In Suez the dejection of despondency yielded to feelings of a more lively nature, partly from vexation, partly from amusement. The custom-house afforded me vexation, whilst the Governor’s divan was an unfailing source of amusement. I arrived in Suez on the 16th of August, proposing to continue my journey to Djidda by the next steamer. Much gratified by the intelligence that a steamer belonging to the Sulphur Company would start in four days, I was proceeding to embark at once, when I was stopped by the custom-house authorities, who desired a strict investigation of the luggage, and insisted upon payment of the tariff duties for every article of my huge accumulation of baggage. Perhaps everything might have been arranged, but when my additional waggon appeared, although I explained that it had been furnished me by the Government, and notwithstanding that I was the bearer of letters directed to the Egyptian revenue officers, the director required an extra special order, and referred me to the Governor, who telegraphed back to Alexandria. In the meantime, for the next two days, I was compelled to take turns with my factotum, the Nubian servant, to sit in the sun on my baggage in order to protect my boxes which contained my money bags full of Maria Theresa dollars. As a refuge for the night I betook myself to a hotel, not much larger than a hut, in which I had already some years previously found the accommodation just suited to give me a foretaste of the privations of the desert. My consternation may be imagined, when at last there arrived from the capital an order that I must pay precisely as any ordinary traveller. Hardly had I recovered my first surprise, when accidentally one of the Governor’s clerks called attention to some contradictions in the despatch. Further inquiries were instituted, and the discovery was made that an important word had been overlooked, and that the tenor of the message was that I was “_not_” to pay.