"Cairo"

In: Overland Route; Part of our Paintings gallery

Date:
c.1850

Medium:
Watercolour on paper heightened with white bodycolour

Description:
At Cairo passengers were accommodated (at the expense of P&O) in 'spacious hotels' where they remained until the network of semaphoric signals, placed across the desert to Suez, announced the arrival of their onward steamer to India. (Taken from an album of thirty-one watercolours, recording the Diorama of the Overland Mail Route from Southampton to Calcutta, and presented to Brodie McGhie Willcox, one of the founding fathers of P&O.)