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Mehemet's rise to power: Massacre of the Mamluks: Invasion of the Morea: Battle of Navarino: Struggle with the Porte: Abbas Pasha, Muhammed Said, and Ismail Pasha: Ismail's lavish expenditure: Foreign bondholders and the Dual Control.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century, the destiny of Egypt was the destiny of one man; he aided the political movements, and accelerated or retarded social activity; he swayed both commerce and agriculture, and organised the army to his liking; he was the heart and brain of this mysterious country. Under the watchful eyes of Europe, attentive for more than forty years, this Macedonian soldier became the personification of the nation under his authority, and, in the main, the history of the country may be summed up in the biography of Mehemet Ali. If we consider the events of his life, and the diverse roads by which he reached the apogee of his fortunes, reviewing the scenes, now sombre, now magnificent, of that remarkable fate, we obtain a complete picture of Egypt itself, seen from the most intimate, real, and striking point of view.

According to the most authentic accounts, Mehemet Ali was born in 1768 (a. h. 1182), at Cavala, a seaport in Turkey in Europe. He was yet very young when he lost his father, Ibrahim Agha, and soon after this misfortune, his uncle and sole remaining relative, Tussun-Agha, was beheaded by order of the Porte. Left an orphan, Mehemet Ali was adopted by the Tchorbadji of Praousta, an old friend of his father, who brought him up with his own son. The boy spent his early youth in the discharge of unimportant military duties, where, however, he frequently found opportunity to display his intelligence and courage. He was even able to render many services to his protector in the collecting of taxes, which was always a difficult matter in Turkey, and occasionally necessitated a regular military expedition.

Anxious to reward Mehemet for all his services, and also doubtless desirous of a still closer connection, the aged Tchorbadji married him to his daughter. This was the beginning of the young man's success; he was then eighteen years old. Dealings with a French merchant of Cavala had inspired him with a taste for commerce, and, devoting himself to it, he speculated with much success, chiefly in tobacco, the richest product of his country.

This period of his life was not without its influence upon Egypt, for we know how strenuously the pasha endeavoured to develop the commercial and manufacturing industries.

The French invasion surprised him in the midst of these peaceful occupations. The Porte, having raised an army in Macedonia, ordered the Tchorbadji to furnish a contingent of three hundred men, who entrusted the command of this small force to his son Ali Agha, appointing Mehemet Ali, whose merit and courage he fully appreciated, as his lieutenant. The Macedonain recruits rejoined the forces of the pasha-captain, and landed with the grand vizier at Abukir, where was fought that battle which resulted in victory for France and the complete defeat of the sultan's army. Completely demoralised by this overthrow, Ali Agha left Mehemet Ali in command of his troops, and quitted the army.

It is well to consider in a brief survey the state of the country at the moment when the incapacity of General Menou compelled the French to withdraw from Egypt. Arrayed against each other were the troops of the sultan, numbering four thousand Albanians and those forces sent from England under the command of Admiral Keith, on one side; and on the other were the Mamluks striving for supremacy; and it was a question whether this powerful force would once more rule Egypt as before the French invasion, or whether the country would again fall under the dominion of the Porte.

There was occasion for anxiety among the Mamluks themselves; their two principal beys, Osman-Bardisi and Muhammed el-Elfi, instead of strengthening their forces by acting in concert, as Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey had done before the French occupation, permitted their rivalry for power so completely to absorb them that it was finally the means of encompassing their ruin and that of their party.

The first pasha invested with the viceroyalty of Egypt after the departure of the French troops was Muhammed Khusurf, who faithfully served the Porte. His government was able and zealous, but the measures he employed against his haughty antagonists lacked the lofty intelligence indispensable to so difficult a task. Muhammed Khusurf, whose rivalry with Mehemet Ali had for some years attracted European attention, found himself at last face to face with his future opponent.

Mehemet Ali, by dint of hard work and the many important services rendered to his country, had passed through successive stages of promotion to the rank of serchime, which gave him the command of three or four thousand Albanians. Foreseeing his opportunity, he had employed himself in secretly strengthening his influence over his subordinates; he allied himself with the Mam-luks, opened the gates of Cairo to them, and, joining Osman-Bardisi, marched against Khusurf. He pursued the viceroy to Damietta, taking possession of the town, conducted his prisoner to Cairo, where he placed him in the custody of the aged Ibrahim Bey, the Nestor of the Mamluks (1803).

At this moment, the second Mamluk bey, Muhammed el-Elfi, returned from England, whither he had accompanied the British to demand protection when they evacuated Alexandria in March of the same year, and landed at Abukir. This arrival filled Bardisi with the gravest anxiety, for Muhammed el-Elfi was his equal in station, and would share his power even if he did not deprive him of the position he had recently acquired through his own efforts. These fears were but too well founded. Whilst Bardisi was securing his position by warfare, el-Elfi had gained the protection of England, and, as its price, had pledged himself to much that would compromise the future of Egypt.

Far from openly joining one or other of the rival parties, Mehemet Ali contented himself with fanning the flame of their rivalry. The rank of Albanian captain, which gave him the air of a subaltern, greatly facilitated the part he intended to play. He worked quietly and with unending perseverance. Flattering the ambitions of some, feeding the resentment of others, winning the weak-minded with soft words, overcoming the strong by his own strength; presiding over all the revolutions in Cairo, upholding the cause of the pashas when the Mamluks needed support, and, when the pasha had acquired a certain amount of power, uniting himself with the Mamluk against his allies of yesterday; above all, neglecting nothing which could secure him the support of the people, and making use for this end of the sheikhs and Oulemas, whom he conciliated, some by religious appearances, others by his apparent desire for the public good, he thus maintained his position during the numerous changes brought about by the respective parties.

At length, in the beginning of March, 1805, as the people were beginning to weary of disturbances as violent as they were frequent, Mehemet Ali promised the sheikhs to restore peace and order if they would assure him their co-operation and influence. He then incited a revolt against the Oulemas, besieged Kourshyd Pasha in the citadel, made himself master of Cairo in the space of a few days, and finished his work by expelling the Mamluks. The Albanians and Oulemas, completely carried away by his valour and manouvres, proclaimed him pasha immediately. Always prudent, and anxious to establish his claims upon the favour of the Porte, Mehemet Ali feigned to refuse. After considerable hesitation, which gave way before some costly gifts, or possibly on consideration of the difficulties hitherto experienced in establishing the authority of the pashas, the Turkish government determined to confirm the choice of the Egyptian people. Mehemet Ali received, therefore, the firman of investiture on July 9,1805; but during the ensuing seven months he governed in Lower Egypt only, Alexandria still being under the authority of an officer delegated by the sultan. As for Upper Egypt, it had remained the appanage of the Mamluk beys, who had contrived to retain possession of the Saïd.

Mehemet Ali had no sooner been proclaimed than Elfi, who had reorganised his party in Upper Egypt, did all in his power to overthrow the new pasha. He first offered to assist Kourshyd to regain his former position; he promised his allegiance to the Porte on condition of the dismissal of Mehemet Ali, and then turned his attention to England. He found difficulty in obtaining her concurrence by promising to give up the chief ports of Egypt. These negotiations, suspended the first time by M. Dro-vetti, the French consul at Alexandria, co-operating with the pasha, were again renewed some time after through the influence of the English ambassador, who, in the name of his country, demanded the re-establishment of the Mamluks, guaranteeing the fidelity of Elfi. The Porte at once sent a fleet to Egypt bearing a firman, appointing Mehemet Ali to the pashalic of Salonica. At this juncture, the viceroy, feeling sure of the support of the sheikhs, who had assisted him to his present position, only sought to temporise. He soon received the further support of the Mamluk beys of Bardisi's party, who forgot their personal grievances in the desire to be revenged upon the common foe; at the same time, twenty-five French Mamluks, urged thereto by M. Drovetti, deserted the ranks of Elfi's adherents and joined Mehemet Ali.

The Pasha of Egypt possessed a zealous partisan in the French ambassador at Constantinople. The latter, perceiving that the secession of the Mamluks made the regaining of their former power an absolute impossibility, pleaded the cause of Mehemet Ali with the Porte, and obtained a firman re-establishing his viceroyalty, on condition of his payment of an annual tribute of about $1,000,000.

The power of Mehemet Ali was beginning to be more firmly established, and the almost simultaneous deaths of Osman-Bardisi and Muhammed el-Elfi (November, 1806, and January, 1807) seemed to promise a peaceful future, when, on March 17th, the English, displeased at his reconciliation with the Porte, arrived in Egypt. Their forces numbered some seven or eight thousand men, and it was the intention to stir up the Mamluks and render them every assistance. A detachment of the English forces, led by General Fraser, took possession of Alexandria, which the English occupied for six months without being able to attempt any other enterprise. The remainder of the troops were cut to pieces at Rosetta by a small contingent of Albanians: thus ended the expedition. The viceroy, who at the beginning of the campaign had displayed really Oriental cruelty, and sent more than a thousand heads of English soldiers to Cairo to decorate Rumlieh, finished his operations by an act of European generosity, and delivered up his prisoners without demanding ransom. The plan of defence adopted by the pasha was the work of Drovetti, to whom, consequently, is due some of the glory of this rapid triumph.

Mehemet Ali, having nothing further to fear from the English, who evacuated Egypt in September, 1807, began to give scope to his ambitious schemes, when the easily disturbed policy of the Porte saw fit to send the wily pasha against the Wahabis, who threatened to invade the Holy Places. Before obeying these injunctions, the viceroy deemed it wise, previous to engaging in a campaign so perilous, to ensure Egypt against the dangers with which, in the absence of the forces, she would be menaced.

But Egypt had no more powerful enemies than the Mamluks, who, since 1808, had kept the country in a constant state of agitation. Mehemet Ali therefore determined to put an end to this civil war, root and branch, and to exterminate completely this formidable adversary. He did not hesitate in the choice of means. War would not have succeeded; murder, therefore, was the only alternative, and the viceroy adopted this horrible means of accomplishing his designs. He invited the entire Mam-luk corps to a banquet, which he proposed to give in the Citadel Palace in honour of the departure of Tussun Pasha for Mecca. This palace is built upon a rock, and is reached by perpendicular paths. On May 1st, the day fixed upon for the festivity, Mehemet Ali received his guests in great splendour and with a cordiality calculated to dispel any suspicions the Mamluks might have entertained. At the conclusion of the banquet, as they were returning home, they were fired upon in the narrow pass, where retreat and resistance were perfectly impossible. Thus, after having defeated the bravest troops in the world, they died obscurely, ingloriously, and unable to defend themselves. Hassan Bey, brother of the celebrated Elfi, spurred his horse to a gallop, rode over the parapets, and fell, bruised and bleeding, at the foot of the walls, where some Arabs saved him from certain death by aiding his flight. The few who escaped massacre took refuge in Syria or Dongola.

Whilst this horrible drama was being enacted in Cairo, similar scenes were taking place in those provinces whose governors had received stringent commands to butcher every remaining Mamluk in Egypt. THUs nearly all perished, and that famous corps was destroyed for ever.

Although Mehemet Ali had no doubt whatever as to the intentions which had prompted the Porte to organise the expedition against the Wahabis, he hastened to prepare for this lengthy war. Mehemet himself was in command of an army in the Hedjaz when Latif Pasha arrived, bearing a firman of investiture to the pashalic of Egypt. Luckily, Mehemet Ali on his departure had left behind him, as vekyl, a trustworthy man devoted to his interests, namely, Mehemet Bey. This faithful minister pretended to favour the claims of Latif Pasha, and then arrested him, and had him publicly executed.

From this moment the real reign of Mehemet Ali begins. Possessed of a fertile country, he promptly began to consider the ways and means of improving the deplorable state of its finances, and to grasp all the resources which agriculture and commerce could yield for the realisation of his ambitious schemes. Nothing must be neglected in the government of a country for so many years the scene of incessant warfare; the labourer must be made to return to the field he had deserted during the time of trouble; political and civil order must be reestablished so as to reassure the inhabitants, and secure the resumption of long abandoned industries.

The most important matter was to restrain the depredations of the Bedouins, and, to assure the obedience of these hitherto unsubdued tribes, he kept their sheikhs as hostages: at the same time he checked the delinquencies of the Kopts, in whose hands the government of the territories had been from time immemorial. A sure and certain peace thus having been ensured to the interior of the country, the pasha turned his attention to another enterprise, the accomplishment of which is always somewhat difficult after a lengthy crisis. He wished to encourage and regulate the payment of taxes without hindering the financial operations of private individuals. To this end, he re-established the custom of receiving tribute in kind, and to support the payment of this tribute he organised the export trade. A thousand vessels built at his own expense ploughed the waters of the Nile in all directions, and conveyed Egyptian produce to the shores of the Mediterranean, where huge warehouses stored the goods destined for foreign countries.

Mehemet Ali preserved a continual intercourse with foreign merchants, and the country owed many fortunate innovations to these relations: agriculture was enriched by several productions hitherto unknown. A Frenchman, M. Jumel, introduced improvements in the production of cotton, whilst M. Drovetti, the pasha's tried friend, helped to further the establishment of manufactories by his advice and great experience of men and things. Before long, cotton mills were built, cloth factories, a sugar refinery, rum distillery, and saltpetre works erected. The foreign trade despatched as much as seven million ardebs of cereals every year, and more than six hundred thousand bales of cotton. In return, European gold flowed into the treasury of this industrious pasha, and the revenues of Egypt, which hitherto had never exceeded $150,000,000, were more than doubled in 1816.

The very slight success which Mehemet Ali had obtained when commanding the irregular forces during the expedition against the Wahabis decided him to put a long-cherished idea into execution, namely, to organise an army on European lines. Henceforth this became the sole occupation of the enterprising pasha and the exclusive goal of his perseverance. The Nizam-Jedyd was proclaimed in the month of July, 1815, and all the troops were ordered to model themselves after the pattern of the French army.

This large undertaking, which in 1807 had cost Selim III. his life, proved almost as fatal to Mehemet Ali. A terrible insurrection broke out amongst the alien soldiers, who principally composed the army; the infuriated troops rose against the tyrant and the unbeliever, the palace was pillaged, and the pasha had scarcely time to seek the shelter of his citadel. His only means of saving his life and recovering his authority was solemnly to promise to abandon his plan. Mehemet Ali therefore deferred his military schemes and awaited the opportunity to test its success upon the natives, who would be far more easily managed than the excitable strangers, brought up as they were on the old traditions of the Okaz and the Mamluks. The war which still raged in Arabia gave him the means of ridding himself of the most indomitable men, whom he despatched to Hedjaz under the command of Ibrahim Pasha, his eldest son.

Now came success to console Mehemet Ali for the failure of his reformatory plans. After a long series of disasters, Ibrahim succeeded, in the year 1818, in taking Abd Allah Ibn-Sonud, the chief of the Wahabis, prisoner. He sent him to the Great Pasha, a name often applied to Mehemet Ali in Egypt, at Cairo, bearing a portion of the jewels taken from the temple at Mecca. The unfortunate man was then taken to Constantinople, where his punishment bore testimony to the victory rather than the clemency of his conquerors.

In reward for his services, the sultan sent Ibrahim a mantle of honour and named him Pasha of Egypt, which title conferred on him the highest rank among the viziers and pashas, and even placed him above his own father in the hierarchy of the dignitaries of the Turkish Empire. At the same time Mehemet Ali was raised to the dignity of khan, an attribute of the Ottomans, and the greatest distinction obtainable for a pasha, inasmuch as it was formerly exclusively reserved for the sovereigns of the Crimea.

After destroying Daryeh, the capital of Nedj, Mehemet Ali conceived the idea of extending his possessions in the interior of Africa, and of subduing the country of the negroes, where he hoped to find much treasure. He accordingly sent his son, Ishmail Pasha, with five thousand men, upon this expedition, which ended most disastrously with the murder of Ishmail and his guard by Melek Nemr, and the destruction of the remainder of his forces.

In the year 1824, Sultan Mahmud, realising the impossibility of putting down the Greek insurrection by his own unaided forces, bent his pride sufficiently to ask help of his vassal Mehemet Ali. Mehemet was now in possession of a well-drilled army and a well-equipped fleet, which were placed at the service of the sultan, who promised him in return the sovereignty of Crete, the pashalic of Syria, and possibly the reversion of Morea for his son Ibrahim. The Greeks, deceived by their easy successes over the undisciplined Turkish hosts, failed to realise the greatness of the danger which threatened them. The Egyptian fleet managed, without serious opposition, to enter the Archipelago, and, in December, 1824, Ibrahim, to whom Mehemet Ali had entrusted the supreme command of the expedition, established his base in Crete, within striking distance of the Greek mainland. The following February he landed with four thousand regular infantry and five hundred cavalry at Modon, in the south of Morea.

The Greeks were utterly unable to hold their own against the well-disciplined fellaheen of Ibrahim Bey, and, before the end of the year, the whole of the Peloponnesus, with the exception of a few strongholds, was at the mercy of the invader, and the report was spread that Ibrahim intended to deport the Greek population and re-people the country with Moslem negroes and Arabs.

The only barrier opposed to the entire extinction of the Greek population was their single stronghold of Missolonghi, which was now besieged by Rashid Pasha and the Turks. If Ibrahim had joined his forces with the besieging army of the Turks, Missolonghi could hardly have resisted their combined attack, and the Greek race would have been in danger of suffering annihilation.

Meanwhile the Great Powers of Europe were seriously concerned with this threatened destruction of the Greeks. England proposed a joint intervention in defence of Greece on the part of the Powers, but Russia desired to act alone. A huge army was gradually concentrated upon the Turkish frontier. The Greek leaders now offered to place Greece under British protection, and the Duke of Wellington was sent to St. Petersburg to arrange the terms of the proposed joint intervention. A protocol was signed at St. Petersburg April 4, 1826, whereby England and Russia pledged themselves to cooperate in preventing any further Turco-Egyptian agression. A more definite agreement was reached in September, aiming at the cutting off of Ibrahim in Morea by a united European fleet, thus forcing the Turks and Egyptians to terms. On July 6,1827, a treaty was signed at London, between England, France, and Russia, which empowered the French and English admirals at Smyrna to part the combatants—by peaceful means if possible, and if not, by force.

Admiral Codrington at once sailed to Nauplia. The Greeks were willing to accept an armistice, but the Turks scorned the offer. At about this time an Egyptian fleet of ninety-two vessels sailed from Alexandria and joined the Ottoman fleet in the bay of Navarino (September 7th). Five days later Admiral Codrington arrived and informed the Turkish admiral that any attempt to leave the bay would be resisted by force. French vessels had also arrived, and Ibrahim agreed not to leave the bay without consulting the sultan. A Greek flotilla having destroyed a Turkish flotilla, Ibrahim took this as a breach of the convention and sailed out to sea, but Codrington succeeded in turning him back. Ibrahim now received instructions from the Porte to the effect that he should defy the Powers. A new ultimatum was at once presented and the allied fleet of the European Powers entered the bay of Navarino. The Turco-Egyptian fleet was disposed at the bottom of the bay in the form of a crescent. Without further parleying, as the fleet of the English and their allies approached, the Turks and Egyptians began to fire, and a battle ensued, apparently without plan on either side: the conflict soon became general, and Admiral Codrington in the Asia opened a broadside upon the Egyptian admiral, and quickly reduced his vessel to a wreck. Other vessels in rapid succession shared the same fate, and the conflict raged with great fury for four hours. When the smoke cleared off, the Turks and Egyptians had disappeared, and the bay was strewn with fragments of their ships.

Admiral Codrington now made a demonstration before Alexandria, and Mehemet Ali gladly withdrew his forces from co-operating with such a dangerous ally as the sultan had proved himself to be. Before the French expedition, bound for the Morea, had arrived, all the Egyptian forces had been withdrawn from the Peloponnesus, and the French only arrived after the Anglo-Egyptian treaty had been signed August 9, 1828.

Mehemet Ali's chief ambition had always been to enlarge the circle of regeneration in the East. In Morea he had failed through European intervention. He felt that his nearer neighbour, Syria, which he had long coveted, would be an easier conquest, and he made the punishment of Abdullah Pasha of Acre, against whom he had many grievances, his excuse to the Porte. In reality it was a case of attacking or being attacked. Through a firman of the Divan of Constantinople, which had been published officially to the European Powers, he knew that his secret relations with Mustapha Pasha of Scodra had become known. He knew also that letters had been intercepted in which he offered this pasha money, troops, and ammunition, while engaging himself to march on the capital of the empire, and that these letters were now in the hand of the Sultan Mahmud. He wras also informed that the Porte was preparing to send a formidable army to Egypt; and his sound instinct taught him what to do in this position.

Ibrahim Pasha was appointed commander-in-chief of the invading army, which was composed of six regiments of infantry, four of cavalry, forty field-pieces, and many siege-pieces. Provisions, artillery, and ammunition were on board the men-of-war. Thousands of baggage camels and ambulances were being collected ready for departure when cholera broke out. Coming from India, after having touched along the coasts of the Persian Gulf, it had penetrated into the caravan to Mecca, where the heat and dearth of water had given it fresh intensity. It raged in the Holy Town, striking down twenty thousand victims, and touched at Jeddah and Zambo, where its effects were very dire. Passing through Suez, it decimated the population, and in August it reached Cairo and spread to Upper and Lower Egypt. The army did not escape the common scourge, and when about to invade Syria was overtaken by the epidemic. Five thousand out of ninety thousand perished. All preparations for the expedition were abandoned until a more temperate season improved the sanitary conditions.

About the beginning of October, 1831, the viceroy gave orders to his son to prepare for departure, and on November 2d the troops started for El Arish, the general meeting-place of the army. Ibrahim Pasha went to Alexandria, whence he embarked with his staff and some troops for landing. Uniting at El Arish, the army marched on Gaza and took possession of that town, dispersing some soldiers of the Pasha of Acre. Thence it turned to Jaffa, where it met with no resistance, the Turkish garrison having already evacuated the town.

At this time the army which had sailed from Alexandria was cruising about the port of Jaffa, and Ibrahim Pasha landed there and took over the command of the army, which advanced slowly on St. Jean d'Acre, seizing Caiffa to facilitate the anchoring of the fleet, which had landed provisions, artillery, and all kinds of ammunition. After six months' siege and ten hours' fighting, Ibrahim Pasha obtained possession of St. Jean d'Acre, under whose walls fell so many valiant crusaders, and which, since the repulse of Napoleon, had passed for all but impregnable. Abdullah Pasha evinced a desire to be taken to Egypt, and he landed at Alexandria, where he was warmly welcomed by the viceroy, who complimented him on his defence.

Hostile in everything to Mehemet Ali, the Porte seized every opportunity of injuring him. When Sultan Mahmud learned of the victory of the viceroy's troops in Syria, he sent one of his first officers to enquire the reason of this invasion. The viceroy alleged grievances against the Pasha of Acre, to which his Highness replied that he alone had the right to punish his subjects.

The eyes of Europe were now fixed upon the Levant, where a novel struggle was going on between vassal and suzerain. Authority and liberty were again opposing each other. The Powers watched the struggle with intense interest. The viceroy protested against bearing the cost of the war, and demanded the investiture of Syria. Mehemet Ali was then declared a rebel, and a firman was issued against him, in support of which excommunication an army of sixty thousand men advanced across Asia Minor to the Syrian boundaries, while a squadron of twenty-five sail stood in the Dardanelles ready to weigh anchor.

The Porte forbade the ambassadors of the Powers to import ammunition into Egypt, for it feared that the viceroy might find a support whose strength it knew only too well. But the viceroy had no need of this, for his former connections with Europe had put him in a position of independence, whereas the Porte itself was obliged to fall back on this support. Russia, the one of the three Great Powers whose disposition it was to support the authority of the sultan, lent him twenty thousand bayonets, whilst Ibrahim Pasha made his advance to the gates of Constantinople.

Immediately after the taking of St. Jean d'Acre Ibrahim Pasha, following up his successes, had turned towards Damascus, which town he entered without a blow being struck, the governor and the leading inhabitants having taken flight. The commander-in-chief established his headquarters under the walls of the conquered country, and then marched in three columns on Horns. The battle of Horns (July 8, 1832) demonstrated the vast superiority of the Egyptian troops. On both sides there were about thirty thousand regular soldiers, but the Egyptians were the better organised, the better disciplined, and the more practised in the arts of war. When it is remembered that at Horns the Turks lost two thousand men killed, and 2,500 taken prisoners, while the Egyptian casualties were only 102 killed and 162 wounded, one is not astonished at the enthusiasm with which Ibrahim Pasha wrote after the battle: "I do not hesitate to say that two or three hundred thousand of such troops would cause me no anxiety."

It is not surprising that the beaten pashas were so struck with terror that in their flight they abandoned sixteen more pieces of artillery and all the ammunition they had managed to save from their defeat. They fled as if they could not put sufficient distance between themselves and their redoubtable enemy.

This battle foretold the result of the Syrian campaign. The population of Syria seemed to call for the domination of the conqueror; the viceroy protested his submission to the Porte and his desire for peace, and meanwhile Ibrahim Pasha marched forward.

The Porte counted on its fleet to guard the Dardanelles, but it needed an army and a commander to oppose Ibrahim Pasha, who again defeated the Turks at Oulon-Kislak. He then advanced towards the plains of Anatolia, where he met Rashid Pasha.

It was now December, 1830, and the atmosphere was heavy with a thick fog. The armies opened fire on each other on December 21st, with the town of Koniah in the background. The grand vizier was at the head of close on sixty thousand men, while the Egyptian army only comprised thirty thousand, including the Bedouins. The fighting had continued for about six hours when Rashid Pasha was taken prisoner; the news of his capture spread along the Turkish lines and threw them into disorder, and the Egyptians remained masters of the field, with twenty pieces of mounted cannon and some baggage: the Turks had lost only five hundred men, while the Egyptian losses were but two hundred.

The battle of Koniah was the last act in the Syrian drama. The sultan's throne was shaken, and its fall might involve great changes in the politics of the world. Ibrahim Pasha was only three days' journey from the Bosphorus, and the way was open to him, with no Turkish army to fight and the whole population in his favour. In Constantinople itself Mehemet Ali had a powerful party, and, if the West did not interfere, the Ottoman Empire was at an end. However, European diplomacy considered that, in spite of its weakness, it should still weigh in the balance of the nations.

Trembling in the midst of his harem, Sultan Mahmud cried for help, and Russia, his nearest neighbour, heard the call. This was the Power that, either from sympathy or ambition, was the most inclined to come to his aid. The Emperor Nicholas had offered assistance in a letter brought to the sultan by the Russian General Mouravieff, and a Russian squadron appeared in the Bosphorus with eight thousand men for disembarkment. The Russians, however, agreed not to set foot on shore unless Mehemet Ali should refuse the conditions that were being proposed to him. The viceroy refused the conditions, which limited his possessions to the pashalics of Acre, Tripoli, and Seyd, and which seemed to him incompatible with the glory won by his arms.

The sultan did not wish to give up Syria, but that province was no longer his. The sword of Ibrahim had severed the last bonds that fastened it to him, and he was obliged to yield it, as well as the district of Andama. On his side, the viceroy acknowledged himself a vassal of the Porte, and agreed to make an annual payment of the monies he received from the pashas of Syria. This peace was concluded on May 14, 1833, and was called the peace of Kutayeh, after the place where Ibrahim signed it.

It was impossible that the convention of Kutayeh should be more than an armistice. The pasha benefited by it too greatly not to desire further advantages, and the sultan had lost so much that he must needs make some attempt at recovery. Mahmud's annoyance was caused by the fact and nature of the dispossession rather than by its material extent. The descendant of the Os-manlis, ever implacable in his hatreds, who had allowed Syria, the cradle of his race, to be wrested from him, now awaited the hour of vengeance. Mehemet Ali knew himself to be strong enough to carry a sceptre ably, and he realised that there would be no need for his numerous pashalics to pass out of his family. Henceforth his mind was filled with thoughts of independence and the rights of succession.

The viceroy and the sultan continued to strengthen their forces, and a conflict occurred near Nezib on June 24, 1839. The Egyptians completely routed their adversaries, despite the strenuous resistance of the Imperial Guard, who, when called upon to surrender, cried in the same words used at Waterloo, "Khasse sultanem mamatenda darrhi tuffenguini iere Koimas." ("The guards of the sultan surrender arms only to death").

Greatly elated, Ibrahim flung himself into the arms of his companion in glory, Suleiman Pasha. His prediction was verified: "This time we will go to Constantinople, or they shall come to Cairo." They set out for Constantinople; but the viceroy was again generous. Through the mediation of Captain Caillé, aide-de-camp to Marshal Soult, who, in the name of France, demanded a cessation of hostilities, Mehemet Ali desired his son not to proceed into Asia Minor; so the general halted before Aintab, the scene of his victories, as he had done on a former occasion before Kutayeh.

Consumptive and exhausted with his excesses, Mahmud, whose virtue lay in his ardent love of reforms, died before his time, but this untimely demise at least spared him the knowledge of the Nezib disaster and the treason of his fleet, which passed into the hands of the viceroy. Hafiz Pasha, routed by Ibrahim, was arraigned on his return to Constantinople for leading the attack before receiving the official mandate; but the Turkish general produced an autograph of his defunct master. The sultan had been false to the last, and deceived both European ambassadors and the ministers of the empire, by means of mysterious correspondence, combined with his protestations for the maintenance of peace.

It was while Mehemet Ali was organising the national guard of Egypt, and arranging the military training of the workmen employed in his many factories, that the unlucky treaty of July 15, 1840, which gave the whole of Syria to the Sublime Porte, was concluded. Four Western Powers had secretly met in London and agreed to deprive the sovereign of the Nile of his conquests, and fling him again at the foot of the throne, which he had treated as a plaything. Mehemet Ali haughtily protested against the desecration of his rights, and France, his faithful ally, with hand on sword-hilt, threatened to draw it against whosoever should touch Egypt. England and Austria covered the Syrian sea-coast with their sails and guns. Beyrut, Latakia, Tortosa, Tripoli, Saida, Tyre, St. Jean d'Acre were bombarded and fell. This formidable coalition despatched Lord Napier to Alexandria as negotiator. Mehemet Ali accepted the overtures, and a convention guaranteed to him, as Pasha of Egypt, rights of succession unknown to all other pashalics of the empire. The hatti-sherif of January 12, 1841, consolidated this privilege, with, however, certain restrictions which were regarded as inadmissible by France, the viceroy, and the cabinets. A new act of investiture, passed on June 1, 1841, confirmed the viceroy in the possession of Egypt, transmissible to his male heirs, and also in the government of Nubia. Mehemet Ali asked no more, France declared herself satisfied, and, to prove it, became once more a member of the European league by the treaty of July 15, 1841, which, without being directly connected with the European question, dealing as it did with the claims of Turkey upon the Dardanelles, implied, none the less, accordance upon the Eastern situation. As a token of reconciliation, the Ottoman Porte soon raised its former rival, Mehemet Ali, to the rank of sadrazam.

The political history of Mehemet Ali was now at an end. All the results, good or bad, of his career, had reached fulfilment. As a vanquished conqueror he had been able to remain firm in the midst of catastrophe; his fatherly ideas and feelings had been his salvation. Had he been absolutely heroic, he would have considered it a duty, for his courage and his name's sake, to carry the struggle on to the bitter end, and to perish in the whirlpool he had raised. He showed that he desired to act thus, but in his children's interests he refrained, and this was, we believe, the only influence of importance which made him give way. It is true that there was not much difference between a throne crumbling to ruins, or one built thereon; such as it was, however, it seemed firmly secured to his children, and it was for them to strengthen the foundations. The pasha considered this a fitting reward for his labours; as for himself, he was over seventy years of age, and ready to lay down his burdens.

A man without learning and surrounded by barbarian soldiers, Mehemet Ali appears before the world as nature made him. Dissimulation, diplomacy, and deceit, coupled with capability, great courage, genius, and much perseverance, brought him to the head of the government of Egypt. To gain his ends he flattered the powerful Ulemas who were the nation's representatives to the sultan, but, once having obtained his object, he dismissed them.

Though a clever politician, he was a bad administrator. Being alternately blindly confident and extremely suspicious, he did not choose well the men he employed as his auxiliaries, and, being a Turk and a devout Mussulman, Mehemet Ali wished to give back to the Turks the power they had lost. He only took account of the results of any undertaking, without paying any attention to the difficulties surmounted in its execution, and this characteristic made him commit many injustices. It was his habit to treat men as levers, which he put aside when he had no further use for them. He was quick of apprehension, and of very superior intelligence, and his whole character was a mixture of generosity and meanness, of greatness and littleness.

Mehemet Ali was an affable, an easy business man, and dominated by a desire to talk. He enjoyed relating the incidents of his past life, and, when not preoccupied by affairs of importance, his conversation was full of charm. The foreigners who visited him were always much impressed with his superiority, while his lively humour, his freedom, and that air of good nature he knew so well how to adopt, all captivated his visitors. The expression of his face was exceedingly mobile, and quickly communicated itself to the men who surrounded him, who were in constant observation of his moods, so that one could judge of the state of mind of the viceroy by the calm or disturbed appearance of his servants.

When Mehemet Ali was anxious, his look became fierce, his forehead wrinkled, and his eyes shone with anger, while his speech was broken and his manner brusque and imperious. As regards those in his service, Mehemet Ali was by turns severe or gentle, tolerant or impatient, irascible, and surprisingly forbearing. He was jealous of the glory of others, and desired all honours for himself. He was an enemy of all that was slow. He liked to do everything, to decide everything, and worked night and day. All letters, notices, and memoranda that referred to his government, he read himself or had them read to him. Picked men translated French and English political newspapers into Turkish, and he encouraged discussion on all subjects of high interest, although generally imposing his own opinion. He did not always keep strictly to his word. He was a stoic, and great pain could not destroy his habitual gaiety, and when very ill he would still speak affably to those around him; but illnesses with him were rare, for his health was, as a rule, excellent. He was very careful about his appearance, and was fond of women without being their slave; in his youth his life had been dissolute. He was above the prejudices of his nation, and prayed very often, although a fatalist.

At the age of forty-five he learned to read, and he held European learning in great esteem, confessing it superior to that of Turkey; but he continued to regard European scientists and artists only as salaried foreigners, whom he hastened to replace by natives as soon as he considered the latter sufficiently enlightened. Mehemet Ali made one great mistake, with which his nearest servants reproach him, and that is with not having introduced into his family learned men from Europe, picked men devoted to his cause, and well versed in the special things of which his country was in need.

Had they been brought into a close contact with the viceroy, and admitted unreservedly to all the privileges the Turks enjoyed, these men would have adopted Egypt as their country. They would have spoken the language and have become the' sentinels and safeguards necessary for the maintenance of useful institutions which the Turks either refused or did not understand.

During the administration of Mehemet Ali, public hygiene was not neglected, and a sanitary council watched over the health of the country. Measures were taken to increase the cleanliness and sanitation of the towns; military hospitals were built, and a lazarette was established at Alexandria, whilst vaccine was widely used. In the country the planting of many trees helped the atmosphere, and Egypt, which Europeans had hitherto regarded as the seat of a permanent plague epidemic, became more and more a healthy and pleasurable resort. Mehemet, whose aims were always for the furthering of Egyptian prosperity, profited by the leisure of peace to look after the industrial works. Two great projects that occupied his attention were the Nile dams and the construction of a railway from Suez to Cairo.

The actual condition of the canalisation of Egypt, while vastly improved by the viceroy, was still far from complete. Canals, partial dams, and embankments were attempted; fifty thousand draw-wells carried the water up to a considerable height, but the system of irrigation was insufficient.

The railway from Cairo to Suez was an easier, though not less important, work. The road crossed neither mountain, river, nor forest, while a series of little plains afforded a firm foundation, requiring very few earthworks. Its two iron arms stretched out into the desert, and steam-engines could traverse the distance from the Nile to the Red Sea in three hours.

Suez would thus become a suburb of Cairo, and thus, being brought closer to Egypt, would regain her trade. This enterprise, just as the former one, gave promise of bringing to Egypt the two sources of national wealth and prosperity: agriculture and trade.

The agricultural unity which Mehemet Ali constituted enabled him to bring about improvements which with private proprietorship would have been impossible. The fellah, careless of to-morrow, did not sow for future reaping, and made no progress, but when Mehemet Ali undertook the control of agricultural labour in Egypt, the general aspect of the country changed, though, in truth, the individual condition of the fellah was not improved. Besides the work of irrigation by means of canals, dykes, and banks, and the introduction of the cultivation of indigo, cotton, opium, and silk, the viceroy had also planted thousands of trees of various kinds, including 100,000 walnut-trees; he ordered the maimours, or prefects, to open up the roads between the villages, and to plant trees. He wished the villages, towns, and hamlets to be ornamented, as in Europe, with large trees, under whose shelter the tired traveller could rest.

In the various districts were vast tracts of land which for a long time the plough had not touched. Concessions of these lands were made to Franks, Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, which concessions were free, and for a term of seven or eight years, while the guarantees were exempt from taxes.

During the closing years of his life, between 1841 and 1849, Mehemet occupied himself with improvements in Egypt. He continued to prosecute his commercial speculations, and manufacturing, educational, and other schemes. The barrage of the Nile, which has only been finished during the British occupation, was begun under his direction. In 1847 he visited Constantinople, and was received with the rank of a vizier. In the year 1848 symptoms of imbecility appeared, and his son Ibrahim was declared his successor. After a reign of only two months he died. Mehemet Ali's death occurred on the 3rd of August, 1849. His direct successor was his grandson, Abbas Pasha, who held the sceptre of Egypt as the direct heir of Ibrahim Pasha. This prince took but little interest in the welfare of his country. He had in him no spark of the noble ambition of his predecessor, and no trace of his genius, and he showed no desire for progress or reforms. He was a real prince of the ancient East, suspicious, sombre, and careless of the destiny of the country entrusted to his care. He liked to withdraw to the privacy of his palace, and, isolated in the midst of his guards, to live that life of the distrustful and voluptuous despots of the East. The palace of Bar-el-Beda, which he had built on the road to Suez in the open desert, a palace without water, lifting its head in the solitude like a silent witness of a useless life and tragic death, impresses the traveller with astonishment and fear.

Abbas Pasha was weak in his negotiations with the European Powers, and this was well for Egypt, as their representative was able to hold in check his silent hostility to Western civilisation. Such guardianship is useful when exercised over a prince like Abbas Pasha, but it tends to become troublesome and baneful when it attempts to interfere with the government of an active and enlightened sovereign animated by just and generous intentions.

Muhammed Said, the successor of Abbas Pasha, was born in 1822, nine years later than his nephew Abbas. He was brought up in Europe by French professors, and M. Kornig, a distinguished Orientalist, remained with his pupil and became his secretary. He not only instructed him in all branches of knowledge becoming to his rank, but also developed in him a love of European civilisation and noble sentiments, of which he gave proof from the moment of his accession. He was imbued with liberal principles, which in an Eastern potentate give proof of great moral superiority, and in this respect Muhammed Said wras second to no prince in Europe. He worked for the emancipation of his subjects and the civilisation of Egypt, and was not content to produce that superficial civilisation which consists in transplanting institutions that the mass of the people could not understand. Said Pasha endeavoured to pursue his father's policy and to carry out his high aims. He had not, however, the strength of character nor the health necessary to meet the serious difficulties involved in such a task, and he will be chiefly remembered by his abolition of the more grinding government monopolies, and for the concession of the Suez Canal.

After his death Said Pasha was succeeded in the vice-royalty by his nephew, Ismail Pasha, who was proclaimed viceroy without opposition early in the year 1863. Ismail, the first who accepted the title of khédive from the sultan, was born on December 31, 1830, being the second of the three sons of Ibrahim, and grandson of Mehemet Ali. He had been educated at the Ecole d'Etat Major at Paris, and when Ahmed, the eldest son of Ibrahim, died in 1858, Ismail became the heir to his uncle Said. He had been employed, after his return to Egypt, on missions to the sovereign pontiff; the emperor, Napoleon III.; and the Sultan of Turkey. In the year 1861 he was despatched with an army of 18,000 men to quell an insurrection in the Sudan, which undertaking he brought to a successful conclusion. On ascending the throne he was much gratified to find that, on account of the scarcity of cotton, resulting from the Civil War in America, the revenues had very considerably increased from the export of the Egyptian cotton. At this date the cotton crop was worth $125,000,000, instead of $25,000,000, which was the normal value of the Egyptian output. It was a very serious misfortune to Egypt that during his sojourn abroad Ismail had learned many luxurious ways, and had also discovered that European nations were accustomed to make free use of their credit in raising sums of money for their immediate advantage. From this moment Ismail started upon a career which gave to Egypt, in the eyes of the world, a fictitious grandeur, and which made him one of the most talked-of rulers among the cabinets and peoples of the European countries. He began by transferring his own private debts to the state, and thereafter looked upon Egypt merely as his private estate, and himself as the sovereign landholder. Without any sense of his responsibility to the Egyptians themselves, he increased his own fame throughout Europe in the sumptuous fashion of a spendthrift millionaire. He deemed it necessary for his fame that Egypt should possess institutions modelled upon those of European countries, and he applied himself with energy to achieve this, and without any stint of expense. By burdening posterity for centuries to come, Ismail, during the two decades subsequent to his accession, always had a supply of ready money with which to dazzle European guests. During his entire reign Egypt swarmed with financiers and schemers of every description, to whom the complacent Ismail lent an only too willing ear.

In the year 1866, in return for an increase of tribute, he obtained from the sultan a firman giving him the title of khédive (Turkish, khidewi, a king), and changing the law of succession to that of direct descent from father to-son; and in 1873 he obtained a new firman, purchased again at an immense cost to his subjects, which rendered him practically independent of the sultan. Ismail projected vast schemes of internal reform. He remodelled the system of customs and the post-office, stimulated commercial progress, and created the Egyptian sugar industry. He introduced European improvements into Cairo and Alexandria; he built vast palaces, entertained visitors with lavish generosity, and maintained an opera and a theatre. By his order the distinguished composer, Verdi, produced the famous opera "Aïda" for the entertainment of his illustrious guests on the occasion of their visit to Egypt during the festivities connected with the opening of the Suez Canal. On this occasion Mariette Bey ransacked the tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings in order to reproduce in a lifelike manner the costumes and scenery appropriate for the occasion.

The opening of this canal gave Ismail much prominence in the courts of Europe. He was made a Grand Commander of the Bath, and the same year visited Paris and London, where he was received by Queen Victoria and welcomed by the lord mayor. In 1869 he again visited London. By his great power of fascination and lavish expenditure he was ever able to make a striking impression upon the foreign courts. During the opening of the canal, when Ismail gave and received royal honours, treating monarchs as equals, and being treated by them in like manner, the jealousy of the sultan was aroused. Ismail, however, contrived judiciously to appease the suspicions of his overlord, Abdul Aziz.

In the year 1876 the old system of consular jurisdiction for foreigners was abolished, and the system of mixed courts was introduced, by which European and native judges sat together to try all civil cases, without respect to nationality.

In the year 1874 Darfur, a province in the Sudan west of Kordofan, was annexed by Ismail. He also engaged in a disastrous war against the Abyssinians, who had ever shown themselves capable of resisting the inroads of Egyptians, Muhammedans, Arabs, and even of European invaders, as was proven by the annihilation of a large Italian army of invasion, and the abandonment of the campaign against Abyssinia by the Italians in the closing years of the nineteenth century.

It was true that Ismail had attempted to carry out the great schemes of his grandfather for the regeneration of the Orient, and it is possible that, if the jealousy of European Powers had not prevented the army of Ibrahim Bej from controlling immense territories in Syria and Anatolia, which they had won by conquest, that the regeneration of the Orient might have been accomplished at least a century earlier. No people would have benefited more by the success of Mehemet Ali's policy than the Christian people who to-day are under the rule of the barbarous Turks. With the regeneration of the Orient, the trade of European nations in the East would have been very largely increased.

190.jpg Part of Cairo, Showing the Mulqufs on The Houses Of Modern Egypt

The policy of regeneration, wisely begun by Mehemet Ali, was resumed within Egypt itself in a spendthrift manner by his grandson Ismail. Every act of his reign, with its ephemeral and hollow magnificence, moved towards the one inevitable result of foreign intervention. The price of all the transient splendour was the surrender by slow degrees of the sovereignty and independence of Egypt itself. The European Powers of late have withdrawn their interest in the betterment of the native populations in the Asiatic dominions of the sultan, and have concerned themselves exclusively with the immediate interests of commerce and the enforcement of debts contracted to European bondholders. All progress in the later history of Egypt has originated in the desire of the European Powers to see Egypt in a position capable of meeting her indebtedness to foreign bondholders.

In so far as the cry raised of "Egypt for the Egyptians" was a protest against forcing the Egyptians to pay for an assumed indebtedness which was at least four times greater than anything they had actually received, no movement was ever more just and righteous than the protest of the fellaheen against foreign control, a movement which has been chiefly associated with the name of Arabi Pasha. The issue of Ismail's financial troubles was most ignominious and disastrous to Egypt, after nearly a hundred years of heroic struggles to keep pace with the progress of modern Europe. Had Ismail modelled his career upon that of his illustrious grandfather, rather than that of Napoleon III., with which it shows many striking parallels, it is probable that the advantage secured to Egypt through the British occupation might have resulted in political and financial independence. When the crash came, and the order for his deposition was sent by the sultan, Ismail resigned the khedivate in complete submission; and, taking away with him a large private fortune and a portion of the royal harem, he spent the remainder of his life in retirement at Naples and Constantinople, and was buried with solemn pomp in the royal cemetery at Cairo.

CHAPTER IV—THE BRITISH INFLUENCE IN EGYPT

Ismail deposed: Tewfik Pasha: Revolt of Arabi Pasha: Lord Wolseley and the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir: The Mahdist Rising: General Gordon in the Sudan: Death of Gordon: The Sudan abandoned and re-conquered: Battle of Onidurman: Khartum College: Financial Stability: Abbas II.: Education, Law, and the improved condition of the Fellaheen: The Caisse de la Dette

The official deposition of Ismail Pasha by the sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid, occurred on June 26, in the year 1879, and his son Tewfik assumed the khedivate, becoming practically the protégé of England and Egypt. To understand how this came to pass, it is necessary to review the account of the financial embarrassments of Ismail. In twelve years he had extracted more than $400,000,000 from the fellaheen in taxes. He had borrowed another $400,000,000 from Europe at the same time, of which nominal sum he probably received $250,000,000 in cash. The loans were ostensibly contracted for public works. Possibly ten per cent, of the borrowed money was profitably laid out. The railways were extended; Upper Egypt was studded with sugar factories,—most of them doomed to failure,—and certain roads and gardens were made about the city of Cairo.

The remainder of this enormous sum of money was spent in purchasing a change in the law of succession, and the new title of khédive; in disastrous Abyssinian campaigns; in multiplying shoddy palaces, and in personal extravagance, which combined Oriental profusion with the worst taste of the Second Empire. Useless works engaged the corvee; the fellaheen were evicted from vast tracts, which became ill-managed estates; and their crops, cattle, and even seed were taken from them by the tax-gatherers, so that they died by hundreds when a low Nile afflicted the land. The only persons who flourished in Ismail's time were foreign speculators and adventurers of the lowest type. As these conditions became more serious, the khédive attempted to find some means of protection against the concession-monger. He adopted a suggestion of the wise Nubar Pasha, and instituted the mixed tribunals for adjudging civil cases between natives and foreigners.

The Powers agreed to the establishment of these tribunals, and intended to enforce the decisions of the courts, even in case that Ismail himself were the delinquent. When later the khédive repudiated the mixed tribunals, this action precipitated his fall. It became increasingly difficult for the khédive to meet his accumulated obligations. The price of cotton had fallen after the close of the American war, and there was less response from the impoverished people to the Cour-bash, which in 1868 was still more strictly enforced; and soon this enforcement by the mixed tribunal of debts due to foreigners by an agricultural population, who lived by borrowing, and were accustomed to settle their debts by haggling, aggravated the misery of the fellaheen, and led to that universal despair which was to give strength and significance to the Arabist revolt. It was no uncommon procedure for the Levantine money-lender to accompany the tax-gatherer into the provinces with a chest of money. He paid the taxes of the assembled and destitute fellaheen, who in return were obliged to give mortgages on their crops or holdings.

The desperate state of Egyptian finance, which led to the sale of the precious Suez Canal shares, at last opened the eyes of the bondholders. Mr. G. T. Goschen (Viscount Goschen) and M. Joubert were deputed to Egypt on behalf of the foreign creditors. The accounts were found to be in a state of wild confusion, with little or no chance of learning the actual facts controlling the financial situation. The minister of finance, or "Mufet-tish," Ismail Pasha Sadeck, was now arrested and banished to Dongola.

There was an immediate prospect of a dual control by England and France. Commissioners were appointed to constitute a caisse, or court, for receiving the interest due to the bondholders. The great mass of the debt was then unified, but the Goschen and Joubert arrangement was found to be too severe for the impoverished country. A low Nile and a famine resulted in a demand for an investigation into the administration, and the following year Ismail was obliged to authorise a commission of inquiry. The waste, extravagance, and wholesale extortion from the peasantry revealed by this report made a deep impression upon Europe, and Ismail was forced to disgorge the estates which he had received from the fellaheen.

In the meantime, the khédive was not inactive in taking measures to prevent the advent of a confirmed foreign control. He created a constitutional ministry, upon whom the responsibility rested for the different branches of the administration. He likewise fomented an outburst of feeling among the Moslems against the foreign element in the constitutional ministry. This was intended to strengthen the pro-Egyptian element in the government, and Ismail thus hoped to demonstrate to the European Powers the uselessness of attempting to subordinate the Egyptians to foreign methods of finance and control. Ismail subsequently dismissed the ministry, and soon afterwards the controllers themselves. Knowing well the jealousy which existed between England and France, he believed that there was a chance that he might successfully play off one Power against the other. If the Moslems had not been so severely oppressed by taxation, and Ismail had acted with courage and firmness, it is probable that he might have held his own, and Egypt might have refused to again accept the dual control.

Bismarck now intervened, and hinted to the sultan that he would receive the support of the Powers, and Abdul Hamid immediately sent a telegram to the Egyptian government that Ismail Pasha was deposed from the khedivate. At this moment his courage gave way, and Ismail surrendered his throne to his son Tewfik.

Tewfik had the misfortune to enter upon a doleful heritage of an empty treasury, a starving people, and an army ready to mutiny. There were now two parties in Egypt. The military movement was of the least importance. The superior posts in the army had been occupied by Circassians since the days of Mehemet Ali.

196 THE BRITISH INFLUENCE IN EGYPT

Slave boys were bought and trained as officers. The number and quality of the Circassians had deteriorated, but they still held the most important posts. The fellaheen officers, under Arabi, who had been brought to protest against reductions in the military establishment, now claimed that the Circassians should make way for the Egyptians. Together with this military dissatisfaction was also a strong civil movement towards national reform, which included a number of serious and sensible administrative reforms, which have since been carried out. Arabi Pasha was the leader of the National Party, and had hopes of convincing fair-minded people of the justice of their cause; but many influences, some good and some bad, were at work simultaneously to divert him from constitutional methods towards making his appeal to the violent and fanatical element.

Just at this time a divergence between English and French views in dealing with the situation had manifested itself, having its root in earlier history. France, now as in 1840, was aiming at the policy of detaching Egypt from the control of the unprogressive Turks; England aimed at the maintenance of the much talked of integrity of the Ottoman Empire. The French premier, Gambetta, was determined that there should be no intervention on the part of the Turks. He drafted the "Identic Note" in January, 1881, and induced Lord Granville, the English Foreign Secretary, to give his assent. This note contained the first distinct threat of foreign intervention. The result was a genuine and spontaneous outburst of Moslem feeling. All parties united to protest against foreign intervention, joined by the fellaheen, who now saw an opportunity of freeing themselves from foreign usurers, to whom they had become so unjustly indebted. Riots broke out in Alexandria in 1881. Gambetta was replaced by the hesitating Freycinet, who looked upon the intervention with alarm, and upon Germany with suspicion. England was thus at the last moment left to act alone. Past experience had taught her that the destiny of Egypt lay in the hands of the dominant sea-power of the Mediterranean, and that Egypt must not be neglected by the masters of India. After a vain attempt to bring about mediation through Dervish Pasha, the special commissioner of the Porte, it was discovered that the Nationalist Party was too little under control to be utilised in any further negotiations. Ahmed Arabi Pasha had greatly increased his influence, and had finally been appointed Minister of War. On the 11th of June there was serious rioting, in which many Greeks and Maltese, four Englishmen, and six Frenchmen were slain. Arabi now stepped forward to preserve order, being at this moment practically the dictator of Egypt. While endeavouring to maintain order, he also threw up earthworks to protect the harbour of Alexandria, and trained the guns upon the British fleet. The admiral in charge, Sir Beauchamp Seymour, who was waiting for the arrival of the Channel Squadron, sent word to the Egyptians to cease the construction of fortifications. The request was not fully assented to, although it was reinforced by an order from the Porte. An ultimatum was presented on July 10, commanding Arabia to surrender the forts. The terms were refused, and eight ships and five gunboats prepared for action on the following day. At the same time the French fleet retired upon Port Said.

The first shot was fired on July 11th, at seven o'clock in the morning, by the Alexandrians, and in reply an iron hail rained upon the forts of the Egyptians from the guns of the British fleet. Arabi's troops fought well and aimed correctly, but their missiles were incapable of penetrating the armour of the ironclads. One fort after another was silenced. Lord Charles Beresford, in command of the gunboat Condor, led a brilliant attack upon Fort Marabout. The firing re-opened on the next day, and a flag of truce was soon displayed. After some unsatisfactory parleying the bombardment was resumed, and when a second flag of truce was unfurled it was discovered that Arabi Pasha had retreated to Kefr-el-Dowar, fourteen miles away from Alexandria. On his departure the city was given over to plunder and destruction. The convicts escaped from the prison, and, joining forces with the Arabs, looted and burned the European quarters. Two thousand persons, mostly Greeks and Levantines, were slain, and an enormous quantity of property destroyed. Admiral Seymour then sent a body of sailors on land, who patrolled the streets and shot down the looters, and order was thus finally restored in Alexandria. The khédive, who was forced to fly for his life to an English steamer, was reinstated in the Ras-el-Tin Palace, under an escort of seven hundred marines. The British admiral was afterwards severely criticised for not having put a stop to the rioting before it assumed such serious proportions.

Arabi's army of 6,000 was now increased by recruits flocking in from every port in Egypt. After considerable pressure had been brought to bear upon the khédive, Tewfik issued a proclamation dismissing Arabi from his service. To enforce the submission of the Arabists, an English army of 33,000 men was gradually landed in Egypt, under the command of Sir Garnet Wolseley, with an efficient staff, including Sir John Adye, Sir Archibald Alison, Sir Evelyn Wood, and General Hamley. An Indian contingent also arrived under General Macpherson.

Sir Garnet, after making a feint to land near Alexandria, steamed to Port Said and disembarked, moving up the Suez Canal in order to join forces with the Indian contingent, who were advancing from Suez. Fighting took place over the control of the canal at the Mahsameh and Kassassin Locks, and at the latter place the British cavalry won an important victory over the Egyptian advance-guard. Arabi's stronghold was at Tel-el-Kebir, and the English were very anxious to win a decisive victory before the troops which the sultan was sending from Constantinople under Dervish and Baker Pasha should arrive. On September 12, 1882, preparations had been completed for an advance, and the army of 11,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, with sixty pieces of artillery, moved forward during the night to within a mile of Arabi's lines. The Egyptians had 20,000 regulars, of which number 2,500 were cavalry, with seventy guns, and they were also aided by 6,000 Bedouins. Though well situated, the army of Arabi was taken by surprise, and the following day, in response to the various flanking movements of the British, directed by Wolseley, and the direct charge of the Highlanders, they made but a very indifferent defence. In a brief space of time the Egyptians were in full retreat, Arabi fleeing to Cairo. The Indian contingent occupied Zagazig, and General Drury-Lowe rode with his cavalry for thirty-nine miles, and entered Cairo on the evening of the 14th. Arabi made a dignified surrender, and with him 10,000 men also gave themselves up.

The Nationalist movement was now at an end, the various garrisons surrendering one after another, and the greater part of the British army left Egypt, 12,000 men remaining behind to maintain order. The Egyptian government wished to try Arabi as a rebel in a secret tribunal. It was generally believed that this would have meant a death sentence. Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, a distinguished British Liberal and a friend of Arabi, who had often expressed his sympathy with the cause of the Nationalists in their endeavour to free Egypt from the slavery of the foreign bondholder, now raised a vigorous protest in favour of an open trial. He personally contributed to the defence of Arabi, and his efforts led to the commutation of the sentence of death to that of perpetual exile in Ceylon—a sentence which was subsequently very much modified. Arabi Pasha returned to Egypt in the year 1902, after an exile which had lasted about nine years.

201.jpg Palace Op the Khedive at Alexandria

The difficult task of readjusting the government of Egypt was then undertaken. Proposals were made to France for a modification of the dual control, in which France was offered the presidency of the Debt Commission. France, however, refused to accept the compromise, and the British government finally determined upon independent action. In place of the officials through whom the two governments had hitherto exercised the control, a single financial adviser was appointed, who was not allowed to take part in the direct administration of the country. The outline of this adjustment was given in a circular note addressed by Lord Granville to the Powers. He declared that an army would remain in Egypt as long as it was required; representative institutions were to be created; the Egyptian army and gendarmery were to be placed in the hands of Englishmen; the Diara estates were to be economically managed; foreigners were to be placed upon the same footing as natives in regard to taxation. The other Powers, including Turkey but excluding France, accepted the agreement. The office of financial adviser was given to Sir Edgar Vincent.

The important work of the reconstruction of Egypt now began in earnest. Sir Benson Maxwell set about establishing an effective means for the impartial administration of justice, and Colonel Moncrieff undertook the responsibility for the work of irrigation. Mr. Clifford Lloyd created a police system, reorganised the prisons and hospitals, and set free the untried prisoners. Baker Pasha formed a provincial gendarmery, and Sir Evelyn Wood organised an army of six thousand men.

In the year 1883, while this work of reconstruction was proceeding, a religious insurrection, which had originated two years previously, was forced upon the notice of the government. It has already been related that the Ismailian sect of the Muhammedans had introduced the doctrine of a coming Messiah, or Mahdi, who was to be the last of the imans, and the incarnation of the universal soul.

Not a few impostors had exploited this doctrine to their own advantage, and some of the Arabian tribes were firmly convinced that the Mahdi had come, and that the Mahdis who had appeared to their kinsmen elsewhere were merely clever charlatans. In the year 1881 Muhammed Ahmet, a religious leader among the Moslem Arabs in the Central African provinces of Kordofan and Darfur, proclaimed himself as the Mahdi, and called upon the Muhammedans to initiate a holy war.

The Mahdi's continued advances were rendered possible by the precarious state of affairs in Egypt. After a settlement was effected in 1883, Hicks Pasha, an officer of courage and ability, who had retired from the Indian army, gathered 11,000 men at Omdurman to quell the Mahdist insurrection. With this force he started up the Nile and struck across the desert to El-Obeid, where his troops were decoyed into a ravine, and after three days' fighting his whole army was annihilated by the Mahdist army numbering about 300,000 men. The entire Sudan then revolted against Egypt. The redoubtable Osman Digna appeared with the Hadendowa Arabs off the coast of the Red Sea, and harassed the Egyptian garrison. Osman defeated Captain Moncrieff and an army of 3,000 Bashi-Bazouks led by Baker Pasha. Egypt, under the advisement of the British government, then attempted to withdraw from the Sudan. It was decided that the western provinces of Kordofan and Dafur should be abandoned, but that important centres like Khartum on the Nile should be preserved, at least for a time. Here all the Egyptian colonists were to congregate. If the revolting Arab tribes, called by the general name of Dervishes, would not come to friendly terms with the settlers, then, in time, it was decided that Khartum itself, and every other locality in the Sudan, should be entirely relinquished, except the ports of the Red Sea.

General Gordon was sent to Khartum to make terms with the Mahdi and prepare for eventualities. The evacuation of this place was almost immediately decided upon by the British Cabinet, and Gordon arrived on February 18, 1884, but, being unsupported by European troops, he found the position an exceedingly difficult one to maintain. The Mahdi scorned his overtures, and Osman Digna was daily closing in upon the Egyptian port of Suakin.

The British then determined to act with vigour. Sinkitat had fallen on February 8th, and to protect Tokar and Suakin they landed four thousand men and fought a fierce battle with nine thousand Hadendowas at El - Teb February 28, 1884. The Egyptian garrison of Tokar, when the British army arrived, was found to have compromised with the Mahdists. Later on was fought the battle of Tamai against Osman Digna, during which a body of Arabs rushed the British guns and broke up the formation of their square. The British were on the point of defeat, but they managed to recover the lost guns, and scatter the Hadendowas.

General Gordon's situation was now extremely critical. It was hoped that an army might advance from Suakin across the desert to Berber, and then ascend the Nile to Khartum. In the meantime, Gordon urgently called for help, and, after interminable delays, in the autumn of 1884, an English army under Lord Wolseley started up the Nile to relieve him. The troops of Wolseley were aided by a camel corps of one thousand men, who were organised to make a rush across the desert. On the 16th of January, 1885, the camel troops came up with the enemy and fought the decisive battle of Matammeh. The Mahdist troops were mown down by rifles and Gatling-guns as soon as they were within short range. Immediately after the battle, Sir Charles Wilson determined to use the Egyptian flotilla to make an immediate advance. The steamers were protected, and a small relief force started on January 24th. They came in sight of Khartum on the 28th, but were fired upon from every side. At this moment, a native called from the bank that the city had fallen, and that the heroic Gordon had been killed.

A history of Egypt would be incomplete without some account of that leader whose bravery, humanitarian views, and understanding of the Oriental character have made him famous among the pioneers of Christian civilisation in Asia and Africa. Fresh from his laurels won in the service of the Chinese government in suppressing the Tai-peng rebellion, Gordon returned to England in 1871. In 1874 he accepted a position from Egypt, with the consent of the British government. He journeyed to Cairo and up the Nile to take up the command as governor of the Equatorial Provinces in succession to Sir Samuel Baker. There he laboured with incessant energy to put down the slave-trade and to secure the welfare of the natives. He established a series of Egyptian outposts along the Abyssinian frontier and made a survey of Lake Albert Nyanza. Returning to Cairo in 1874, after some delay, he was appointed by Ismail Pasha as governor-general of the whole of the Egyptian Sudan. A war followed with Abyssinia, and, after the army, led by Egyptian officers, had been beaten twice, Gordon went to Massowah to negotiate with the Abyssinian monarch, Atti Johannes. He next proceeded to Khartum, and vigorously undertook the suppression of the slave-trade.

Gordon's death at Khartum, in 1884, is one of the greatest tragedies of modern history. Supported neither by Egypt nor by the English army, of a different religion from all his followers, pressed on all sides by the Mah-dist forces, Gordon gallantly kept his few faithful followers at his side, and, with incessant activity and heroism, protected the remaining Egyptian colonists of the cities along the Nile, over which he still held control. He had called upon the British government to send aid across the desert from Suakin via Berber, but this request had been denied him. Berber then fell, and he was cut off to the north by many hundred miles of territory occupied by Mahdists. On January the 1st, nearly a month before the long-delayed succour approached the beleaguered city, the provisions had given out. He had written on December 14th that, with two hundred men, he could have successfully kept up the defence. As his army had been starving since the 5th of January, it is difficult to understand how he managed to hold out till January the 26th. On this date, two days before the relief expedition approached, the Mahdi's troops attacked Khartum, and, finding Gordon's men too weak to fight, the defences were cut down, and the heroic Gordon was killed by a shot at the head of the steps of the palace.

Upon learning of the death of Gordon, the relief expedition retreated, finding that the object of their advance had proved to be a hopeless one. A general evacuation was begun, and Dongola and the whole country south of Wady Haifa surrendered. The Mahdi, soon after winning Khartum, died, and was succeeded by the Califa Abdulla at Taashi. This change facilitated the Anglo-Egyptian retreat. About the same time Slatin Bey surrendered in Darfur and embraced Muhammedan-ism, and Lupton Bey, following his example, also adopted the religion of Islam, and yielded in Bahr-el-Ghazel. Emin Pasha alone retained his authority, derived originally from Egypt, in the province of Equatoria. Sir H. M. Stanley afterwards made his famous journey "Through Darkest Africa" and rescued this famous pasha. This noted explorer died May 9, 1904.

In the autumn of 1885, the dervish Emir of Dongola, Muhammed el-Kheir, advanced upon the Egyptian frontier. On December 30th he was met by the Egyptian troops under Sir Frederick Stephenson. The Egyptian troops, unaided by Europeans, attacked the dervishes at Ginnis and totally defeated them, winning two guns and twenty banners. It was a source of much gratification that the Egyptian fellaheen had proved themselves so courageous and well disciplined in the encounter with the fierce hosts of the desert.

In October, 1886, Wad en Nejumi, the victor of El-Obeid, was sent by the califa to invade Egypt. The advance of this army was delayed by trouble within the Sudan; but the califa, having at length beaten his enemies, in the year 1889 sent large reinforcements northwards to carry on the campaign against Egypt with vigour. The Egyptian troops, with one squadron of hussars, fought a decisive engagement with Wad en Nejumi on August 3rd of the same year. The dervish leader, many of his emirs, and twelve hundred Arab warriors were slain; four thousand more were taken prisoners, and 147 dervish standards were captured.

The ever-increasing progress of Egypt during the next ten years, together with the accounts received from escaped prisoners of the reign of terror and inhumanity which obtained in the Sudan, brought the question of the reconquest of the lost provinces once more into prominence. The Italians had met with a fearful disaster in fighting against the Abyssinians at the battle of Adowa on March 1,1896. They were holding Kassala within the ex-Egyptian territory by invitation from England, and a reason was presented for attacking the dervishes elsewhere in order to draw off their army from Kassala. With the appointment of Sir Henry Kitchener, on March 11,1896, as sirdar of the Egyptian army, the final period of hostilities was entered upon between Egypt and the independent Arabs of the Central African Provinces.

General Kitchener was ordered to build a railroad up the Nile, and to push forward with a well-organised Egyptian army, whose chief officers were Englishmen. The whole scheme of the invasion was planned with consummate forethought and deliberation, the officials and advisers in charge of the enterprise being chosen from the most tried and able experts in their several provinces. Lieut.-Col. E. P. C. Girouard, a brilliant young Canadian, undertook the work of railroad reconstruction. Col. L. Bundle was chief of the staff, and Major R. Wingate head of the Intelligence Department, ably assisted by the ex-prisoner of the califa, Slatin Bey. The army consisted in the beginning almost entirely of Egyptian and Sudanese troops, together with one battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment. There were eight battalions of artillery, eight camel corps, and sixty-three gunboats which steamed up the Nile.

After some sharp skirmishing, the advance was made to Dongola, when the English battalion was sent home disabled, and in time was replaced by a strong English brigade under General Gatacre. Early in 1897, a railroad had been thrown across the desert from Wady Haifa towards Abu Hamed, obviating the need of making an immense detour around the bend of the Nile near Dongola. The califa had, by this time, organised his defence. The Jaalin tribe had revolted against him at Metammeh, and had sought for help from the Egyptians, but before the supply of rifles arrived, the dervishes under the Emir Mahmud stormed Metammeh and annihilated the whole tribe of the Jaalin Arabs.

The van of the army of invasion, both the flying corps and the flotilla of gunboats, advanced upon Abu Hamed towards the end of August. Major-General Hunter carried the place by storm. Berber was found to be deserted, and was occupied on September 5th. Hunter burned Adarama and reconnoitred on the Atbara. The gunboats bombarded Metammeh and reduced the place to ruins. The sirdar, General Kitchener, then went on a mission to Kassala, where he found the Italians anxious to evacuate. He thereupon made an agreement whereby the Egyptians should occupy the place, which was accordingly accomplished under Colonel Parsons on Christmas Day, 1897. Disagreements among the dervishes prevented them from making any concerted defence, and early in 1896 Kitchener renewed the advance and captured the dervish stores at Shendy on March 27th. The zeriba or camp of Mahmud was attacked and stormed with great loss to the dervishes on the 5th of April.

On the date scheduled beforehand by Lord Kitchener, just after the annual rains had refreshed the country, the Anglo-Egyptian army made its final advance upon Khartum. There were ten thousand British troops and fifteen thousand Egyptians. The forces were concentrated at Wady Hamed, sixty miles above Omdurman, from which point they bombarded the city with shells filled with deadly lyddite, and the mosque and tomb of the late Mahdi were destroyed. At length the entire army advanced to within four miles of Khartum. On September 2nd the cavalry and a horse battery reached Kasar Shanbal. From this point they saw the whole army of the califa, consisting of from forty to fifty thousand men, advancing to confront them from behind the hills. The Anglo-Egyptians advanced to meet the dervishes disposed in the form of a horseshoe, with either end resting upon the banks of the river. At intervals along the whole line of the army were field-pieces and Maxims, and the gunboats were within reach to aid in shelling the enemy. The British soldiers then built a square sand rampart called a zarilea, and their Egyptian allies dug defensive trenches.

On the front and left the dervishes came on in great strength, but, when the Maxims, the field-guns, and the repeating rifles opened fire upon them, at a comparatively close range, a frightful havoc was the result. All who remained to fight were immediately shot down, and the whole field was cleared in fifteen minutes. The dervishes retreated behind the hills, and were joined by fresh forces. General MacDonald, in making a detour with a body of Lancers, was suddenly beset by two thousand dervish riflemen, who fiercely charged him on three sides. Quickly forming a square, he succeeded by desperate efforts in repelling the enemy, until he was reinforced by Kitchener, who perceived his desperate situation.

The calif then attacked the extreme left wing of the army, but was again driven off. The Anglo-Egyptians were now in a position to deliver the main attack upon the dervish defences. The troops of the califa fought with heroic bravery, fearlessly advancing within range of the Anglo-Egyptian fire, but each time they were mown down by the cross fire of the Maxims and rifles. Vast numbers were slain, and some divisions of the dervishes suffered complete annihilation. They left ten thousand dead upon the field, and ten thousand wounded. The rest fled in all directions, a scattered and straggling force, with the califa himself. The Anglo-Egyptians lost but two thousand men. Few prisoners were taken, for, in almost every instance, the dervishes refused to surrender, and even when wounded used their swords and spears against the rescuers of the ambulance corps. All the fighting was over by midday, and in the afternoon General Kitchener entered Omdurman, and the army encamped in the vicinity. Slatin Bey was duly installed as governor in the name of the Egyptian khédive. The European prisoners of the califa were now released, and on Sunday, the 4th of September, the sirdar and all his army held a solemn service in memory of General Gordon near the spot where he was killed.

Bodies of men were now sent out on all sides to pacify the country, and the sirdar, who had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Kitchener of Khartum, started on an expedition up the Nile in a gunboat, in order to settle the difficult question arising from the occupation of Pashoda by a French corps under Major Marchand. The ability and strategy of this French commander were of a very high order. The general plan of the expedition had been in accord with French military traditions, based upon former attempts in India and America to separate the British colonial dominions, or to block the way to their extension by establishing a series of military outposts or forts at certain strategic points chosen for this purpose. Had the French designs under Desaix in India, or of the army of occupation in the Mississippi Valley in the eighteenth century, been supported by a powerful fleet, there is no doubt that British colonisation would have suffered a severe setback. If Major Marchand remained in Fashoda, the route to all the upper regions of the Nile would be cut off from any English or Egyptian enterprise. Accordingly, Lord Kitchener ran the risk of grave international complications by advancing upon Fashoda to meet Major Marchand. Fortunately, a temporary agreement was entered upon that the home governments should decide the question at issue, and Lord Kitchener then hoisted the Anglo-Egyptian flag south of the French settlement, and the officers fraternised over glasses of champagne.

It is now believed that Russia would have aided France if it had come to a war, but the French government thought the affair not of sufficient importance to warrant an international struggle over the retention of Fashoda, and the respective spheres of influence of France and Great Britain were finally agreed upon early in the following year by the Niger Convention, which left the whole of the ex-Egyptian provinces under British protection, as far south as the Equatorial Lakes, and as far west as the border line between Darfur and Wadai.

The calif was subsequently pursued from place to place in the desert, and was at length overtaken by Colonel Wingate at Om Dubreikat. The dervish leader fought a desperate fight; and, refusing to fly, was slain with all his personal followers on November 26, 1899.

The total cost of these campaigns had been incredibly small, not amounting in all to the total of $12,000,000, and the railroad, the cost of which is here included in the expenditure, is of permanent value to Egypt.

After the re-occupation of Khartum, it was again, as in Gordon's time, made the seat of government, the dervish capital having been located across the Nile at Omdurman. For a memorial to Gordon, $500,000 was enthusiastically raised in England. The memorial took the practical form of an educational establishment for the natives of the Sudan, the foundation-stone of which was laid by Lord Cromer in January, 1900. The school is intended to be exclusively for Muhammedans, and only the Moslem religion is to be taught within its walls.

Though the Mahdism, of which the late califa had been the leading spirit, had degenerated into a struggle of slave-traders versus civilisation, the calif at least showed conspicuous courage in the manner in which he faced his death. For the last twenty years, during which the revolts of the dervishes had troubled the outlying provinces of the Egyptian dominions, trade had been almost at a standstill; large numbers of blacks had been enslaved; an equal number probably had been slaughtered, and whole regions depopulated. The total population was cut down during these years to one-half of what it previously had been, and it was of vital importance to Egypt to reconquer all the lost provinces which lay upon the banks of the river Nile. If the prosperity of Egypt is to rest upon a sound basis, and not be subjected to periodic overthrow at the hands of the hostile inhabitants of the south, it is essential that the Upper Nile should be under the control of those who are responsible for the welfare of the country. Egypt is the gift of the Nile, and the entire population of Egypt is dependent upon this river. To secure prosperity for the country and to develop Egyptian resources to the fullest extent, the rulers of Egypt must also be the rulers of the Nile. When the Anglo-Egyptian expedition under Kitchener set out to reconquer the Sudan, the development of Egypt had been progressing in all directions at a rapid rate. Having greater interests to defend, less indebtedness to meet, and greater facilities for meeting the taxes due the home government, no less than the foreign bondholders, the time was ripe in which to take that great step towards securing the prosperity of Egypt in the future by finally destroying the community of slaveholders, which, under the sanction of Mahdism, brutally tyrannised over the non-Muhammedan population.

From the beginning of the British occupation, the English have been engaged in persevering efforts at reform in every branch of the administration. The reforms which they instituted in the different departments of the army, finance, public works, and the police system were not at first popular. The native officials found out that they could not use methods of extortion; the upper classes, the pashas, and the wealthy landowners also discovered that they were not at liberty to do as they pleased, and that the English inspectors of irrigation strictly regulated the water-supply. It has since been fully demonstrated that the curtailing of their privilege to make use of the water when and how they chose is more than compensated by improved conditions.

During the fifteen years previous to 1898, the population of Egypt had increased by about three million, or forty-three per cent. It was then ten million; it is now nearly eleven million. Within the boundaries of the irrigated land Egypt has always been a very populous country. By the effort to expand this area of irrigation, the way was prepared for a considerable increase in the total population. There are sections of this land where the density of the population averages from seven to eight hundred or even a thousand persons to the square mile. In early times, the population was still greater, as the irrigation area was increased by the great reservoir of Lake Mceris. When Omar made a census (A.D. 640), there were to be found six million Kopts, exclusive of the aged, the young, and the women, and three hundred thousand Greeks: this would imply, even at that decadent period, a total population of fifteen million.

The increased prosperity shown by the railroads is most satisfactory. Two hundred and twelve miles of new railroad have been constructed, and an enormous development of the railroad and telegraph business has resulted. Since the year 1897 railroad development has been very rapid, and, with the line to the Sudan, amounted in 1904 to some two thousand miles. From the Sudan railway it is intended ultimately to extend a railroad system through the heart of Africa, from Cairo to Capetown.

Great progress has been made in all departments of public works. Hundreds of agricultural roads have been built, and the mileage of canals and drains has been largely increased to the very great benefit of the Egyptian peasant.

The quantity of salt sold was doubled between 1881 and 1897, while the price has been reduced nearly forty per cent. The tonnage of the port of Alexandria increased from 1,250,000 pounds to 2,549,739 between 1881 and 1901. This increase was paralleled by a like increase in Alexandria's great rival, Port Said.

Sir Evelyn Baring (Viscount Cromer) was appointed consul-general and financial adviser to Egypt in January, 1884, succeeding in this position Sir Edward Malet. Sir Evelyn was nominally the financial adviser, but practically the master of Egypt. The khédive never ventured to oppose the carrying out of his wishes, since the British army of occupation was ever at his beck and call to lend its weight to the commands which he issued to the government under the appearance of friendly advice.

The most serious obstacle to the progress of Egypt has been the authority of the mixed administrations, the chief of which is the Caisse de la Dette. The main object of these administrations is to secure for European bondholders payment of the debts incurred by Egypt chiefly under the incredibly profligate government of Ismail Pasha. The Caisse de la Dette has commissions from six of the Powers. It receives from the tax-gatherer all the taxes apportioned to the payment of the interest for foreign indebtedness. Its influence, however, extends much farther, and the Caisse exercises the right of prohibiting expenditure on the part of the Egyptian government until its own demands for current interest have been complied with. It further has the right to veto any loan which the Egyptian government might be willing to raise, however urgent the necessity might be, unless it can be demonstrated that there is not the least likelihood that payment of the shareholders whom the Caisse represents will be in the least degree affected. If all that the Caisse claimed as belonging to its jurisdiction were really allowed to it by the Anglo-Egyptian government, the Caisse or International Court might exercise an arbitrary control over Egyptian affairs. It has many times seriously attempted to block the progress of Egypt with the sole aim of considering the pockets of the foreign shareholders, and in entire disregard to the welfare of the people.

Added to this tribunal is the Railway Board and the Commissions of the Daira and Domains. The Railway Board administers the railroads, telegraphs, and the port of Alexandria. The Daira and Domains Commissions administer the large estates, mortgaged to the holders of the loans raised by Ismail Pasha under these two respective names. The Daira Estate yielded a surplus over and above the amount of interest on the debt paid, for the first time, in 1890. The Domain Estate had to face a deficit until the year 1900. Until these respective dates the Egyptian government itself was obliged to pay the deficit due to the bondholders.

223.jpg Viscount Cromer (sir Evelyn Baring)

In the year 1884, the Convention of London was signed by the European Powers, which was, however, for the most part, oppressive and unjust to the Egyptians. The amount of money raised by taxation, which was allowed to be spent in one year, was limited to the definite sum of $25,927,890. Fortunately for Egypt, the London Convention had one clause by which $44,760,000 could be utilised for the development of the country. With this sum the indemnities of Alexandria were paid, defects in the payment of interest were made good, and a small sum was left wherewith to increase irrigation and other useful works. The criminal folly of the former lavish expenditure was now demonstrated by a brilliant object-lesson. This small sum, when kept out of the hands of the rapacious bondholders, and applied to the development of the rich soil of Egypt, was found to work wonders. From the moment when the finances of Egypt were for the first time used to develop what is naturally the richest soil in the world, progress towards betterment grew rapidly into the remarkable prosperity of to-day. For a time, however, the government was obliged to use extreme parsimony in order to keep the country from further falling under the control of the irresponsible bondholders. Finally, in the year 1888, Sir Evelyn Baring wrote to the home government that the situation was so far improved that in his judgment "it would take a series of untoward events seriously to endanger the stability of Egyptian finance and the solvency of the Egyptian government." The corner had been turned, and progressive financial relief was at length afforded the long-suffering Egyptian people in the year 1890. After several years of financial betterment, it was decided to devote future surpluses to remunerative objects, such as works of irrigation, railway extension, the construction of hospitals, prisons, and other public buildings, and in the improvement of the system of education. Great difficulty was experienced in making use of this surplus, on account of technical hindrances which were persistently placed in the way of the Egyptian government by the Caisse de la Dette. These difficulties are now almost entirely removed.

In 1896 it was decided, as has been narrated, to be for the interest of Egypt to start a campaign against the dervishes. Appeal was made to the Caisse de la Dette to raise additional funds for the necessary expenses of the projected campaign. The Caisse, following its universal precedent, immediately vetoed the project. England then made special grants-in-aid to Egypt, which both aided the Egyptian government and greatly strengthened her hold upon Egypt. By means of this timely assistance, Egypt was enabled successfully to pass through the period of increased expenditure incurred by the reconquest of the Sudan.

During the lifetime of Khedive Tewfik, who owed his throne to the British occupation, there had been little or no disagreement between the British and Egyptian authorities. In the year 1887 Sir Henry Drummond Wolff prepared a convention, in accordance with which England promised to leave Egypt within three years from that date. At the last moment the sultan, urged by France and Russia, refused to sign it, and the occupation which these two Powers would not agree to legalise even for a period of three years was now less likely than ever to terminate. The following year Tewfik dismissed Nubar Pasha, who had, by the advice of the foreign Powers, stood in the way of reforms planned by the English officials.

Tewfik died in 1892, and was succeeded by Abbas Hilmi Pasha, called officially Abbas II. He was born in 1874, and was barely of age according to Turkish law, which fixes magistracy at eighteen years of age in the case of the succession to the throne. He came directly from the college at Vienna to Cairo, where his accession was celebrated with great pomp; and the firman, confirming him in all the powers, privileges, and territorial rights which his father had enjoyed, was read from the steps of the palace in Abdin Square. For some time the new khédive did not cooperate with cordiality with Great Britain. He was young and eager to exercise his power. His throne had not been saved for him by the British, as his father's had been, and he was surrounded by intriguers, who were scheming always for their own advantage. He at first appeared almost as unprogressive as his great-uncle, Abbas I., but he later learned to understand the importance of British counsels. During his visit to England in 1899 he frankly acknowledged the great good which England had done in Egypt, and declared himself ready to cooperate with the officials administering British affairs. This friendliness was a great change from the disposition which he had shown in previous years, during the long-drawn-out dispute between himself and Sir Evelyn Baring regarding the appointment of Egyptian officials. The controversy at one time indicated a grave crisis, and it is reported that on one occasion the British agent ordered the army to make a demonstration before the palace, and pointed out to the young ruler the folly of forcing events which would inevitably lead to his dethronement. The tension was gradually relaxed, and compromises brought about which resulted in harmony between the khédive and the British policy of administration, and no one rejoiced more than Abbas Hilmi over the victory of Omdurman.

Agricultural interests are dearer to the heart of the khédive than statecraft. He rides well, drives well, rises early, and is of abstemious habits. Turkish is his mother tongue, but he talks Arabic with fluency and speaks English, French, and German very well.

An agreement between England and Egypt had been entered upon January 19, 1899, in regard to the administration of the Sudan. According to this agreement, the British and Egyptian flags were to be used together, and the supreme military and civil command was vested in the governor-general, who is appointed by the khédive on the recommendation of the British government, and who cannot be removed without the latter's consent. This has proved so successful that the governor-general, Sir Reginald Wingate, reported in 1901:

"I record my appreciation of the manner in which the officers, non-commissioned officers, soldiers, and officials,—British, Egyptian, and Sudanese,—without distinction, have laboured during the past year to push on the work of regenerating the country. Nor can I pass over without mention the loyal and valuable assistance I have received from many of the loyal ulemas, sheiks, and notables, who have displayed a most genuine desire to see their country once more advancing in the path of progress, material success, and novel development."

In 1898 there were in all about 10,000 schools, with 17,000 teachers and 228,000 pupils. Seven-eighths of these schools were elementary, the education being confined to reading, writing, and the rudiments of arithmetic. The government has under its immediate direction eighty-seven schools of the lowest grade, called kuttabs, and thirty-five of the higher grades, three secondary, two girls' schools, and ten schools for higher or professional education,—the school of law, the school of medicine, with its pharmaceutical school and its school for nursing and obstetrics, polytechnic schools for civil engineers, two training-schools for schoolmasters, a school of agriculture, two technical schools, one training-school for female teachers, and the military school. In addition to the schools belonging to the Ministry of Public Instruction, there were under the inspection of that department in 1901 twenty-three primary schools of the higher grade, with an attendance of 3,585, and 845 schools of the lowest grade, with 1,364 teachers and an attendance of 26,831 pupils. There are 187 schools attached to various Protestant and Catholic missions, and forty-three European private schools.

The Koptic community supports one thousand schools for elementary education, twenty-seven primary boys' and girls' schools, and one college. The teaching of the Koptic language in the schools is now compulsory; the subjects taught, and the methods of teaching them, are the same as in vogue in other countries. Fifty per cent, of the Koptic male population can read and write well. The indigenous tribunals of the country are called Mehkemmehs, and are presided over by cadis. At the present time they retain jurisdiction in matters of personal law relating to marriage succession, guardianship, etc. Beyond this sphere they also fulfil certain functions connected with the registration of title of land. In matters of personal law, however, the native Christians are subject to their own patriarchs or other religious leaders.

In other matters, natives are justiciable before the so-called native tribunals, established during the period of the British occupation. These consist of forty-six summary tribunals, each presided over by a single judge, who is empowered to exercise jurisdiction in matters up to $500 in value, and criminal jurisdiction in offences punishable by fine or by imprisonment of three years or less. Associated with these are seven central tribunals, each chamber consisting of three judges. There is also a court of appeal in Cairo, one-half of its members being Europeans. In criminal matters there is always a right to appeal, sometimes to the court of appeal, sometimes to a central tribunal. In civil matters an appeal lies from a summary tribunal to a central tribunal in matters exceeding $500 in value, and from the judgment of a central tribunal in the first instance to the court of appeal in all cases. The prosecution in criminal matters is entrusted to the parquet, which is directed by a procurer-general; the investigation of crime is ordinarily conducted by the parquet, or by the police under its direction. Offences against irrigation laws, which were once of such frequent occurrence and the occasion of injustice and lawlessness, are now tried by special and summary administration tribunals.

The capitulations or agreements concerning justice entered into by all the Great Powers of Europe and the Ottoman Empire, relative to the trial and judgment of Europeans, include Egypt as an integral part of the Turkish Empire. Foreigners for this reason have the privilege of being tried by European courts. But if one party in a case is European and another Egyptian, there are special mixed tribunals, established in 1876, consisting partly of native and partly of foreign judges. These tribunals settle civil and also some criminal cases between Egyptians and Europeans, and in 1900 penal jurisdiction was conferred upon them in connection with offences against the bankruptcy laws.

There are three mixed tribunals of the first class, with a court of appeal, sitting at Alexandria. Civil cases between foreigners of the same nationality are tried before their own consular courts, which also try criminal cases not within the jurisdiction of the mixed tribunals, in which the accused are foreigners. By this well organised administration of justice, crime has steadily decreased throughout Egypt, and the people have learned to enjoy the benefit of receiving impartial justice, from which they had been shut off for many centuries.

About sixty per cent, of the inhabitants of modern Egypt belong to the agricultural class—the fellaheen. The peasantry are primitive and thrifty in their habits, and hold tenaciously to their ancient traditions. They are a healthy race, good-tempered and tractable, and fairly intelligent, but, like all Southern nations breathing a balmy atmosphere, they are unprogressive. Centuries of oppression have not, however, crushed their cheerfulness. There is none of that abject misery of poverty among the Egyptians which is to be seen in cold countries. There is no starvation amongst them. Food is cheap, and a peasant can live well on a piastre (five cents) a day. A single cotton garment is enough for clothing, and the merest hut affords sufficient protection. The wants of the Egyptians are few. Their condition, now freed from forced labour, called the "Courbash," as also from injustice, crushing taxation, and usury, which characterised former administrations, compares favourably with the peasantry of many countries in Europe, and is equal, if not superior, to that of the peasantry of England itself.

Under the British protection there has been a renewal of the Koptic Christian race. They are easily to be distinguished from their Muhammedan countrymen, being lighter in colour, and resembling the portraits on the ancient monuments. They are a strong community in Upper Egypt, whither they fled from the Arab invaders, and they there hold a large portion of the land. They live mostly in the towns, are better educated than other Egyptians, and are employed frequently in the government service as clerks and accountants.

Koptic is still studied for church purposes by the Kopts, who both by their physiognomy and by their retention of the old Egyptian institution of monasticism are the only true descendants having the social and physical heredity of the ancient Egyptians. Four of the oldest monasteries in the world still survive in the Natron Valley.

In spite of their distinguished social ancestry, the Kopts are by no means a superior class morally to the fellaheen, who are in part the descendants of those ancient Egyptians who renounced the Christian religion, the language and institutions of the Egyptian Christians, and accepted Muhammedanism and the Arabic language and institutions.

The creed of the Kopts is Jacobite. They have three metropolitans and twelve bishops in Egypt, one metropolitan and two bishops in Abyssinia, and one bishop in Khartum. There are also arch-priests, priests, deacons, and monks. Priests must be married before ordination, but celibacy is imposed upon monks and high dignitaries. The Abyssinian Church is ruled by a metropolitan, and bishops are chosen from amongst the Egyptian-Koptic ecclesiastics, nor can the coronation of the King of Abyssinia take place until he has been anointed by the metropolitan, and this only after the authorisation by the Patriarch of Alexandria.

CHAPTER V.—THE WATER WAYS OF EGYPT

The White and Blue Niles: The Barrage: Clearing the Sudd: The Suez Canal: Ancient and modern irrigation: The Dam at Aswan: The modern exploration of the Nile.

Between the Sudan and the Mediterranean the only perennial stream is the Nile, a word probably derived from the Semitic root nahal, meaning a valley or a river-valley, and subsequently a "river," in a pre-eminent and exclusive sense. The ancient Egyptians called it the Ar or Aur (Koptic, Iaro), or "black"; hence the Greek word [...] allusion to the colour, not of the water, but of the sediment which it precipitated during the floods. In contrast to the yellow sands of the surrounding desert, the Nile mud is black enough to have given the land itself its oldest name, Kem, or Kemi, which has the same meaning of "black." At Khartum, where the White Nile joins the Blue Nile, the main branch has a fall from its upper level in the region of the tropical lakes, four thousand feet above the sea, to twelve hundred feet, while traversing a distance of twenty-three hundred miles. From Khartum to the sea the distance through which the waters of the Nile wend their way is about eighteen hundred and forty miles. During the greater part of this course the flow is level, the average descent being about eight inches per mile. If it were not, therefore, for the obstruction met with in the Nubian section, the course of the Nile would be everywhere navigable. Although no perennial affluents enter the main stream lower down than Khartum, the volume of the Nile remains with little diminution throughout the entire distance to the Mediterranean. During the period of low water the amount of water in different localities is still uniform, notwithstanding all the irrigation, infiltration, and evaporation constantly taking place. The only explanation which has been given to this phenomenon is that there are hidden wells in the bed of the Nile, and from their flow the waste is ever renewed.

As the earth revolves from west to east, the waters of the Nile tend to be driven upon the right bank on the west, where the current is constantly eating away the sandstone and limestone cliffs. For this reason the left side of the river is far more fertile and well cultivated than the right bank. Below Ombos the valley is narrowly constructed, being but thirteen hundred yards in width, the cliffs overhanging the river on either side, but at Thebes it broadens out to nine or ten miles, and farther up, in the Keneh district, the valley is twelve or fifteen miles in width. The river here approaches within sixty miles of the Red Sea, and it is believed that a branch of the Nile once flowed out into the sea in this direction.

Seventy miles below Keneh the Nile throws from its left bank the Bahr Yusef branch, a small current of 350 feet in breadth, which flows for hundreds of miles through the broader strip of alluvial land between the main stream and the Libyan escarpments. In the Beni-Suef district this stream again bifurcates, the chief branch continuing to wind along the Nile Valley to a point above the Delta, where it joins the main stream. The left branch penetrates westward through a gap in the Libyan escarpments into the Fayum depression, ramifying into a thousand irrigating rills, and pouring its overflow into the Birket-el-Qarum, or "Lake of Horns," which still floods the lowest cavity and is a remnant of the famous ancient Lake Moris. The Fayum, which is the territory reclaimed from the former lake, is now an exceedingly productive district, a sort of inland delta, fed like the marine delta by the fertilising flood-waters of the Nile.

The traveller Junker wrote of this district in 1875: "I found myself surrounded by a garden tract of unsurpassed fertility, where there was scarcely room for a path amid the exuberant growths; where pedestrians, riders, and animals had to move about along the embankments of countless canals. Now a land of roses, of the vine, olive, sugar-cane, and cotton, where the orange and lemon plants attain the size of our apple-trees, it was in primeval times an arid depression of the stony and sandy Libyan waste."

North of the Fayum the Nile flows on to Cairo, where the narrow water way allowed to its course by the two lines of cliffs widens, and the cliffs recede to the right and left. There is thus space for the waters to spread and ramify over the alluvial plain. Nearly all this portion of Egypt has been covered by the sediment of the Nile, and from the earliest times there have been numerous distinct branches or channels of the river running out by separate openings into the sea. As several of these branches have been tapped to a great extent for irrigation, all except two have ceased to be true outlets of the Nile. In the Greek period there were seven mouths and several [...Greek...], or "false mouths." The two remaining mouths are those of Rosetta and Damietta, and these were always the most important of the number. They branched off formerly close to the present spot where Cairo stands, a little below Memphis; but during two thousand years the fork has gradually shifted to about thirteen miles lower down.

The triangular space enclosed by these two branches and the sea-coast was called by the Greeks the delta, on account of the likeness in shape to the Greek letter of that name A. At the head, or apex, of the triangle stands the famous barrage, or dam, begun in 1847 by Mehemet Ali, for the twofold purpose of reclaiming many thousand acres of waste land, and of regulating the discharge and the navigation through the Delta. The idea was originated by a Frenchman in his service named Linant Bey. This engineer desired to alter the course of the river and build a weir at a point farther to the north, where the contour of land seemed to favour the design more than that of the present locality. Mehemet Ali thought his plans too costly, and accepted in preference those of Mougel Bey. Unexpected difficulties were encountered from the very beginning. Mehemet was exceedingly anxious to hurry the work, and Mougel Bey had only made a beginning, when an exceptionally high Nile carried away all the lime in the concrete base. Mehemet Ali did not live to see the completion of this work. The object, could it have been realised, was to hold up the waters of the Nile during the eight months of the ebb, and thus keep them on a level with the soil, and at the same time to supply Lower Egypt with an amount of water equal to that which came down during flood-time. It was hoped to cover the very large expenditure by the additional land which it was expected would come under irrigation, and by doing away with the primitive shadoofs and setting free for productive enterprise the numerous army of the agricultural labourers who spent the greater part of their time in slowly raising up buckets of water from the Nile and pouring them into the irrigating channels.

The barrage is a double bridge, or weir, the eastern part spanning the Damietta branch of the Nile, the western part the Rosetta branch. The appearance of the structure is so light and graceful that the spectator finds it hard to conceive of the difficulty and the greatness of the work itself. Architecturally, the barrage is very beautiful, with a noble front and a grand effect, produced by a line of castellated turrets, which mark the site of the sluice gates. There are two lofty crenellated towers, corresponding with the towers over the gateway of a mediaeval baronial castle. The sluices are formed of double cones of hollow iron, in a semicircular form, worked on a radii of rods fixed to a central axis at each side of the sluice-gate. They are slowly raised or let down by the labour of two men, the gates being inflected as they descend in the direction of the bed of that part of the river whose waters are retained. The working of the barrage was never what it was intended to be. After the year 1867 it ceased to be of any practical utility, and was merely an impediment to navigation. Between the years 1885—90, however, during the British occupation, Sir Colon Scott-Moncrieff successfully completed the barrage at a cost of $2,500,000, and now the desired depth of eight feet of water on the lower part of the Nile can always be maintained.

It proved to be of the greatest advantage in saving labour worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and in the irrigation and navigation facilities that had been contemplated as among the benefits which would naturally accrue from its successful completion.

Compared with the advance of the land seaward at the estuary of the Mississippi and the Ganges, the advance of the Nile seaward is very slow. This is accounted for by the geological theory that the Delta of the Nile is gradually sinking. If this is so, the tendency of the periodical deposit to raise the level of the Delta will be counteracted by the annual subsidence. These phenomena account for the gradual burial of Egyptian monuments under the sand, although the actual level of the sea above what it formerly was is quite unappreciable.

The periodical rise in the Nile, recurring as regularly as the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, necessarily remained an unsolved mystery to the ancients, for until the discovery of the tropical regions, with their mountainous lakes and deluging rains, it was impossible to learn the occasion of this increase. It is now known that the Blue Nile, flowing out of the mountainous parts of Abyssinia, is the sole cause of the periodic overflow of the Nile. Without the tropical rains of the Ethiopian tablelands, there would be no great rise nor any fertilising deposits. Without the White Nile, which runs steadily from the perennial reservoirs of the great Central African lakes, the Lower Nile would assume the character of an intermittent wady, such as the neighbouring Khor Baraka, periodically flushed by the discharge of the torrential downpours from Abyssinia. Though there is a periodical increase in the flow of the upper waters of the White Nile, yet the effect of this, lower down, is minimised by the dense quantities of vegetable drift, which, combining with the forest of aquatic growth, forms those vast barriers, known by the name of sudd, which not only arrest navigation but are able to dam up large bodies of water.

The sudd, it is supposed, stopped the advance of the Roman centurions who were sent up the Nile in the days of Nero. Sir Samuel Baker was the one who first pointed out the great disadvantage of allowing the vegetable matter to accumulate, both to merchants and to those who were employed to suppress the slave-trade. In the year 1863 the two branches of the White Nile were blocked above their junction at Lake No. Once blocked, the accumulation rapidly increased from the stoppage of outlet, forming the innumerable floating islands which at this part of the Nile customarily float down-stream. A marsh of vast extent had been formed, and to all appearance, as Baker narrates, the White Nile had disappeared. Baker cut through fifty miles of the sudd, and urged the khédive to reopen the Nile. The work was successfully undertaken by Ishmail Ayub Pasha, and the White Nile became clear for large vessels when Gordon reached Khartum in 1874. It is practically impossible to keep the central provinces of the Nile open to civilisation unless the course of the Nile is free. Yet in 1878 the obstruction had been renewed, and during the occupation of these provinces by the rebel dervishes under the Mahdi and the califa the Nile was completely blocked, as formerly, at Lake No. The alarming failure of the Nile flood in 1899—1900 was generally attributed to this blockade, and in 1899 fifty thousand dollars was placed at the disposal of the governor-general for reopening the White Nile by removing the vast accumulation of sudd which blocked the Bahr-el-Jebel from Lake No almost as far as Shambeh. The work was started under the direction of Sir William Garstin in 1899. In 1900 the greater part of the sudd had been removed by the strenuous labours of Major Peake, and the Nile again became navigable from Khartum to Rejaf. The sudd was found to be piled up and of almost as close a structure as peat. It was sawn out in blocks ten feet square and carried away by gunboats. In the years 1901—02 further progress was made, and twenty thousand dollars appropriated for the work; and by means of constant patrolling the sudd is now practically absent from the whole course of the White Nile.

The discharge of the flood waters from the Upper Nile begins to make itself felt in Lower Nubia and Egypt in the month of June, at first slightly, and after the middle of July much more rapidly, the river continuing to rise steadily till the first week in October, when it reaches high-water mark, nearly fifty-four or fifty-five feet at the Egyptian frontier, and twenty-five or twenty-six feet at Cairo. A subsidence then sets in, and continues till low-water level is again reached, usually about the end of May. The floods are then much higher and confined to a narrower space in the Nubian section of the Nile, while they gradually die out in the region of the Delta, where the excess seawards is discharged by the Rosetta and Damietta branches. In place of the old Nilometers, the amount of the rise of the Nile is now reported by telegraph from meteorological stations.

It is popularly supposed that at every rise the plains of the Delta are inundated, but this is not the case. The actual overflow of the banks of the river and canals is the exception, and when it happens is most disastrous. The irrigation of fields and plantations is effected by slow infiltration through the retaining dykes, which are prevented from bursting by the process of slow absorption. The first lands to be affected are not those which are nearest to the dyke, but those which are of the lowest level, because the waters, in percolating through under the ground, reach the surface of these parts first. In Manitoba during a dry season sometimes the roots of the wheat strike down deep enough to reach the reservoir of moisture under ground. In Egypt this underground moisture is what is counted upon, but it is fed by a special and prepared system, and is thus brought to the roots of the plants artificially.

An analysis of the Nile alluvium, which has accumulated in the course of ages to a thickness of from three to four feet above the old river-bed, shows that it contains a considerable percentage of such fertilising substances as carbonate of lime and magnesia, silicates of aluminum, carbon, and several oxides. Where the water has to be raised to higher levels, two processes are used. The primitive shadoof of native origin figured on a monument as far back as 3,300 years ago, and the more modern sakieh was apparently introduced in later times from Syria and Persia. The shadoof is used on small farms, and the sakieh is more often used for larger farms and plantations. These contrivances line the whole course of the Nile from Lower Egypt to above Khartum. The shadoof will raise six hundred gallons ten feet in an hour, and consists of a pole weighted at one end, with a bucket at the other; when the water is raised the weight counterbalances the weight of the full bucket. The sakieh, which will raise twelve hundred gallons twenty or twenty-four feet in an hour, is a modified form of a Persian wheel, made to revolve by a beast of burden; it draws an endless series of buckets up from the water, and automatically empties them into a trough or other receptacle. In former times these appliances were heavily taxed and made the instruments of oppression, but these abuses have been reformed since Egypt came under a more humane form of government.

Another interesting feature of the water ways of Egypt is the intermittent watercourses. The largest of these is the Khor Baraka (Barka), which flows out towards Tapan, south of Suakin. It presents some analogy to the Nile, and in part was undoubtedly a perennial stream 250 miles long, and draining seven or eight thousand square miles. At present its flat sandy bed, winding between well-wooded banks, is dry for a great part of the year. This route is extensively used for the caravan trade between Suakin and Kassala. During September the water begins to flow, but is spasmodic. After the first flood the natives plant their crops, but sometimes the second flow, being too great, cannot be confined to the limits prepared for it, and the crops are carried away and the sowing must of necessity be started again.

The canals of Egypt are of great aid in extending the beneficial influence of the inundations of the Nile. In Lower Egypt is the Mahmudiyeh Canal, connecting Alexandria with the Rosetta branch, and following the same direction as an ancient canal which preceded it.

Mehemet Ali constructed this canal, which is about fifty miles long and one hundred feet broad. It is believed that twelve thousand labourers perished during its construction. Between the Rosetta and the Damietta branches of the Nile there are other canals, such as the Manuf, which connects the two branches of the river at a point not far from the Delta. East of the Damietta branch are other canals, occupying the ancient river-beds of the Tanitic and Pelusiac branches of the Nile. One of these is called the canal of the El-Muiz, from the first Fatimite caliph who ruled in Egypt, and who ordered it to be constructed. Another is named the canal of Abul-Munegga, from the name of the Jew who executed this work under the caliph El-'Amir, in order to bring water into the province of Sharkiyah. This last canal is connected with the remains of the one which in ancient times joined the Nile with the Red Sea. After falling into neglect it has again in part been restored and much increased in length as the Sweet Water Canal.

Further mention may also be made of the great canal called the Bahr-Yusef, or River Joseph, which is important enough to be classed as a ramification of the Nile itself. As has been mentioned, this water way runs parallel with the Nile on the west side below Cairo for about 350 miles to Farshut, and is the most important irrigation canal in Egypt. It is a series of canals rather than one canal. Tradition states that this canal was repaired by the celebrated Saladin. Another tradition, relating that the canal existed in the time of the Pharaohs, has recently been proved to be correct.

Egypt possesses not only the greatest natural water way in the world, but also the greatest artificial water way—the Suez Canal. Before the opening of this canal there were in the past other canals which afforded communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. These ancient canals differed in one respect from the Suez Canal, since they were all fed by the fresh waters of the Nile. One of these still remains in use, and is called the Fresh Water Canal. According to Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, Sesostris was the first to conceive and carry out the idea of a water connection between the two seas, by means of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile from Avaris to Bubastis, and by rendering navigable the irrigation canal which already existed between Bubastis and Heroopolis. It is believed by some that the fragment bearing the oval of Ramses II. found near the course of the present canal affords confirmation of this assertion.

The first authentic account of the carrying out of the conception of an inter-sea water way is to be found in the time of Pharaoh Necho II., about the year 610 B.C. Herodotus records of Necho that he was "the first to attempt the construction of the canal to the Red Sea." This canal tapped the Nile at Bubastis, near Zagazig, and followed closely the line of modern Wady Canal to Heroopolis, the site of which lies in the neighbourhood of Toussun and Serapeum, between the Bitter Lakes and Lake Tinseh. At that date the Red Sea reached much farther inland than it does now, and was called in the upper portion the Heroopolite Gulf. The expanse of brackish water, now known as the Bitter Lakes, was then, in all probability, directly connected with the Red Sea. The length of this canal, according to Pliny, was sixty-two miles, or about fifty-seven English miles. This length, allowing for the sinuosity of the valley traversed, agrees with the distance between the site of old Bubastis and the present head of the Bitter Lakes. The length given by Herodotus of more than one thousand stadia (114 miles) must be understood to include the whole distance between the two seas, both by the Nile and by the canal. Herodotus relates that it cost the lives of 120,000 men to cut the canal. He says that the undertaking was abandoned because of a warning from an oracle that the barbarians alone, meaning the Persians, would benefit by the success of the enterprise.

251.jpg Hieroglyphic Record of an Ancient Canal

The true reason for relinquishing the plan probably was that the Egyptians believed the Red Sea to have been higher in altitude than the Nile. They feared that if the canal were opened between the Nile and the Red Sea the salt water would flow in and make the waters of the Nile brackish. This explanation would indicate a lack of knowledge of locks and sluices on the part of the Egyptians.

The work of Necho was continued by Darius, the son of Hystaspes (520 B.C.). The natural channel of communication between the Heroopolite Gulf and the Red Sea had begun to fill up with silt even in the time of Necho, and a hundred years later, in the time of Darius, was completely blocked, so that it had to be entirely cleaned out to render it navigable. The traces of this canal can still be plainly seen in the neighbourhood of Shaluf, near the south end of the Bitter Lakes. The present fresh-water canal was also made to follow its course for some distance between that point and Suez. Persian monuments have been found by Lepsius in the neighbourhood, commemorating the work of Darius. On one of these the name of Darius is written in the Persian cuneiform characters, and on a cartouche in the Egyptian form. Until this date it therefore appears that ships sailed up the Pelusiac branch of the Nile to Bubastis, and thence along the canal to Heroopolis, where the cargoes were transhipped to the Red Sea. This inconvenient transfer of cargoes was remedied by the next Egyptian sovereign, who bestowed much care on the water connection between the two seas.

Ptolemy Philadelphus (285 B.C.), in addition to cleaning out and thoroughly restoring the two canals, joined the fresh-water canal with the Heroopolite Gulf by means of a lock and sluices, which permitted the passage of vessels, and were effective in preventing the salt water from mingling with the fresh water. At the point where the canal joined the Heroopolite Gulf to the Red Sea, Ptolemy founded the town of Arsinoë, a little to the north of the modern Suez.

The line of communication between the two seas was impassable during the reign of Cleopatra (31 b.c.). It is believed by some that it was restored during the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan (98-117). During this period the Pelusiac branch of the Nile was very low, the water having almost completely deserted this formerly well-filled course. If Trajan, therefore, undertook to reopen the water way, he must have tapped the Nile much higher up, in order to reach a plentiful supply of water. The old canal near Cairo, which elsewhere joined the line of the former canal on the way to the Bitter Lakes, was once called "Amnis Trajanus," and from this it has been inferred that Trajan was really the builder, and that during his reign this canal was cleaned and rendered navigable. As there is no further evidence than the name to prove that Trajan undertook so important an enterprise, the "Amnis Trajanus" was probably constructed during the Arabic period.

When Amr had conquered Egypt, according to another account, the caliph Omar ordered him to ship rich supplies of grain to Mecca and Medina, because during the pilgrimages these cities and often the whole of Hedjaz suffered severely from famine. As it was extremely difficult to send large quantities of provisions across the desert on the backs of camels, it is supposed that to facilitate this transportation Omar ordered the construction of the canal from a point near Cairo to the head of the Red Sea. On account of his forethought in thus providing for the pilgrims to the Hedjaz, Omar received the title of "Prince of the Faithful" (Emir el-Momenéen), which thenceforth was adopted by his successors in the caliphate. One hundred and thirty-four years after this time, El-Mansur, the second caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, is said to have closed the canal to prevent supplies from being shipped to one of the descendants of Ali who had revolted at Medina. Since that time it is probable that it has never been reopened, although there is a report that the Sultan Hakim rendered it available for the passage of boats in the year A.D. 1000, after which it was neglected and became choked with sand. While not thereafter used for navigation, there were parts which during the time of the annual inundation of the Nile were filled with water, until Mehemet Ali prevented this. The parts filled during the inundation extended as far as Sheykh Hanaydik, near Toussun and the Bitter Lakes.

The old canal which left the Nile at Cairo had long ceased to flow beyond the outskirts of the city, and the still more ancient canal from the neighbourhood of Bubastis, now known as the Wady Canal, extended only a few miles in the direction of the isthmus as far as Kassassin. During the construction of the Suez Canal the need of supplying the labourers with fresh water was imperative. The company, therefore, determined in 1861 to prolong the canal from Kassassin to the centre of the isthmus, and in the year 1863 they brought the fresh-water canal as far as Suez. In one or two places the bed of the old canal was cleared out and made to serve the new canal. The level of the fresh-water canal is about twenty feet above that of the Suez Canal, which it joins at Ismailia by means of two locks. The difference of level between it and the Red Sea is remedied by four locks constructed between Nefeesh and its terminus at Suez. Its average depth of water at high Nile is six feet, and at low Nile three feet.

A canal from Bulak, near Cairo, passing by Heliopolis and Belbeys, and joining the Wady Canal a few miles east of Zagazig, restores the line of water communication between the Nile and the Red Sea as it existed perhaps in the time of Trajan, and certainly as it was in the time of the Caliph Omar. The improvement of this canal as a means of transit is local and external only.

Napoleon Bonaparte was the first in modern times to take up the subject of a water connection between the two seas. In 1798 he examined the traces of the old canal of Necho and his successors, and ordered Monsieur Lepère to survey the isthmus and prepare a project for uniting the two seas by a direct canal. The result of this French engineer's labours was to discover a supposed difference of thirty feet between the Red Sea at high tide and the Mediterranean at low tide. As this inequality of level seemed to preclude the idea of a direct maritime canal, a compromise was recommended.

Owing to the exertions of Lieutenant Waghorn, the route through Egypt for the transmission of the mails between England and India was determined upon in 1839. The Peninsular and Oriental Company established a service of steamers between England and Alexandria, and between Suez and India. In spite of this endeavour nothing was actually accomplished with regard to a canal until 1846, when a mixed commission was appointed to enquire into the subject. This commission entirely exploded the error into which Lepère had fallen in reporting a difference of level between the two seas.

A plan was projected in 1855 by M. Linant Bey and M. Mougel Bey, under the superintendence of M. de Les-seps, who had already received a firman of concession from Said Pasha. This plan recommended a direct canal between Suez and Pelusium, which should pass through the Bitter Lakes, Lake Tinseh, Ballah, and Menzaleh, and connecting with the sea at each end by means of a lock. A fresh-water canal from Bulak to the centre of the isthmus and thence through Suez, with a conduit for conveying water to Pelusium, was also proposed. This project was in 1856 submitted to an international commission company composed of representatives from England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Prussia, and Spain, and the following modification was suggested: that the line of the canal to the north should be slightly altered and brought to a point seventeen and a half miles west of Pelusium, this change being determined upon from the fact that the water at this point was from twenty-five to thirty feet deep at a distance of two miles from the coast, whereas at Pelusium this depth of water was only to be found at a distance of five miles from the coast. It was suggested that the plan for locks be abolished, and the length of the jetties at Suez and Port Said be diminished. Various other details of a minor character were determined, and this project was finally accepted and carried through by the Suez Canal Company.

In 1854 M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, whose father was the first representative of France in Egypt after the occupation, and who was chosen consul at Cairo (1831—1838), obtained a preliminary concession from Said Pasha, authorising him to form a company for the purpose of excavating a canal between the two seas, and laying down the connections on which the concession was granted. This was followed by the drawing up and revision of the project mentioned above, and by the renewal in 1856 of the first concession with certain modifications and additions. Meanwhile the British government, under the influence of Lord Palmerston, then foreign secretary, endeavoured for various political reasons to place obstacles in the way of the enterprise, and so far succeeded in this unworthy attempt as to prevent the sultan from giving his assent to the concessions made by the viceroy of Egypt. Nothing, however, could daunt the intrepid promoter, M. de Lesseps. He declared his motto to be "Pour principe de commencer par avoir de la con-fiance." Undeterred by intrigues, and finding that his project met with a favourable reception throughout the Continent of Europe, he determined, in 1858, to open a subscription which would secure funds for the undertaking. The capital, according to the statistics of the company, approved in the firman of the concession, was to consist of forty million dollars in shares of one hundred dollars each. More than half of this amount was subscribed for, and eventually, in 1860, Said Pasha consented to take up the remaining unallotted shares, amounting to more than twelve million dollars. Disregarding the opposition of the English government, and ignoring the Sublime Porte, which was influenced by England, M. de Lesseps began his work in 1859, and on the 25th of April of that year the work was formally commenced, in the presence of M. de Lesseps and four directors of the company, by the digging of a small trench along the projected line of the canal, on the narrow strip of land between Lake Menzaleh and the Mediterranean. This was followed by the establishment of working encampments in different parts of the isthmus.

Although the first steps were thus taken, incredible difficulties prevented de Lesseps from pushing forward with his work. Towards the close of 1862 the actual results were only a narrow "rigole" cut from the Mediterranean to Lake Tinseh, and the extension of the freshwater canal from Rasel-Wady to the same point. The principal work done in 1863 was the continuation of the fresh-water canal to Suez. At this point a fresh obstacle arose which threatened to stop the work altogether. Among the articles of the concession of 1856 was one providing that four-fifths of the workmen on the canal should be Egyptians. Said Pasha consented to furnish these workmen by conscription from different parts of Egypt, and the company agreed to pay them at a rate equal to about two-thirds less than was given for similar work in Europe, and one-third more than they received in their own country, and to provide them with food, dwellings, etc. In principle this was the corvée, or forced labour. The fellaheen were taken away from their homes and set to work at the canal, though there is no doubt that they were as well treated and better paid than at home. The injustice and impolicy of this clause had always been insisted upon to the sultan by the English government, and when Ismail Pasha became viceroy, in the year 1863, he saw that the constant drain upon the working population required to keep twenty thousand fresh labourers monthly for the canal was a loss to the country for which nothing could compensate. In the early part of 1864 he refused to continue to send the monthly contingent, and the work was almost stopped.

By the consent of all the parties, the subjects in dispute were submitted to the arbitrage of the French Emperor Napoleon III., who decided that the two concessions of 1854 and 1856, being in the nature of a contract and binding on both parties, the Egyptian government should pay an indemnity equal to the fellah labour and $6,000,000 for the resumption of the lands originally granted, two hundred metres only being retained on each side of the canal for the erection of workshops, the deposit of soil, etc., and $3,200,000 for the fresh-water canal, and the right of levying tolls on it. The Egyptian government undertook to keep it in repair and navigable, and to allow the company free use of it for any purpose. The sum total of these payments amounted to $16,800,000, and was to be paid in sixteen instalments from 1864 to 1879.

The company now proceeded to replace by machinery the manual labour, and, thanks to the energy and ingenuity of the principal contractors, Messrs. Borel and Lavalley, that which seemed first of all to threaten destruction to the enterprise now led to its ultimate success. Without the machinery thus called into action, it is probable that the canal would never have been completed when it was. The ingenuity displayed in the invention of this machinery, and its application to this vast undertaking, constituted one of the chief glories in the enterprise of M. de Lesseps.

The work now proceeded without interruption of any kind; but at the end of the year 1867 it became evident that more money would be needed, and a subscription was opened for the purpose of obtaining $20,000,000 by means of one hundred dollar shares, issued at $600 a share, and bearing interest at the rate of five dollars a share. When more money was needed in 1869, the government agreed to renounce the interest on the shares held by it for twenty-five years, and more bonds were issued.

By help of these subventions and loans the work was pushed onward with great vigour. The sceptical were gradually losing their scepticism, and all the world was awakening to see what an immense advantage to civilisation the triumph of de Lesseps' engineering enterprise would be.

The great Frenchman had shown consummate skill as an organiser, but still more perhaps as an astute diplomatist, who knew how to upset the machinations of his numerous and powerful opponents by judicious counter-strokes of policy. By the beginning of 1869, the great labours of the company had very nearly reached their completion. The waters, flowing from the Mediterranean, first entered into the Bitter Lakes on March 18, 1869. Ismail Pasha was present to watch the initial success of the grand undertaking, and predicted that in a very short space of time the canal would be open to the ships of all the world. The first steamer which made the passage was one which carried M. de Lesseps on board, and which steamed the whole length of the canal September, 1869, in an interval of fifteen hours. This was a great triumph for the intrepid and persevering engineer, whose enterprise had been scoffed at by many men of the greatest European fame, and the completion of which had been delayed by incredible obstacles arising from jealousy or want of funds. By this time the unworthy tactics of the former Palmerston ministry of Great Britain in opposition to a scheme of such universal helpfulness to commerce had been succeeded by an official interest in the success of the enterprise which grew from sentiment, in the first instance, to a willingness later to buy up all the shares held by the Egyptian government. M. de Lesseps gave formal notice early in September that the canal would be opened for navigation on November 17, 1869. The khédive made costly preparations in order that the event might become an international celebration. Invitations were sent to all the sovereigns of Europe. The sultan refused to be present, but the Empress Eugenie accepted the invitation in the name of the French people. The Austrian emperor, the Prussian crown prince, and Prince Amadeus of Italy also took part in the festivity. The initial ceremony was on November 15th, at Port Said. Emperor Francis Joseph landed at midday, and was received with pomp and magnificence by the Khedive Ismail. There were splendid decorations in the streets and triumphal arches were raised. Meanwhile salutes were exchanged between the batteries and the ships of war in the harbour. At night there were gorgeous illuminations and fireworks. The khédive gave a grand ball on his own yacht, at which the Emperor of Austria and all the distinguished guests were in attendance. The French empress then arrived in Alexandria, and was received by Ismail and Francis Joseph with salutes of guns and the acclamations of the people. The next day the French imperial yacht Aigle, with the empress on board, proceeded to steam up the canal, being followed by forty vessels. They reached Ismailia after eight hours and a half, and were there met by vessels coming from the south end at Suez. On November 19th the fleet of steamers, led by the French imperial yacht, set out for Suez. They anchored overnight at the Bitter Lakes, and on November 21st the whole fleet of forty-five steamers arrived at Suez and entered the Red Sea. The empress, accompanied by the visiting fleet, returned on November 22nd, and reached the Mediterranean on the 23rd.

England, the country which more than any other had opposed the progress of the canal, derived more benefit than any other country from its completion. In 1875 the British government bought 176,600 shares from the khédive for a sum of nearly $20,000,000; and at the present time the value of these shares has risen more than fourfold. By this acquisition the British government became the largest shareholder. Of the shipping which avails itself of this route to the East, which is shorter by six thousand miles than any other, about eighty per cent, is British. In 1891, of 4,207 ships, with a grain tonnage of 12,218,000, as many as 3,217 of 9,484,000 tons were British.

Extensive works were undertaken in 1894 for the widening of the canal. Illuminated buoys and electric lights have been introduced to facilitate the night traffic, so that, proceeding continuously, instead of stopping overnight, ships can now pass through in less than twenty hours in place of the thirty-five or forty hours which were formerly taken to effect the passage. These greater facilities postponed the need of discussing the project for running a parallel canal to the East which some time ago was thought to be an impending necessity on account of the blockage of the canal by the number of vessels passing through its course.

By the Anglo-French Convention of 1888, the canal had acquired an international character. Both the water way itself and the isthmus for three miles on either side were declared neutral territory, exempt from blockade, fortification, or military occupation of any kind. The passage is to remain open for all time to ships of all nations, whether they are war-ships or merchantmen or liners, or whether the country to which they belong is engaged in war or enjoying peace. Within this convention was included the fresh-water canal which supplies drinking water to Ismailia and Port Said, and all the floating population about the banks of the Suez Canal. On April 8, 1904, by the terms of a new Anglo-French Colonial Treaty, it has been jointly agreed that the provisions of the Convention of 1888 shall remain in force for the next thirty years.

Egypt was the scene of the earliest of all advances in engineering science. The system of irrigation, which originated in the days of the oldest Egyptian dynasties, has remained practically the same through all the intervening centuries until very recent times. During every period of vigorous government the rulers of Egypt paid special attention to irrigation canals and sluices, through which the flood waters could be brought to some hitherto uncultivated area. The famous barrage, projected early in the nineteenth century and only rendered efficient for what it was intended since the British occupation, made very little alteration in the actual supply of water during the seasons of low water in the Nile. The most serious problem is how to ward off the periodical famine years, of which there has been record from the earliest ages, and of which the Book of Genesis has left an account in the history of Joseph and the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Without creating such a vast reservoir in the upper waters of the Nile, that the storage there retained can be available in years of low water to fill the river to its accustomed level, it is impossible to prevent the calamity occasioned by leaving many districts of Egypt without cultivation for one or more seasons. With the desire of accomplishing this, Sir Benjamin Baker, the leading authority on engineering works in Egypt, prepared a scheme for reserving a vast storage of water in Upper Egypt at Aswan. It was also decided to follow up the enterprise with another to be undertaken at Assiut.

On February 20,1898, the khédive approved of a contract with Messrs. John Aird and Company, which settled the much-debated question of the Nile reservoir and the scheme for the great dam at Aswan. The government was able to start the undertaking without any preliminary outlay. It was agreed that the company should receive the sum of $800,000 a year for a period of thirty years. Aswan, six hundred miles south of Cairo, was selected as an advantageous site because the Nile at that place flows over a granite bed, and is shut in on either side by granite rocks, which, when the course of the river is barred, would form the shores of the artificial irrigation lake.

Before this work started, there had been a long controversy as to the effect produced by the rising waters upon the renowned temple on the Isle of Philæ. Lord Leighton, the president of the Royal Academy, had vigorously protested against allowing the destruction of this famous ancient ruin. In the modification of the plans caused by this protest, it was hoped that no serious harm would result to this well-preserved relic of ancient Egyptian religion and art.

The enterprise was put through with great rapidity, the project fully realising the designs of its inaugurators. By aid of this great structure, 2,500 square miles have been added to the area of the 10,500 miles hitherto subject to cultivation. Its value to the country is at the least worth $100,000,000. The dam extends for one and a quarter miles, and possesses 180 openings, each of which is twenty-three feet high, and will altogether allow the outpour of fifteen thousand tons of water per second. Navigation up and down the Nile has not been impeded, since, by a chain of four locks, vessels are able to pass up and down the river. Each lock is 260 feet long and thirty-two feet wide. During flood-time the gates of the dam are open; while the flood is subsiding the gates are gradually closed, and thus, in a long season of low water, the reservoir is gradually filled up for use through a system of canals, whereby the waters can be drawn off for irrigation and the main flow of the Nile can be increased. The lake thus formed is nearly three times the superficial area of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, and the waters are held back for a distance of 140 miles up the course of the river. The reservoir is filled during the months of January and February, and from April to the end of August the water is let out for irrigation purposes from the bottom of the reservoir, thus enabling the sediment, which is of such value, to be carried out through the sluices. Four or five waterings are allowed to percolate from it to the various regions which are thus brought under cultivation, and besides this the main supply of the river itself is artificially increased at the same time.

The dam has been constructed of granite ashlar taken from quarries near Aswan. These quarries are the very same from which the ancient obelisks were hewn. The amount of rock used was about one million tons in weight. In building the dam it was found to be very difficult to lay the foundation, since the bottom of the river proved to be unsound, although in the preliminary reports it had been declared to be of solid granite. In some instances it was found necessary to dig down for forty feet, in order to lay a perfectly secure foundation on which the heavy wall could be superimposed. This required much additional labour, and great risk and damage was encountered during the progress of the work at the date of the impending rise of the waters of the Nile. Rubble dams were raised to ward off the waters from the point where it was necessary to excavate. The holes were gradually filled with solid blocks of granite; then the base of the structure, one hundred feet in width, was laid, and the massive piers, capable of resisting the immense pressure of the water during the height of the floods, were raised, and the whole edifice was at length completed with great rapidity by the aid of many thousand workmen, just before the rise in the Nile occurred. The official opening of the dam took place on the 10th of December, 1902.

The dam at Aswan is the greatest irrigation project ever yet undertaken, but is by no means the last one likely to be executed in relation to the waters of the Nile. A smaller dam is to be constructed at Assiut, in order to supply a system of irrigation in the neighbourhood of that city, and also to carry water across to thousands of acres between this region and Cairo. This project is planned somewhat after the design of the barrage which is below Cairo.

It is impossible to forecast what engineering skill may have in store for the future of Egypt. One may hope, at least, that the most prosperous days of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Romans will be reproduced once more for the modern Egyptians, as an outcome of the wise administration which has originated through the occupation of the country by the English, as an international trust held for civilisation. By aid of British initiative, Egypt now controls a vast empire in equatorial Africa and the Sudan, and the great water ways of this immense territory are being gradually brought under such control that the maximum advantage to all the population will be the necessary result. The whole Nile is now opened to commerce. The British have guaranteed equal rights, and what has been called the policy of the "open door," for the commerce of all nations.

The history of the modern exploration of the Nile is closely associated with the history of Egypt in modern times. The men who first visited Egypt and ascended the Nile valley were in almost every case Indo-Euro-peans. The early Egyptians were familiar perhaps with the Nile as far as Khartum, and with the Blue Nile up to its source in Lake Tsana, but they showed little or no interest in exploring the White Nile. In 457 B.C., Herodotus entered Egypt, and ascended the Nile as far as the First Cataract. He then learned many things about its upper waters, and made enquiries about the territories which lay beyond. He heard that the source was unknown; that there was a centre of civilisation in a city of the Ethiopians, in the bend of the Nile at Meroë (Merawi of to-day), but about the regions beyond he was unable to learn anything. Eratosthenes, the earliest geographer of whom we have record, was born in 276 b. c. at Cyrene, North Africa. From the information he gathered and edited, he sketched a nearly correct route of the Nile to Khartum. He also inserted the two Abyssinian affluents, and suggested that lakes were the source of the river.

When Rome extended her domains over Egypt, in 30 B.C., the interest of the Romans was aroused in the solution of the problem of the discovery of the source of the Nile. Strabo set out with Ælius Gallus, the Roman Governor of Egypt, on a journey of exploration up the Nile as far as Philæ, at the First Cataract. About 30 B.C. Greek explorers by the names of Bion, Dalion, and Si-mondes were engaged in active exploration of the Nile above the First Cataract and perhaps south of Khartum, according to the account of Pliny the Elder, writing in 50 A.D. The Emperor Nero, in A.D. 66, sent an expedition up the Nile, and its members journeyed as far as the modern Fashoda and perhaps even beyond the White Nile. Their advance was impeded by the sudd, and, after writing discouraging reports, their attempt was abandoned. Among the Greek merchants who traded on the East African coast was one named Diogenes, who had been informed by an Arab that by a twenty-five days' journey one could gain access to a chain of great lakes, two of which were the headwaters of the White Nile. They also said that there was a mountain range, named from its brilliant appearance the Mountains of the Moon. He was informed that the Nile formed from the two head streams, flowed through marshes until it united with the Blue Nile, and then it flowed on until it entered into well-known regions. Diogenes reported this to a Syrian geographer named Marinus of Tyre, who wrote of it in his Geography during the first century of the Christian era. The writings of Marinus disappeared, it is supposed, when the Alexandrian Library was scattered, but luckily Gladius Ptolemy quoted them, and thus they have been preserved for us. Ptolemy wrote, in 150 A.D., the first clearly intelligible account of the origin of the White Nile, the two lakes, Victoria and Albert Nyanza, and the Mountains of the Moon. But no less than 1,740 years elapsed before justice could be done to this ancient geographer, and his account verified. It was Sir Henry M. Stanley who discovered the Ruwanzori mountain range, corresponding to the classical Mountains of the Moon, and who thus justified Ptolemy's view of the topography of Africa. For many years after Ptolemy, the work of exploring the sources of the Nile was entirely discontinued, and the solution of the problem was still wrapped in impenetrable mystery.

The first modern explorer of any consequence who came from Great Britain was a Scotchman named Bruce. In 1763 he travelled through many ports of Northern Africa and visited the Levant, and subsequently Syria and Palestine. Wherever he went he drew sketches of antiquities, which are now preserved in the British Museum. Landing in Africa in 1786, he went up the Nile as far as Aswan. From there he travelled to the Red Sea and reached Jiddah, the port of Hajas. He then returned to Africa, stopping at Massawra, and from there penetrated into the heart of Abyssinia. The emperor received him with favour and suffered him to reach the Blue Nile, which to the mind of Bruce had always been considered as the main stream of the Nile. Having determined the latitude and longitude, he went down the Blue Nile as far as the site of Khartum, where the waters of the White Nile join with those of the Blue Nile. He next proceeded to Berber, and crossed the desert to Korosko, returning, after a three years' journey, in the year 1773. In journeying through France many learned men took a great interest in the story of his explorations, but he was bitterly disappointed to hear that he had not been the first to reach the sources of the Blue Nile. Partly for this reason he delayed publishing his travels for seventeen years after his return. Bruce was a truthful and accurate writer, but nevertheless his book was received on all sides with incredulity. Although received at the British court, he was not given any special honours or decorations. He first pointed out the great importance to England of controlling the Egyptian route to India, and he also secured for English merchants a concession on the Red Sea.

In 1812, John Ludwig Burckhardt, of Swiss nationality, the first among Europeans, made a pilgrimage to Mecca and then travelled up the Nile to Korosko, after which he crossed the desert to Berber and Shendy. His death occurred after his return to Cairo, and he left a valuable collection of Oriental manuscripts to the University of Cambridge, England, which were published after his death.

In 1827, a Belgian, named Adolphe Lisiant, ascended the White Nile to within 150 miles of Khartum. The expedition which he led was aided by an English society, called the "African Association," which became afterwards a part of the Royal Geographical Society. Many explorers visited the White Nile between 1827 and 1845. In 1845, John Pethrick, a Welshman, explored the Nile for coal and precious metals in the interest of Mehemet Ali. After the death of this pasha, Pethrick visited El-Obeid in Kordofan as a trader, and remained there for five years. In 1853 he ventured upon an enterprise relating to the ivory trade. For this purpose he travelled backwards and forwards upon the White Nile and the Bahr-el-Ghazal for a period of six years, reaching some of the important affluents of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the Jur and the Jalo, or the Rol. Returning to England, he was commissioned to undertake a relief expedition to help Captains Speke and Grant, who had set out upon their journey of exploration, and in the year 1861 he returned to Central Africa. Interest in the slave-trade deterred him from following the directions under which he had been sent out, namely, to bring relief to Speke and Grant. Sir Samuel Baker anticipated him in relieving the expedition, and this so angered Speke that he attempted to have Pethrick deprived of his consular position. Pethrick died in 1882.

When Lieutenant Richard Francis Burton had completed his famous journey through Hedjaz to the sacred city of Mecca, he called at the port of Aden at the southwest extremity of Arabia. While there, he made friends with the authorities, and persuaded them to allow him to penetrate Africa through Somaliland, which is situated to the southwest of Abyssinia. He hoped by an overland journey westbound to strike the Nile at its headwaters. John H. Speke accompanied Burton on his journey, and thus gained his first experience of African exploration. Unfortunately this expedition was not a success, for the Somali were so suspicious of the object of the travellers that they forced them to return to the coast.

Once more, in 1856, the same party started farther south from Zanzibar. Hearing of a great inland lake, they pressed forwards to make an exploration, but were prevented by the Masai tribes. Burton was now laid up with fever, and Speke formed a large party and crossed the Unyamivezi and Usukuma. On July 30, 1858, they were fortunate enough to cross one of the bays of the southern half of Lake Victoria Nyanza. They struck northwards, and, on August 3rd, gained sight of the open waters of the great lake. Speke did not realise the vast area of the lake at this time, and put down its width at about one hundred miles. As he had promised Burton to return at a certain pre-arranged date, he went back to the coast. Burton, however, was unreasonable enough to be displeased with Speke's discovery, and the two fell into strained relations. On arriving at the coast, Speke at once went back to England, and there raised funds to make a longer and more complete exploration. He was naturally anxious to learn more about the great lake in the middle of the continent, and, besides this, he thought that he could demonstrate to the satisfaction of the scientific world that this vast basin of water was the source of the White Nile. Captain James A. Grant asked leave to accompany Speke, and became his efficient lieutenant. Grant was a good shot, a matter of importance, for it was almost certain that the party would have to confront the danger of being surrounded by wild beasts and hostile natives. He was also a good geologist and painted well in water-colours, and proved himself to be a capable lieutenant to the leader of the party. The Indian government sent the expedition a quantity of ammunition and surveying instruments.

The party started from Zanzibar for the interior in October, 1860. At Usugara they were detained by the illness of Captain Grant and some of the Hottentot retainers. A number of the instruments were now sent back in order to lighten the burdens, and among other things was returned the cumbrous photographic apparatus, which was the only kind in use in the sixties. At Ugogo serious trouble arose with the native chiefs, who demanded tolls from the party. Many of the remaining porters here deserted, and others were frightened by the hostility of the local tribes. When at length they reached the Unyamivezi most of the beasts of burden had died, and half of the stores they had intended to bring with them were found to have been stolen by the natives. The Arabs here told Speke that there was another lake besides the Victoria, whose waters, according to some, were reported to be salty.

Fierce internecine wars were now being waged between the tribes of the locality, which made any thought of progress, so long as they lasted, an impossibility. Speke, having successfully endeavoured to negotiate a peace between the chief Mouwa and the Arabs of the region, resolved upon the bold enterprise of pushing on without Grant and the supplies towards Buzina, the nearest country ruled by Bahima chiefs. The venture, however, was a fruitless one, and he bravely struggled to reach Usui. In this he succeeded, remaining there till October, 1861, when he went through the region of the Suwaroras, who demanded excessive tolls for permission to pass through their territory. Proceeding into the wilderness, they were met by envoys from Rumanika, a king whose court they intended to visit, and who had heard in advance of their impending journey. The messengers of the king received them well and brought them to the court. Rumanika now desired them to remain at his capital until he had sent word before them that the party intended to go to Uganda. Grant, about this time, was laid up with an ulcerated leg; and, when the time came for moving forward, Speke was obliged to set out for Uganda alone, which place he entered on January 16, 1862. He became a close friend of the royal family and the chief men, and his beard was a constant source of admiration and conversation.

The illness of Grant prevented him from joining the party at Uganda till the end of May, and on July 7th of the same year, after many delays, they obtained leave from the king to leave Uganda. By July the 28th, Speke had reached the Ripon Falls, where the Victoria Nyanza branch of the Nile flows out of the great lake at the head of Napoleon Gulf. These falls were called after the Marquis of Ripon, who was then the president of the Royal Geographical Society. At this time, Grant, still convalescent, was moving by a more direct route towards Ungaro. Speke met him again on the way thither, and they finished their journey together. After suffering vexatious impositions from the monarch, Speke asked leave to go and visit a new lake which the natives called Lutanzige, but was refused permission. He then sent Bombay, his servant and interlocutor, along the course of the Nile towards the outposts of Pethrick. The messenger returned with hopeful news that there was a clear course open to them in that direction. The whole party then journeyed down the Kafu River to the point where it enters the Nile. On the way thither, they came to the Karuma Falls, and were obliged to march across swampy ground. Finally they met a Sudanese black named Mu-hammed Wad-el-Mek, who was dressed like an Egyptian and who spoke Arabic. Muhammed first of all told them that he had come from Pethrick, but it was later discovered that he was in the employment of Doctor Bono, a trader from Malta. The Sudanese was not anxious that the party should proceed, and told them stories about the impossibility of ascending the river at that time, during the month of December. It was difficult to dissuade Speke, however, and on January 12, 1863, he set out for a place which is now called Affudu. There the party paused for awhile in order to kill enough game to feed the native servants. On the 1st of February, having forced some of the natives into their service as porters, they descended the Nile to its confluence with the Asua River. They next crossed this river, and proceeded onwards to the Nile Rapids, and from thence skirted the borders of the Bari country. On February 15, 1863, they made an entrance into Gondokoro, where the whole party was filled with joy to meet Sir Samuel Baker, who had arrived there on the way out to relieve them. They all advanced together to Khartum, after which Speke and Grant returned to England, in the spring of 1863. Thus was the task of the discovery of the sources of the Nile, which had baffled the seekers for many centuries, at length completed. Speke was received by the Prince of Wales (King Edward VII.), but the satisfaction of being allowed to place an additional motto on his coat-of-arms was the only recognition which he received for his services.

As a result of Speke's discoveries, the Victoria Nyanza took its place on the maps of Africa, and a fair conception had been obtained of the size and shape of Lake Albert Nyanza.

The whole course of the White Nile was also revealed with more or less accuracy, and all the mysterious surmises as to the great flow of the Nile from some unknown headwaters of enormous extent were now solved. It was only necessary to fill in the details of the map in regard to the great lakes and the rivers which flowed into them, and further to investigate the extensive territory between the lakes and the Egyptian settlements to the north. Sir Samuel Baker was the man who more than any other helped to supply the details of the work already accomplished. From Cairo he started on a journey up the course of the Nile. When he had reached Berber, he chose the course of the At-bara, or Blue Nile, the branch which receives the floods of water from the Abyssinian table-lands. He travelled up the western frontier of Abyssinia, proceeding as far as the river Rahad, a river flowing into the Blue Nile from the Egyptian side. From this point Baker turned backwards towards Khartum, which he reached in June, 1862, where he made a stay of some duration. He now made up his mind to search for Speke, and went up the White Nile as far as Gondokoro, where the meeting with Speke took place. Baker left this place March 26, 1863, but met with almost insuperable obstacles in trying to make further advance. The porters deserted, the camels died, and the ammunition and the presents intended to ease the way through the territory of native princes had to be all abandoned. Thus disencumbered, his party ascended the White Nile until they reached the Victoria affluent. The Bauyno tribes now prevented his intended advance to the Albert Nyanza. Baker, however, had the good fortune to be well received by the chieftain Kamurasi, and, as he was at this moment suffering from a severe attack of fever, the friendliness of this Central African chieftain was probably the means of saving his life. The king graciously received Baker's present of a double-barrelled gun, and then sent him onward with two guides and three hundred men. The party now managed to push their way to the shores of the Albert Nyanza. They first arrived at a place called Mbakovia, situated near the south-east coast, and on March 16, 1864, they saw for the first time the great lake itself, which they now named the Albert Nyanza. After a short stay at Mbakovia, they proceeded along the coast of the lake until they reached Magungo, where the Victoria branch of the Nile flows into the Albert Nyanza. Continuing the journey up the source of the Victoria Nile, they discovered the Murchison Falls. When they set out for the Karuma Falls the porters deserted, and after many desperate adventures they at length returned to Khartum in May, 1865. Baker then went on to Berber, and crossed the desert to Suakin on the Red Sea. He returned to England late in the year 1865, and was received with honour and decorated by the queen with a well-earned knighthood.

In the year 1869 Baker entered the service of the Egyptian government, and was commissioned by the viceroy to subdue the regions of Equatorial Africa, and annex them to the Egyptian Empire. To succeed in this enterprise he waged many a war with African tribes like the Boni. On several occasions these conflicts had been forced upon him; on other occasions Baker Pasha was the aggressor, owing to his fixed determination to extend on all sides the limits of the Egyptian Sudan. With all the rulers, however, who treated him well, he remained on terms of loyalty and friendship; and, in time, he inspired them with respect for his fairness and liberality. Baker Pasha scattered the slave-traders on all sides, and, for the time being, effectually broke up their power. The slave-traders of the Sudan were of Arab nationality, and were in the habit of advancing farther, year by year, upon the villages of the defenceless Africans, and spreading their ravages into the heart of Africa. They always attacked the less warlike tribes, and, upon breaking into a negro settlement, would carry off the whole population, except the aged or sick. The slaves were herded together in vast numbers by help of logs of wood sawn in two, with holes cut large enough to enclose the neck of a slave, and the two sides of the log afterwards securely fastened again, thereby yoking together a row of these unfortunate beings. Every year, out of five hundred thousand or more slaves, at least half the number perished.. The markets for the slaves were the cities of the Muhammedans all through North Africa, Syria, Turkey, and Persia. The death-dealing hardships to the slaves were for the most part endured on the long journey to Cairo, or, when the trade was suppressed there, to points north of the Sudan, such as Tripoli, or certain ports on the Red Sea. Those who were hardy enough to reach the slave-markets were usually well treated by their Muhammedan masters. During the time of Baker Pasha's administration, while he was pursuing the slave-traders and establishing Egyptian outposts, the whole course of the Nile from the Great Lakes became well known to the civilised world, though after this period Baker Pasha did not make any further voyages of discovery into unknown parts.

During the years of 1859 and 1860, an adventurous Dutch lady of fortune, Miss Alexandrine Tinné, journeyed up the Nile as far as Gondokoro, and in 1861 she commenced to organise a daring expedition to find the source of the Bahr-el-Ghazel, and explore the territory between the Nile basin and Lake Chad. She started from Khartum, and ascended the Bahr-el-Ghazel as far as the affluent Bahr-el-Hamad. She then crossed overland as far as the Jur and Kosango Rivers, and reached the mountains on the outlying districts of the Nyam-Nyam country. Here the members of the expedition suffered from black-water fever, and only with the greatest difficulty were they able to return to Khartum, where they arrived in July, 1864. In 1868 Miss Tinné, nothing-daunted, started for Lake Chad from Tripoli, with the intention of closing in upon the Nile from the eastern sources of the affluents of the Bahr-el-Ghazel. On reaching Wadi-Aberjong, however, this brave-hearted woman was waylaid by the fierce Tuaregs, and was beheaded August 1, 1868.

In the sixties, Georg Schweinfurth, a native of Riga, in the Baltic provinces of Russia, set out to explore Nubia, Upper Egypt, and Abyssinia for botanical purposes. Subsequently the Royal Academy of Science in Berlin equipped him for an expedition to explore the region of the Bahr-el-Ghazel. He entered the Sudan by Suakin on the Red Sea, and crossed the desert to Berber, reaching Khartum on November 1, 1868. The following January he set out along the course of the White Nile, passed Getina, and examined the vegetation (sudd) which had drifted down from all the affluents of the White Nile. He prolonged his stay for three years on the Bahr-el-Ghazel, solely absorbed in scientific studies, and, unlike his predecessors, he was unconcerned with reforms and attempts to suppress the slave-trade.

Schweinfurth penetrated so far into the heart of Africa that he reached the Congo basin and explored the upper waters of the Welle River, and on his return to Europe he published a work, in 1873, called "The Heart of Africa." In this book he tried to demonstrate that the area of the Victoria Nyanza was taken up by a chain of five lakes.

About this time, in the same year, the famous Henry Morton Stanley returned to London from his adventurous discovery and relief of Dr. David Livingstone. The distinguished missionary and explorer died not long afterwards, and the fame of his brilliant discoveries and heroic life aroused great sympathy and interest in African exploration. The great river which Livingstone had explored was believed by him to have been the Nile, but was more correctly thought by others to have been the Congo River. On account of the interest aroused in Livingstone, the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph of London decided to send Stanley on a fully equipped expedition to solve the many problems relating to the heart of Africa about which the civilised world was still in the dark.

Stanley chose the route of Zanzibar, and, landing there, he went up the course of the river and crossed the country to the Victoria Nyanza by the way of Unyamwezi. He reached the lake by the end of February, 1875. On March the 8th he set out to explore the shores of the lake, and mapped the whole region, including its bays, islands, and archipelagoes, with a considerable amount of accuracy. He also examined Napoleon Gulf, and reached as far as Ripon Falls, at which point the waters of the lake flow towards the Albert Nyanza. He then verified the accuracy of Speke's supposition that the Victoria Nyanza really was the main source of the White Nile. Stanley set out from Uganda at the end of the year 1875, and travelled across the country to the Congo. About the same time three English surveyors, Colonels Purdy, Colston, and Sidney Enser, made several topographical reports on much of the territory between the Bahr-el-Ghazel, the Shari, and the Nile. Later on, in 1876, General Gordon sent Romolo Gesei, an Italian in the service of the khédive, to navigate and to explore Lake Albert Nyanza. In the following year Colonel Mason, an American, surveyed the lake, of which he made an accurate topographical chart.

In the year 1880, Mr. E. G. Ravenstein, an eminent geographer, made some valuable surveys of eastern equatorial Africa, which had the effect of inciting the Royal Geographical Society to send out, in 1882, an expedition under Joseph Thomson, a brilliant young African explorer, in order to find out a direct route to the Victoria Nyanza. Thomson set out from Momhasa early in the year 1883, but he never succeeded in realising the purpose of his mission.

Emin Pasha, as we have seen, was the governor appointed by the khédive to rule the Egyptian equatorial provinces. He made a few discoveries, such as the Semliki River, which was called by him Divern. Whilst he was engaged in travelling through the Bahr-el-Ghazel district, the revolt of the Mahdi occurred, and Emin Pasha was isolated from the outer world. In the year 1886 Doctor Junker returned to Europe from Emin, and roused great interest by his account of the adventures of the pasha, whom most people had believed to have died, but whom they now learned had set up an independent sovereignty in the heart of Africa, awaiting anxiously the advent of a relief expedition. Then Henry M. Stanley volunteered to go out on a relief expedition to bring Emin Pasha home.

Stanley avoided the route through the German colony on the East, and started upon his ever memorable relief expedition by the Congo route. The veteran adventurer succeeded in relieving Emin Pasha, and, furthermore, he discovered the Mountains of the Moon, called by the natives Ruwenjori, on May 24, 1888. He also traced to its sources the Semliki River, and explored Lake Albert Edward and a gulf of the Victoria to the south-west. The remainder of this famous journey, for the success of which he was knighted as Sir Henry M. Stanley, was outside the basin of the Nile, and is recorded in his book, "Through Darkest Africa."

In 1900, Dr. Donaldson Smith, an American, made an important journey through the countries between the north end of Lake Rudolf and the Mountain Nile.

291.jpg Examples of Phoenecian Porcelain

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History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12), S. Rappoport

.

HISTORY OF EGYPT

From 330 B.C. to the Present Time

By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel

Member of the Ecole Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German,
French Orientalist and Philologist

VOL. XII., Part B.

Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations

THE GROLIER SOCIETY
PUBLISHERS, LONDON

Contents

List of Illustrations

CHAPTER III.—THE RULE OF MEHEMET ALI

CHAPTER IV—THE BRITISH INFLUENCE IN EGYPT

CHAPTER V.—THE WATER WAYS OF EGYPT

History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12), S. Rappoport

.

HISTORY OF EGYPT

From 330 B.C. to the Present Time

By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel

Member of the Ecole Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German, French Orientalist and Philologist

VOL. XII., Part B.

Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations

THE GROLIER SOCIETY PUBLISHERS, LONDON

Contents

List of Illustrations

CHAPTER III.—THE RULE OF MEHEMET ALI

CHAPTER IV—THE BRITISH INFLUENCE IN EGYPT

CHAPTER V.—THE WATER WAYS OF EGYPT

Member of the Ecole Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German,
French Orientalist and Philologist

THE GROLIER SOCIETY
PUBLISHERS, LONDON