314 



THE CONSULAR CORPS. 



M. de Beligny, a French Creole from Santo 

 Domingo, afterwards transferred to Manilla and 

 to Charleston, South Carolina. M. Vignard, a 

 young man of amiable manners, and distin- 

 guished in Algeria as an Arabic scholar, fell 

 victim to a sunstroke when voyaging from Aden, 

 where I met him en route for his post. The pre- 

 sent Consul is M. Ladislas Cochet : the Chan- 

 cellier and Dragoman is M. Jablonski, Pole 

 and poet. 



Lieut. -Colonel Atkins Hamerton is, and has 

 been, I have said, II . B. Majesty's Consul, and 

 H. E. I. Company's Agent at the Court of H. H. 

 Sayyid Said, since December, 1841, when we first 

 established relations with Zanzibar. Attached 

 to his establishment is a passed apothecary, an 

 Eurasian, the only attempt at a medico on the 

 Island. Lieut. -Colonel Hamerton had been on 

 terms of intimacy with Sayyid Said during a 

 quarter of a century ; and their friendship, as 

 happens, began with a ' little aversion.' The 

 Britisher proposed to travel in the interior from 

 Maskat, in those days a favourite exploration 

 with the more adventurous ; and the Arab, sus- 

 picious as all Arabs, thinking it safest to put the 

 intruder out of the way, imprudently wrote a 

 letter to that effect. This missive fell into the 



