A select party sat down to luncheon on board the _Assyrian Monarch_ to bid farewell to Jumbo. William Newman, his American keeper, was presented with a gold medal by a few fellows of the Royal Zoölogical Society “to commemorate their appreciation of the coolness and skill of William Newman.” Mr. Patton, a member of the steamship company which owned the _Assyrian Monarch_, proposed the toast, “The United States,” to which General Merritt, the American Consul-general at London, replied. General Merritt expressed his belief that the possession of common objects of interest and sympathy tended to unite America and England in friendship and mutual understanding. He regretted that the great elephant was not conveyed in an American ship, but expressed the hope that America would soon have a mercantile marine of her own. The Consul-general then spoke of the large numbers of the subjects of the Queen who had left England for America in recent years. As the boat dropped down to Gravesend, Jumbo received royal honors, the crews of the training ships mounting the yards as he went by. Baroness Burdett-Coutts, friend and correspondent of Dickens, admirer of Louis Napoleon, and collector of Shakespeare folios, took as much interest in Jumbo as she did in her other hobbies. She traveled by train to Gravesend on the day of Jumbo’s final departure, and she took with her a party of Lords and their Ladies. The Baroness had sent ahead a large box of buns for the use of Jumbo during his passage. Before the _Assyrian Monarch_ left she gave Jumbo his last bun and bid him good-by, expressing the opinion that he would find as many warm friends in America as he had found in England. She shook hands with Newman and Scott, and the boat departed. A code of signals was arranged by which news of Jumbo was signaled for more than twenty-four hours after the _Assyrian Monarch_ passed Dover, and accounts of his health were sent from The Lizard, the last point on British soil. The ship also carried elastic bags, into which communications concerning Jumbo were placed and dropped overboard for the information of the British public.[26]