Inscribed ‘Lord Minto with Mr Waghorn’s best respects’ to half title.
“The great advocate of the use of steam in combination with the Overland Route was Thomas Waghorn, an enthusiastic and imaginative lieutenant with the Bombay Marine. By the 1820s when Waghorn first began to consider the possibilities of steam it was already being used for domestic river transport and cross-channel packets. In 1829 Waghorn set out from London to prove his arguments in favour of the route, carrying despatches for Sir John Malcolm, now governor of Bombay. He posted to Trieste and found a ship going to Alexandria, sailed up river from Rosetta to Cairo and rode by camel for three days from Cairo to Suez… He completed the whole journey [to Bombay] in forty days, even without the still dubious advantage of steam, proving the value of travelling via Egypt to himself and the more adventurous of his supporters.” (Sarah Searight, The British in the Middle East, London, 1979, p. 153.)
Ibrahim-Hilmy II, 314.
