The final journey

With the departure of Heuglin to Württemberg, the story of the Tinne- Heuglin expedition to the Gazelle-river comes to an end in mid-February 1865. Being restricted to this period of time, this book will only superficially glance at their lives before the expedition and after, when both our protagonists entered the last episode of their lives.

Alexine must have left Cairo before the summer of 1865. At Alexandria she hired the steam yacht ‘Claymore’ and settled herself with her dogs, Arabs and ‘negroes’ and an Egyptian crew to visit Crete, Greece, Italy, France, Sardinia and Malta during the summer of 1865, crisscrossing the Mediterranean Sea and drawing much attention wherever she went on account of the number of her black attendants.

After John and Margaret had returned home in February, no correspondence seems to have taken place for some months. On 20 October 1865, she wrote John from Naples, thanking him for a letter of credit of £400, which she apparently had asked for, either by letter or telegram. In this letter she states:

From Naples, John was asked to purchase a sailing boat for her. When he finally was able to buy one (named ‘Seagull’) built on the island of Wight, England, it was sent to Rotterdam. With the assistance of Jules van Capellen, it was registered as a Dutch ship at the Yacht Club of Rotterdam, named ‘de Meeuw’ and sent with a hired Dutch crew, headed by Captain Wilhelmie, to Toulon, where Alexine had just arrived after a trip to Sardinia and a longer stay in Nice.