Richard and I were exceedingly comfortable, as we always were, and it amused us to hear "our boys," as we called our English fellow-passengers, swearing at the Triestine stewards in Hindostani, and talking louder and louder in the hopes of being understood. We used to hear all day shouts of, "Where is Captain Burton? where is Mrs. Burton?" We were wanted to interpret. We were the connecting link between Austrian-Lloyd's and the discontented Britishers. But at last we all became exceedingly jolly. We slept on deck in rows, and read and talked. In the evening we sang glees and duets. We women abolished toilette for white tea-gowns. After a very pleasant time, albeit very rough weather, Richard and I left the ship at Suez, and were soon surrounded by a little band of Richard's old friends of Mecca days. We put off, with them, afterwards to the Arabian shore, to rest after our journey at "Moses' Wells," about three miles in the Arabian desert--the scene of poor Palmer, Gill, and Charington's departure. It was a lovely scene, with its blue sea, yellow sands, azure sky, and pink and purple mountains. The sun was hot, but the pure desert air blew in our faces, as we went across the sand to the picturesque spot. The wells or springs are surrounded by tropical verdure, intermingled with Fellah huts. The most romantic spot of all is a single tiny spring, under an isolated palm tree, standing all alone on a little hillock of sand and desert, far from all else, as if that tree and that spring had been created for each other to live alone. It was delightful after India and the rough voyage. We took our _kayf_ there with the Arabs, who gave us delicious coffee and _narghílehs_, and we rode camels. We were there at the time of Abdul Assiz's death. [Sidenote: _After a Stay in Egypt, to Trieste_.] After stopping some time at Cairo, Alexandria, and Ramleh, we embarked for Trieste on another Lloyd's, which carried Jamrach and his menagerie. During our stay in Cairo, we saw a great deal of poor Marquis de Compiègne (afterwards shot in a duel), Dr. Schweinfürth, and Marietta Bey and the Bulak Museum; poor John Wallis, legal Consul, once editor of the _Tablet_; Baron de Kremer, our old Austrian colleague at Damascus, afterwards Minister of Finance at Vienna (now dead). We found the voyage very cold, even in July, after India. We first went to Candia, passing Gavdo, Cape Spaltra, the two islands Cerigotto and Cerigo.