DIFFICULTIES AND OBSTACLES. 



9 



posed 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 c territorial aggran- 

 disement' 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 4 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 keep- 



