It was a sign too that the
prejudice against him in certain quarters was at last lived down. She
wrote to a friend:
"You will have seen from the papers, and I know what pleasure it will
give you, that the Conservatives on going out made Dick Sir Richard
Burton, K.C.M.G. . . . . The Queen's recognition of Dick's forty-four
years of service was sweetly done at last, sent for our Silver Wedding,
and she told a friend of mine that she was pleased to confer something
that would include both husband and wife."
The Burtons crossed over to Morocco from Gibraltar in a flat-bottomed
cattle-tug, only fit for a river; and as the sea was exceedingly heavy,
and the machinery had stopped, the sailors said for want of oil, the
seas washed right over the boat, and the passage was prolonged from two
hours to five. They made many excursions round about Tangiers; but on
the whole they were disappointed with Morocco. They disliked Tangiers
itself, and the Consulate seemed to them a miserable little house after
the palazzo at Trieste. Lady Burton had expected to find Tangiers a
second Damascus; but in this she was sorely disappointed. She wrote to
a friend from there, "Trieste will seem like Paris after it. It has
none of the romance or barbaric splendour of Damascus. Nevertheless,"
she says, "I would willingly have lived there, and put out all my best
capabilities, if my husband could have got the place he wanted, and for
which I had employed every bit of interest on his side and mine to
obtain.
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