How a courier could stop the progress of the Egyptian army I cannot comprehend. The Convention was signed on the 27th of November; on the 28th Mehemet Ali sent an officer to Beyrout by a British steamer, with orders to Ibrahim to commence his retreat; the Egyptian was to be accompanied by a British officer to see it carried into execution. What object, then, could Mehemet Ali have in sending a courier, even if it was possible, which he declared it was not, in consequence of the distracted state of the country, to order them to return? It will be seen, by my correspondence with Boghos Bey, that Mehemet Ali always objected to embarking his troops. I proposed that he should do so, thinking it much better for the peace and happiness of the country, that they should proceed by sea to Alexandria in preference to marching through a country where the inhabitants would be exposed to all the devastations of a retiring army. I never contemplated that his army should be destroyed after signing a Convention; quite the contrary. The moment the Convention was signed, Mehemet Ali could only be considered the Sultan’s servant, and the Egyptian troops the Sultan’s army, and not a hair of their heads ought to have been touched; and as to embarking plunder, no part of the Convention sanctioned that, and if it had been permitted, the blame would have rested with our own officers. I cannot either understand how Ibrahim Pacha could have known of the Convention which only left Alexandria on the 28th in the afternoon, so as to have allowed him time, had he quitted Damascus on the 27th, to return on the 2nd of December; nor can I understand how he could suppose the Convention should be binding on the Allies, when it was immediately rejected by the authorities in Syria, and his officer sent back without, I believe, landing at Beyrout; nor do I see how he had either been virtually or totally bereaved of his stronghold in Syria, seeing that if he had ever quitted Damascus and returned, it was his own act and deed. Sir Robert Stopford received the intelligence of Ibrahim’s retreat at Marmorice Bay on the 13th of January, which he communicated to the Admiralty, adding, “my orders to Commodore Sir Charles Napier may by this time have been the means of facilitating his retreat[21].”