BY THE NEW FOREST 105 



perform myself, both night and day. The up and down mail- 

 coaches passed through during the middle of the night. I was 

 thus prevented from going to bed. During tlnree weeks I never 

 once went to bed. I had about two or three hours' rest on a 

 couch out of the twentj'-four hours. The effect was intense pain 

 in my feet ; they were so tender I could scarcely bear the weight 

 of my stockings.' 



Falmouth was still the port for the Indian mails 

 when the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation 

 Company first established themselves at Southampton. 

 The letters* of the learned German professor, Dr. 

 Eichard Lepsius, furnish a time-bill of the outward 

 voyage to Alexandria. He sailed from Southampton 

 on board the Peninsular Company's steamer Oriental 

 at ten a.m. on September 1, 1842. Bunsen saw him 

 and his companions off. 



It reads oddly now that because the wind was 

 against them they did not reach Falmouth for a full 

 day afterwards. There they lay for about five hours, 

 awaiting the London mail. At three o'clock it arrived. 

 After touching at Gibraltar, the Oriental reached 

 Malta on the 11th. Here the voyagers were com- 

 pelled to wait nearly three days for the post via 

 Marseilles, the journey from London to Paris alone 

 then taking thirty-one hours. On the 18th the steamer 

 reached Alexandria. 



Of course there still is, as there was then, a despatch 

 of Indian mails through France. Then it fell in at 

 Malta or Alexandria with the boat from Southamp- 

 ton. In the fifties. Sir Rowland Hill took the oppor- 



* ' Letters from Egypt,' etc. Bohn, 1853. 



