I was anxious again to take Lieut. John Hanning Speke, because he had suffered with me in purse and person at Berberah, and because he, like the rest of the party, could obtain no redress. Our misfortunes came directly from Aden, indirectly from England. I had proposed to build a fort at Berberah, and to buy all the non-Ottoman ports on the western shores of the Red Sea for the trifle of £10,000. In those days of fierce outcry against ‘territorial aggrandisement’ the Court of Directors looked with horror at such a firebrand proposal, and they were lost in wonder that a subaltern officer should dare to prepare for the Suez Canal, which Lord Palmerston and Mr Robert Stephenson had declared to be impracticable. Therefore the late Dr Buist, editor of the Bombay _Times_, had his orders to write down the ‘Somali Expedition.’ He was ably assisted by a certain Reverend gentleman, then chaplain at Aden, who had gained for himself the honourable epithet of Shaytan Abyaz, or White Devil, while the apathy of the highest political authority—the Resident at Aden, Brigadier Coghlan—and the active jealousy of his assistant, Captain Playfair, also contributed to thwart all my views, and to bring about, more or less directly, the bloody disaster which befell us at Berberah. For this we had no redress. The Right Honourable the Governor-General of India, the late Lord Dalhousie, of pernicious memory, thought more of using our injuries to cut off the slave-trade than of doing us justice, although justice might easily have been done. After keeping us waiting from April 23, 1855, to June 13, 1857, the spoliator of Oude was pleased to inform us, laconically and disdaining explanation, that he ‘could not accede to the application.’[4] Nothing could persuade the Court of Directors to dispense with the services of Lieut. Speke, who had, like myself, volunteered for the Crimea, and who, at the end of the War, had resolved to travel for the rest of his leave. I persuaded him to accompany me as far as Bombay, trusting that the just and generous Governor, the late Lord Elphinstone, who had ever warmly supported my projects, and that my lamented friend James Grant Lumsden, then Member of Council, would enable us, despite official opposition at home, to tide over all obstacles.