370 



THE END OF THE EXPEDITION. 



I have related in a former volume how the 

 change at the British Consulate affected me 

 personally. My report to the Secretary of the 

 Royal Geographical Society had not been for- 

 warded, and no one knew where it was. The 

 sketch and field books which we had sent in case 

 of mishap from the interior, were accidentally 

 found stowed away in some drawer. A mistaken 

 feeling of delicacy made me object to be the 

 bearer of despatches which would have thrown a 

 curious light upon certain intrigues, and no 

 feeling of delicacy on the part of the person 

 complained of prevented his devising an ignoble 

 plot and carrying out the principle, ' Calumniari 

 audacter, semper all quid hserebit.' The Home 

 branch of the Indian Government embraced the 

 opportunity of displaying under the sham of in- 

 flexible justice — summum jus summa injuria — 

 peculiar animus, and turned a preoccupied ear 

 to explanations which would have more than 

 satisfied any other. And thus unhappily ended 

 my labours at Zanzibar and in Eastern Inter- 

 tropical Africa 



he repeatedly was. It was generally believed that the arrange- 

 ment was verbal, Sayyid Majid having refused to bind himself 

 by writing : possibly there may have been a secret document. 

 This agreement was subsequently modified by the action of the 

 Bombay Government. 



