time and space, he at the same moment beheld the broad massive arm of England stretched across to govern and make use of her enormous Indian territories, comprising a hundred million of souls. He never thought of himself; he was too much engaged with the vastness of his designs for his country. We shall see how that country rewarded his efforts.

Thomas Waghorn was born at Chatham, in 1800. At twelve years of age he became a midshipman in Her Majesty’s Navy; and before he had reached seventeen, passed in “navigation” for Lieutenant, being the youngest midshipman that had ever done so—the examination requiring a great amount of both theoretical and practical knowledge, and being always conducted with severity. This made him eligible to the rank of lieutenant, but did not include it. At the close 495of the year 1817, he was paid off, and went as third mate of a Free-trader to Calcutta. He returned home, and, in 1819, obtained an appointment in the Bengal Marine (Pilot-Service) of India, where he served till 1824. At the request of the Bengal Government, he now volunteered for the Arracan War, and received the command of the Honourable East India Company’s cutter, Matchless, together with a division of gun-boats, and repaired to the scene of action in Arracan, with the south-eastern division of that army and flotilla. He was five times in action, saw much rough work by land and by sea, and escaped with only one wound in the right thigh. He remained two years and a half in this service, and after having received the thanks of all the authorities in that province, he returned to Calcutta in 1827, with a constitution already undermined from the baneful fever of Arracan, where so many thousands had died.

Weakened as he had been, Mr. Waghorn nevertheless rallied to the great project he had secretly at heart, namely, “A steam communication between our Eastern possessions and their mother-country, England.” Even before his departure from Calcutta on furlough, in 1827, ill in health, and only imperfectly recovered from the Arracan fever, still, between its attacks, his energies returned. He communicated his plan to the officials, namely, the Marine Board at Calcutta, who forthwith advanced it to the notice of the then Chief Secretary to the Bengal Government, the present Mr. Charles Lushington, M.P. for Westminster; through whom he obtained letters of credence from Lord Combermere, then acting as Vice-President in Council (Earl Amherst, Governor-General, being on a tour in Upper India), to the Honourable Court of Directors of the East India Company in London, recommending him, in consequence of his meritorious conduct in the Arracan War, “as a fit and proper person to open Steam Navigation with India, viâ the Cape of Good Hope.”

On his homeward voyage, Mr. Waghorn advocated this great object publicly by every means in his power (the numerous attestations of which lie open before us) at Madras, the Mauritius, the Cape, and St. Helena. Directly he arrived in England, he set about the same thing, and advocated the project at all points, particularly in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham. But the Post Office, at that time, was opposed to ocean steam-navigation; and so, unfortunately, were the East India Directors,—with the single exception of Mr. Loch. Two whole years were thus passed in fruitless efforts to make great men open their eyes. At length, in October, 1829, Mr. Waghorn was summoned by Lord Ellenborough, the then Chairman of the Court of Directors, to go to India, through Egypt, with despatches for Sir John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay, &c., and more especially, to report upon the practicability of the Red Sea Navigation for the Overland Route.

On the 28th of October, having had only four days’ previous notice from the India House, Waghorn started on the top of the Eagle stage-coach from the Spread Eagle, Gracechurch Street. All his luggage weighed about twenty pounds. The East India Company’s steam-vessel Enterprise was expected to be at Suez, in the Red Sea, from India, on or about the 8th of December. It was much desired that despatches from England should reach her at this place, which Mr. Waghorn undertook they should do. He could not speak French nor Italian, both of which would have been very advantageous; but he had some knowledge of Hindostanee, and a little Arabic.

On this “trip,” as Waghorn calls it, so extraordinarily rapid was the first part of his journey, viz. to Trieste (accomplished in nine days and a half, through five kingdoms) that an enquiry was instituted by the Foreign Office respecting it; for at this time our Post Office Letters occupied fourteen days in reaching that place. Yet Waghorn had been obliged to travel upwards of one hundred and thirty miles out of his direct way, in consequence of broken bridges, falling avalanches, and the disabling of a steamer.

Instantly enquiring for the quickest means of getting on to Alexandria, he was informed that an Austrian brig had sailed only the evening before, and having had calms and light airs all night, she was still in sight from the tops of the hills. Away he dashed in a fresh posting carriage, because if he could reach Pesano, through Capo D’Istria, twenty miles down the eastern side of the Gulf of Venice, before the Austrian vessel had passed, he might embark from this port as passenger for Alexandria. On reaching Pesano, he could still distinguish the vessel, and he accordingly strove to increase the rapidity of his chase to the utmost. He got within three miles of the vessel. At this juncture a strong northerly wind sprang up, and carrying her forward on her course, she was presently lost to sight. Exhausted in body, and “racked,” as he says, by disappointment after the previous excitement, he returned to Trieste.

Ascertaining that the next opportunity of getting to Alexandria would be by a Spanish ship, which was now taking in her cargo in the quarantine ground, he instantly hastened there. The captain informed him that he could not possibly sail in less than three days, and required one hundred dollars for the passage. Waghorn directly offered him one hundred and fifty dollars if he would sail in eight-and-forty hours. Whereupon the captain found that it was just possible to do so; and he kept his word.

“After a tedious passage of sixteen days,” says Waghorn, to whom every hour that did not fly was no doubt tedious, “I arrived at Alexandria, but hearing that Mr. Barker, who held the combined 496offices of Consul General in Egypt, and agent to the Honourable East India Company, was at his country-house at Rosetta, I hired donkeys, and was on my way for it after five hours’ stay at Alexandria.”

One ludicrous characteristic of the Alexandrian donkeys is worth recording. Never in future can we regard the epithet of “an ass,” as being properly synonymous with stupidity. The creatures ambled and trotted along very well during the first day; but on the subsequent morning, when they clearly perceived that a long journey was before them, they fell down intentionally four or five times, with all the signs of fatigue and weakness. The drivers informed him that it was a common practice of the donkeys.

Embarking on the Nile, our traveller made it his business to navigate the boat himself, in order to take soundings, and to obtain as much knowledge as would promote both the immediate and future objects of his journey.

Mr. Waghorn rested at Rosetta, to recover from his fatigue, and then set out for Cairo on a cangé, a sort of boat of fifteen tons’ burthen, with two large latteen-sails. The rais, or captain, agreed to land him at Cairo in three days and four nights, or receive nothing. This he failed to do, in consequence of the boat grounding on the shoal of Shallakan. Waghorn’s notions of a reason for fatigue, may be curiously gathered from a remark he makes incidentally on this occasion. “The crew,” says he, “were almost fatigued: we have been continually tacking for five days and nights.” Being out of all patience, he left the boat, and again mounting donkeys, proceeded with his servant to Cairo. He left his luggage behind him, merely taking his despatches.

Having obtained camels, and a requisite passport from the Pasha, Mohammed Ali, to guarantee his safe passage across the Desert of Suez; Mr. Waghorn left Cairo on the 5th of December for Suez, and at sunset had pitched his tent on the Desert at six miles distance.

At dawn of day, he was again on his journey, and managed to travel thirty-four miles beneath the burning sun before he halted. The next day he journeyed thirty miles, and in the evening pitched his tent only four miles short of Suez. The next day, he reached the appointed place, and there rested, the Enterprise not having yet arrived.

While waiting with the greatest impatience the arrival of this steamer, Mr. Waghorn appears to have endeavoured to calm himself by jotting down a few observations on the Desert he had just crossed. These observations, slight and few as they are, must be “made much of,” as they are, of all things, the rarest with him. He always saw the end before him, and nearly all his observations were confined to the means of attaining it.

“The Desert of Suez, commencing from Cairo, a gentle ascent, about thirty-five miles on the way; then, the same gradual descent till you arrive at the plains of Suez. The soil of the first five miles from Cairo is fine sand; then, coarse sand, inclinable to gravel. Within twelve miles of Suez” (notice—he is tired already of description, and brings you within twelve miles of the place) “you meet many sand-hills between, till you arrive at the plains before mentioned, which form a perfect level for miles in extent, leading you to the gates of Suez.

“The antelopes I observed in parties of about a dozen each, and the camel-drivers informed me that they creep under the shrubs about eighteen inches high, to catch the drops of dew, which is the only means they have of relieving their thirst. I saw partridges in covies of from six to seven, but nowhere on the wing: they were running about the Desert, and I was informed they were not eaten even by the Arabs.”

Considering the food they pick up in the Desert, perhaps this is no wonder.

Having informed us that camels are to be had very cheaply at Suez—say a dollar each camel for fifty miles’ distance—and that the water is very brackish, he suddenly adds, with characteristic brevity, “To save recapitulation in describing Cossier, it is the same as Suez, viz., camels are to be had in abundance at a trifling expense, and the water is as bad.”

He remained at Suez two days, waiting with feverish anxiety the expected arrival of the Enterprise. She still did not appear—a strong N.W. wind blowing directly down the sea. Being quite unable to endure the suspense any longer, he determined to embark on the Red Sea in an open boat, intending to sail down its centre, in hopes of meeting her between Suez and Cossier.

All the seamen of the locality vigorously remonstrated with Mr. Waghorn against this attempt, and he well knew that the nautical authorities, both of the East India House and the British Government, were of opinion that the Red Sea was not navigable. But he had important Government despatches to deliver—had pledged himself to deliver them on board the Enterprise, and considering that his course of duty, as well as his reputation as a traveller, were at stake, he persisted in his determination. Accordingly, he embarked in an open boat, and without having any personal knowledge of the navigation of this sea, without chart, without compass, or even the encouragement of a single precedent for such an enterprise—his only guide the sun by day, and the North star by night—he sailed down the centre of the Red Sea.

Of this most interesting and unprecedented voyage, the narrative of which everybody would have read with such avidity, Mr. Waghorn gives no detailed account. He disappoints you of all the circumstances. All intermediate things are abruptly cut off with these very characteristic words:—“Suffice it to say, I arrived at Juddah, 620 miles, in six and a half days, in that boat!” You 497get nothing more than the sum total. He kept a sailor’s log-journal; but it is only meant for sailors to read, though now and then you obtain a glimpse of the sort of work he went through. Thus:—“Sunday, 13th, strong N.W. wind, half a gale, but scudding under storm-sail. Sunset, anchored for the night. Jaffateen islands out of sight to the N. Lost two anchors during the night,” &c. The rest is equally nautical and technical. In one of the many scattered papers collected since the death of Mr. Waghorn, we find a very slight passing allusion to toils, perils, and privations, which, however, he calmly says, were “inseparable from such a voyage under such circumstances,”—but not one touch of description from first to last.

A more extraordinary instance of great practical experience and knowledge, resolutely and fully carrying out a project which must of necessity have appeared little short of madness to almost everybody else, was never recorded. He was perfectly successful, so far as the navigation was concerned, and in the course he adopted, notwithstanding that his crew of six Arabs mutinied. It appears (for he tells us only the bare fact) they were only subdued on the principle known to philosophers in theory, and to high-couraged men, accustomed to command, by experience, viz., that the one man who is braver, stronger, and firmer than any individual of ten or twenty men, is more than a match for the ten or twenty put together. He touched at Cossier on the 14th, not having fallen in with the Enterprise. There he was told by the Governor that the steamer was expected every hour. Mr. Waghorn was in no state of mind to wait very long; so, finding she did not arrive, he again put to sea in his open boat, resolved, if he did not fall in with her, to proceed the entire distance to Juddah—a distance of four hundred miles further. Of this further voyage he does not leave any record, even in his log, beyond the simple declaration that he “embarked for Juddah—ran the distance in three days and twenty-one hours and a quarter—and on the 23rd anchored his boat close to one of the East India Company’s cruisers, the Benares.”

But, now comes the most trying part of his whole undertaking—the part which a man of his vigorously constituted impulses was least able to bear as the climax of his prolonged and arduous efforts, privations, anxieties, and fatigue. Repairing on board the Benares, to learn the news, the captain informed him, that in consequence of being found in a defective state on her arrival at Bombay, “the Enterprise was not coming at all.” This intelligence seems to have felled him like a blow, and he was immediately seized with a delirious fever. The captain and officers of the Benares felt great sympathy and interest in this sad result of so many extraordinary efforts, and detaining him on board, bestowed every attention on his malady.

“Thus baffled,” writes Mr. Waghorn, “I was six weeks before I could proceed onward to Bombay by sailing vessel.” On arriving at Bombay with his despatches, the thanks of the Government in Council, &c., were voted to him, “for having, when disappointed of a steamer, proceeded with these despatches in an open boat, down the Red Sea, &c.” There was evidently much more said of a complimentary kind, but Waghorn cuts all short with the et cætera.

He reached Bombay on the 21st of March, having thus accomplished his journey from London in four months and twenty-one days—an extraordinary rapidity at this date, 1830. Of course, the time he was detained in Cairo, Suez, Cossier, and Juddah (where he lay ill with the fever six weeks), ought to be deducted, because he would have saved all this time, fever inclusive, if he had not expected the Enterprise from India.

He now turned his attention to a series of fresh exhortations to large public meetings which he convened at different places—Calcutta, Madras, the Isle of France, the Cape of Good Hope, St. Helena, &c., on the subject of shortening the route from England to India, and greatly lessening the time. He described the various points of the new route he proposed, and also the new kind of steam-vessel which it was advisable to have built and fitted up, for the sole purpose of a rapid transmission of the mail. In an “Address to His Majesty’s Ministers and the Honourable East India Company,” which we find among his papers, there occurs the following passage—simple in expression, noble in its quiet modesty, but pregnant with enormous results to his country, all of which have already, in a great degree, been accomplished.

“Of myself I trust I may be excused when I say that the highest object of my ambition has ever been an extensive usefulness; and my line of life—my turn of mind—my disposition long ago impelled me to give all my leisure, and all my opportunities of observation, to the introduction of steam-vessels, and permanently establishing them as the means of communication between India and England, including all the colonies on the route. The vast importance of three months’ earlier information to His Majesty’s Government and to the Honourable Company, whether relative to a war or a peace; to abundant or to short crops; to the sickness or convalescence of a colony or district, and oftentimes even of an individual; the advantages to the merchant, by enabling him to regulate his supplies and orders according to circumstances and demands; the anxieties of the thousands of my countrymen in India for accounts, and further accounts, of their parents, children, and friends at home; the corresponding anxieties of those relatives and friends in this country; in a word, the speediest possible transit of letters to the tens of thousands who at all times in solicitude await them, was a service to my mind,” (of the greatest general importance) “and it shall not be my fault if I do not, and for ever, establish it.”

By his indefatigable efforts in India, having extensively made known his plans and methods 498for 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, straightforward, 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, 499Lord 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 Ghuznee, 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 500great emergency, numerous instances might be related of him. His services in Egypt are well known to all who dwell there, or have travelled in that country. For the information of such as may not have any personal knowledge of these things, we may mention a few of the most prominent. Lieutenant Waghorn and his partners, without any aid whatever, with the single exception of the Bombay Steam Committee, built the eight halting places on the Desert, between Cairo and Suez; also the three hotels established above them, in which every comfort and even some luxuries were provided and stored for the passing traveller—among which should be mentioned iron tanks with good water, ranged in cellars beneath;—and all this in a region which was previously a waste of arid sands and scorching gravel, beset with wandering robbers and their camels. These wandering robbers he converted into faithful guides, as they are now found to be by every traveller; and even ladies with their infants are enabled to cross and recross the Desert with as much security as if they were in Europe.

He neglected no means of making us acquainted with our position and line of policy in these countries. He wrote and published pamphlets in England to show the justice and sound policy of our having friendly relations with Egypt, in opposition to the undue position of Turkey (1837, 1838); also, to make his countrymen conversant with the character of Mehemet Ali, and with the countries of Egypt, Arabia, and Syria (1840); another on the acceleration of mails between England and the East (1843); and a letter to Earl Grey on emigration to Australia (1848). At this time, in conjunction with Mr. Wheatley, he had established an agency for the Overland Route to India, China, &c., and had offices in Cornhill, which are still in active operation. The enormous subsequent increase of letters to India by the mail, may be inferred from this fact—that in his first arrangement, Lieutenant Waghorn had all letters for India sent to Messrs. Smith and Elder of Cornhill, to be stamped, and then forwarded to him in Alexandria: the earliest despatches amounted to one hundred and eighty-four letters; this number is now more than doubled by the correspondence of Smith and Elder alone, on their own business. They were the first booksellers who rightly appreciated Mr. Waghorn’s efforts; and they cordially co-operated with him.

“When he left Egypt, in 1841, he had established English carriages, vans, and horses, for the passengers’ conveyance across the Desert (instead of camels); indeed, he placed small steamers (from England) on the Nile and the canal of Alexandria. Every fraction of his money was spent by him in getting more and more facilities; and, had the saving of money been one of the characteristics of his nature, the Overland Route would not be as useful as it now is—and this is acknowledged by all. Mr. Waghorn claimed for himself, and most justly, the merit of this work: he claimed it without fear of denial; and stated upon his honour, that no money or means were ever received by him from either Her Majesty’s Government or the East India Company to aid it. It grew into life altogether from his having, by his own energy and private resources, worked the ‘Overland Mails’ to and from India for two years, (from 1831 to 1834) in his own individual person. ‘Will it be believed,’ says he, ‘that up to that time Mr. Waghorn was thought and called by many, a Visionary, and by some a Madman?’”

It may very easily be believed that this was thought and said, as it is a common practice with the world when anything extraordinary is performed for the first time; and though it may be hard enough for the individual to bear, we may simply set it down as the first step to the admission of his success. But it is very clear the Pasha was wise enough to recognise the value of the man who had done so much, and not only accorded him his friendship and assistance on all occasions, but sent him on one occasion as his confidential messenger to Khosru Pasha, Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Constantinople, in 1839, as well as to Lord Ponsonby, who was there as Ambassador from England at this time.

Nor did his merit pass unrecognised in his own country; first by the public generally, though, perhaps, first of all by the “Times” newspaper, the proprietors of which were subsequently munificent in their pecuniary assistance of his efforts in the Trieste experiments, as indeed were the morning papers generally. In six successive months he accomplished the gain of thirteen days viâ Trieste over the Marseilles route. Lords Palmerston and Aberdeen, as foreign ministers of England; Lords Ellenborough, Glenelg, and Ripon, and Sir John Hobhouse, as presidents of the India Board, were also fully aware of his labours in bringing about the “Overland Route” through Egypt, and thus giving stability to English interests in our Eastern empire.

And now comes the melancholy end of all these so arduous and important labours. Embarrassed in his own private circumstances from the expenditure of all his own funds, and large debts contracted besides, solely in effecting these public objects, he was compelled, after vainly endeavouring to extricate himself by establishing in London an office of agency for the Overland Route, to apply to the India House and the Government for assistance. His constitution was by this time broken up by the sort of toil he had gone through in the last twenty years, and he merely asked to have his public debts paid, and enough allowed him as a pension to enable him to close his few remaining days in rest. He was still in the prime of life; but prematurely old from his hard work.

In consequence of various memorials and petitions the India House awarded Lieutenant Waghorn a pension of 200l. per annum; and the Government did the same. But they would not pay the debts he had contracted in their service. If he had made a bad bargain, 501he must abide by it, and suffer for it. Both pensions, therefore, were compromised to his creditors, and he remained without any adequate means of support. The following extract, with which we must conclude, is from his last memorial:—

“The immediate origin and cause of my embarrassments was a forfeited promise on the part of the Treasury and the India House, whereby only four instead of six thousand pounds, relied on by me, were paid towards the Trieste Route experiments in the winter of 1846–7, when, single-handed, and despite unparalleled and wholly unforeseen difficulties, I eclipsed, on five trials out of six, the long organised arrangements of the French authorities, specially stimulated to all possible exertion, and supplied with unlimited means by M. Guizot. On the first of these six occasions, there arose the breaking down, on the Indian Ocean, of the steamer provided for me, thereby trebling the computed expenses through the delay; and when, startled by this excessive outlay, I hesitated to entail more, the Treasury and the India House told me to proceed, to do the service well, and make out my bill afterwards. I did proceed. I did the service not only well, not only to the satisfaction of my employers, but in a manner that elicited the admiration of Europe, as all the Continental and British journals of that period, besides heaps of private testimonials, demonstrated. My rivals, to whom the impediments in my path were best known, were loudest in their acknowledgments; and the only drawback to my just pride was the incredulity manifested in some quarters, that I could have actually accomplished what (it is notorious) I did at any time, much less among the all but impassable roads of the Alps, in the depth of a winter of far more than ordinary Alpine severity. I presented my bill. It was dishonoured. I had made myself an invalid, had sown the seeds of a broken constitution, in the performance of that duty. The disappointment occasioned by the non-payment of the two thousand pounds, has preyed incessantly upon me since; and now, a wreck alike almost in mind and body, I am sustained alone by the hope, that the annals of the Insolvent Court will not have inscribed upon them the Pioneer of the Overland Route, because of obligations he incurred for the public, by direction of the public authorities.”

The date of this memorial is June 8th, 1849. High testimonials are appended to it from Lords Palmerston, Aberdeen, Ellenborough, Harrowby, Combermere, Ripon, Sir John Hobhouse, Sir Robert Gordon, and Mr. Joseph Hume. But it did not produce any effect; the debts and the harassing remained; and the pioneer of the Overland Route died very shortly afterwards;—we cannot say of a broken heart, because his constitution had been previously shattered by his labours. Yet it looks sadly like this. He might have lived some years longer. He was only forty-seven. The pension awarded him by the India House he had only possessed eighteen months; and the pension from Government had been yet more tardily bestowed, so that he only lived to receive the first quarter.

At his death both pensions died with him, his widow being left to starve. The India House, however, have lately granted her a pension of fifty pounds; and the Government, naïvely stating, as if in excuse for the extravagance, that it was in consequence of the “eminent services” performed by her late husband, awarded her the sum of twenty-five pounds per annum. This twenty-five pounds having been the subject of many comments from the press, both of loud indignation and cutting ridicule, the Government made a second grant, with the statement that “in consequence of the extreme destitution of Mrs. Waghorn,” a further sum was awarded of fifteen pounds more! This is the fact, and such are the terms of the grant. Why, it reads like an act of clemency towards some criminal or other offender;—“You have been very wicked, you know; but as you are in extreme destitution, here are a few pounds more.”

While these above-mentioned petitions, memorials, and struggles for life and honour were going on, great numbers of our wealthy countrymen were rushing with bags of money to pour out at the feet of Mr. Hudson, M.P., in reward for his having made the largest fortune in the shortest time ever known;—and soon after the Government munificence had been bestowed on the destitute widow of Lieutenant Waghorn, the Marquis of Lansdowne and the Marquis of Londonderry, in their places in the House of Lords, eulogised the splendid “military ability” of F. M. the late Duke of Cambridge, speaking in high terms of the great deeds he would have achieved, “if he had only had an opportunity,” and voting a pension of twelve thousand pounds a year to his destitute son, and three thousand pounds a year to his destitute daughter.

We have now beheld the labours, and the reward, of the pioneer of the Overland Route; who, for the establishment of this route and for manifold services subsequently rendered, received the “thanks” of three quarters of the globe, that is to say, of Europe, Asia, and Africa, “besides numberless letters of ‘thanks’ from mercantile communities at every point where Eastern trade is concerned!” His public debts are not paid to this day.