COLONEL HAMERTON. 



35 



health. He was aroused from lethargy by the 

 presence of strangers, and after the usual hos- 

 pitable orders my letters were produced and 

 read. Those entrusted to me by Lord Elphin- 

 stone, and by his Eminence the learned and be- 

 nevolent Cardinal Wiseman, for whom He had 

 the profoundest respect, pleased him greatly; 

 but he put aside the missive of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, declaring that he had been 

 terribly worried for 6 copy ' by sundry writing 

 and talking members of that distinguished body. 



I can even now distinctly see my poor friend 

 sitting before me, a tall, broad-shouldered, and 

 powerful figure, with square features, dark, 

 fixed eyes, hair and beard prematurely snow- 

 white, and a complexion once fair and ruddy, 

 but long ago bleached ghastly pale by ennui and 

 sickness. Such had been the effect of the burn- 

 ing heats of Maskat and 'the Gulf,' and the 

 deadly damp of Zanzibar, Island and Coast. The 

 worst symptom in his case — one which I have 

 rarely found other than fatal — was his unwilling- 

 ness to quit the place which was slowly killing 

 him. At night he would chat merrily about a 

 remove, about a return to Ireland ; he loathed 

 the subject in the morning. To escape seemed a 

 physical impossibility, when he had only to order 



