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 Fayzoghlu and Dar-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 Arif 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 General de Depenses, 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