The Land of Midian, vol 1 | Page 7

note the advantages offered by its exploitation. For the world around the Viceroy pronounced itself decidedly against the project. My venerable friend, Linant Pasha, suggested a comparison with the abandoned diggings of the Upper Nile; forgetting that in at least half of Midian land, only the "tailings" have been washed: whereas in the Bish��r�� country, and throughout the "Etbaye," between the meridians of Berenike and Saw��k��n, the very thinnest metallic fibrils have been shafted and tunnelled to their end in the rock by those marvellous labourers, the old Egyptians. In the Ham��m��t country, again, the excessive distances, both from the Nile and from the Red Sea, together with the cost of transport, must bar all profit. Even worse are the conditions of Fayzoghl�� and D��r-For; whilst the mines of Midian begin literally at the shore.
Another Pasha wrote to me from Alexandria, congratulating me upon having discovered, during our first Expedition, "a little copper and iron." Generally, the official public, knowing that I had brought back stones, not solid masses of gold and silver, loudly deplored the prospective waste of money; and money, after the horse-plague, the low Nile, and the excessive exigencies of the short-sighted creditor, was exceptionally scarce. The truly Oriental view of the question was taken by an official, whom I shall call ��rif Pasha--the "Knowing One." When told that M. George Marie, the Government engineer detailed to accompany the first Expedition, had sent in official analyses with sample tubes of gold and silver, thus establishing the presence of auriferous and argentiferous rocks on the Arabian shore, Son Excellence exclaimed, "Imprudent jeune homme, thus to throw away the chances of life! Had he only declared the whole affair a farce, a flam, a sell, a canard, the Viceroy would have held him to be honest, and would have taken care of his future."
Still, through bad report the Khediv, who had mastered, with his usual accuracy of perception and judgment, the subject of Midian and her Mines, was staunch to his resolve; and when one of his European financiers, a Controleur G��n��ral de D��penses, the normal round peg in the square hole, warned him that there were no public funds for such purpose, his Highness warmly declared, on dit, that the costs of the Expedition should be defrayed at his own expense.
Meanwhile I had passed the summer of 1877 in preparation for the work of the ensuing winter. A long correspondence with many learned friends, and a sedulous study of the latest geographers, especially German, taught me all that was known of mining in Arabia generally, and particularly in Midian. During my six months' absence from Egypt my vision was fixed steadily upon one point, the Expedition that was to come; and when his Highness was pleased to offer me, in an autograph letter full of the kindest expressions, the government of D��r-For, I deferred accepting the honour till Midian had been disposed of.
Unhappily, certain kindly advisers persuaded me to make well better by a visit to Karlsbad, and a course of its alkaline "Fountains of Health." Never was there a greater mistake! The air is bad as the water is good; the climate is reeking damp, like that of Western Africa; and, as in St. Petersburg, a plaid must be carried during the finest weather. Its effects, rheumatic and neuralgic, may be judged by the fact that the doctors must walk about with pocketed squirts, for the hypodermal injection of opium. Almost all those whom I knew there, wanting to be better, went away worse; and, in my own case, a whole month of Midian sun, and a sharp attack of ague and fever were required to burn out the Hexenschuss and to counteract the deleterious effects of the "Hygeian springs."
At last the happy hour for departure struck; and on October 19, 1877, the Austro-Hungarian Espero (Capitano Colombo) steamed out of Trieste. On board were Sefer Pasha, our host of Castle Bertoldstein; and my learned friends, the Aulic Councillor Alfred von Kremer, Austrian Commissioner to Egypt, and Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey. The latter gave me a tough piece of work in the shape of his "?gypten," which will presently be quoted in these pages. It would be vain to repeat a description of the little voyage described in "The Gold-Mines of Midian." The Dalmatian, or first day; the second, or day of Corfu loved and lost; and the third, made memorable by Cephalonia and the glorious Canale, all gave fine smooth weather. But the usual rolling began off still-vexed Cape Matapan. It lasted through the fourth day, or of Candia, this insula nobilis et am?na--
"Crete, the crown of all the isles, flower of Levantine waters"
--while the fifth, or Mediterraneo-Alexandrian day, killed two of the seventeen fine horses, Yuckers and Anglo-Normans, which Sefer Pasha was conveying to Cairo.
On Thursday morning