as an Arab merchant. This was one of his most splendid and dangerous expeditions, and the least known, partly because his pilgrimage to Meccah was in every man's mouth, and partly because the excitement aroused by the Crimean War had to a large extent deadened the interest in all personal adventure.
He disappeared into the desert for four months, but this unnoticed, unknown, journey has been of great importance to the Egyptians, to the English, and now to the Italian Army. The way was long and weary, adventurous and dangerous, but at last the "Dreadful City" was sighted, and relying on his good Star and audacity, he walked boldly in, sending his compliments to the Amir, and asking for audience. His diplomacy on this occasion, his capacity for passing as an Arab, and his sound Mohammedan Theology, gave him ten days in the City, where he slept every night in peril of his life.
The journey back was full of peril, the provisions being only five biscuits, a few limes, a few lumps of sugar, and a single skin of water. They passed through a terrible desert, such as Grant Allen describes when relating the journey of Mohammed Ali and Ivan Royle from Eagle City through the desert to Carthage. When Richard however had made up his mind that he would soon become food for the desert beasts, for he had been thirty-six hours without water, could
