As in other important changes and inventions, I find in my researches many claimants for originality; and though it may appear scarcely necessary to wade through the mass of papers[297] published by persons claiming for themselves or their friends the merit of an overland route which has existed since the dawn of history, I shall endeavour to furnish within a brief space the leading facts relating to the routes which, in our own time, have produced such marked changes in our commercial intercourse with India. [Sidenote: Sir Miles Nightingall, in 1819, and Mount-Stuart Elphinstone, in 1823, return home by this route.] Though not so much frequented as that by the Euphrates route, travellers have found their way from time immemorial between Europe and India through Egypt, availing themselves of native vessels for the Red Sea or along its coasts to the once far-famed lands of Yemen and thence to the ever coveted “Cathay” of the East. The first authentic record, in recent times, however, of any journey from India to Great Britain by the Isthmus of Suez, with the object of ascertaining whether that route could be renewed as a pathway of commerce, or, if not, for the transmission of despatches, was a passage made in 1819, by Sir Miles Nightingall, then Commander-in-chief of the Bombay army (for whom, however, no claim of originality has been made), who, on relinquishing that command, returned to England viâ the Red Sea accompanied by Lady Nightingall.[298] Sir Miles and his wife left Bombay in the East India Company’s cruiser _Teignmouth_, and after many troubles reached Suez and thence found their way home. But the first distinct official proposal of this route as one practicable for the regular conveyance of despatches and the mails was made by the Hon. Mount-Stuart Elphinstone, who, when Governor of Bombay in 1823, recommended steam communication between that place and England, remarking that the passage “_might be done in thirty-four days, all stoppages included_.” The Court of Directors, however, paid no heed to this suggestion; and as these sagacious rulers of our Eastern Empire paid quite as little attention to his further communication to them on the same subject in 1826, he thought it advisable to give them a practical illustration of the value of this route by returning home, when he relinquished the Government of Bombay in the following year, with his staff and other friends, by way of the Red Sea and Mediterranean.[299] His immediate successor in the Government of Bombay, Sir John Malcolm, by returning home viâ Suez (to which reference shall hereafter be made), followed up the good work of his predecessors; and was zealously seconded by his brother, Sir Charles Malcolm, then superintendent of the Indian Navy; while another brother, Sir Pulteney Malcolm, naval commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, also took an active part in promoting the isthmus of Suez route.