During their residence at Gondokoro, Petherick afterwards came in and gave an account of his adventures, saying that he had never expected to see them arrive, from the accounts he had heard. All was now plain sailing. Baker's boats were well found, and they slipped down the Nile to Khartum, where they met with an enthusiastic reception from the European residents, amongst whom was Mr De Bono, the ivory-trader, whose outpost they had met with, and the Baroness Von Capellan, who, with Madame Tinne and her daughter (at that time unfortunately absent on a collateral expedition), had come up the Nile to look for them. From this point to Alexandria Captain Grant's narrative is replete with interesting observations. Few adventures were met with worthy to be compared with those they had passed through, though those they fell in with would have made a mere Nile voyage extremely interesting. The Nile is now as familiar to African travellers as the Rhine to European tourists. The passage of the Nubian Desert with camels from Berber, where they cut off a great elbow of the Nile, was perhaps the most exciting part of the homeward journey. They were brought from Aswan to Cairo by a steamer obligingly sent by his Highness Ismail Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt, and received by him with all possible distinction. They arrived at Cairo on the 25th of May 1863. The eighteen faithful men and four women who accompanied them to the end of the journey parted with them with every demonstration of affectionate regret, and were forwarded, well rewarded, to Zanzibar. On the 4th of June 1863 Captains Grant and Speke sailed together in the Pera, Captain Jamieson, for England, where they arrived after an absence of three years 342 ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND. and fifty-one days. The fatal accident which terminated Captain Speke's career in England, in the prime of his life and at the zenith of his glory, was attended with the solitary consolation, that after so long and perilous a wandering it was his lot to sleep with his fathers. THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. |