“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.