Chapter XL: Appendix: H (1)

REPORT AFTER GOING TO SEARCH FOR PALMER.

"_It is said to be generally believed in official quarters that the whole of the troops forming the army of occupation in Egypt will have been withdrawn by the end of the financial year_ (Daily Papers).

"'Many will consider the following statement sensational and exaggerated, while it is distinctly, confessedly realistic. There is no second opinion upon the subject amongst foreigners in Egypt, whatever Egyptians may say, not think. When the last English soldier leaves Alexandria, the last European had better embark with him. Shortly after the final eclipse of our Redcoats and our Bluejackets the Nile Valley will witness a human hurricane which its lively annals have not yet chronicled. As we are here so here we must perforce rest. It is our second conquest of the glorious land which--all know--was offered in gift to England some years before its final fall. We honestly declined the "Protectorate," or whatever it may be called. Now, the tyranny of circumstance forces--nay! has forced--it upon us.'

"These lines were written in early 1883, and time has brought with it no change. Our occupation of Egypt is compulsory as ever. We only have made matters worse by those 'extra-parliamentary utterances,' those pledges for withdrawal which have kept the Nile Valley in a state of chronic excitement. As for our newly raised 'Army' and Police force, these men would be the first to turn upon Europeans and to rend them.

"A few words concerning the voyage.

"Nothing can be pleasanter, if aught of the kind can please, than a steamer-trip from Trieste to Alexandria. This, too, despite the _visages patibulaires_ of a First Class which should travel Second Class, of a Second which ever intrudes into the domains and dominions of a First Class, and despite the terrible infantry which makes an irritable Italian exclaim aloud, '_Sancte Herode ora pro nobis!_' The weather is sometimes perfect even in gloomy November, boisterous December, and roaring January. The scene-shifting of the five days, which may be six, is ever various and ever picturesque. The first, which begins at noon, is the Trieste-Dalmatian, showing the many-featured and historic shores of Trieste, vice-queen of the Adriatic and the Istrian coasts, which want only a secret something to make them thoroughly classical and Italian. It ends as morning rises splendid over the snowy crest and the bold seafront of the Dinarian Alps; and forenoon and afternoon are spent in gazing at the grey archipelago sharply thrown out from the Mediterranean blue; the rock-stuck Pomo; 'piscous' Sant' Andrea; romantic Lissa, whose Egypto-Greek art-remains make the fortune of the Spalato Museum; Cazza, the 'spoon' with bulging handle and bowl; broken Lagosta; the Sabbion cello Promontory, tossed and towering in azure air; and Pelagosa, the last remnant of a volcanic rim where lightning is deadly and where wind-storms are unknown.

"No. 2, the Albanian-Corfu day, opens with a near prospect of the grand and grandly named Akrokeraunian (Cimariot) Rocks. Whatever gales, Tramontana or Scirocco, may roar outside, the basin of Korkyra, forty-eight hours from Trieste and seventy-two from Alexandria, is a haven of rest tranquil as a dry dock. We have time to land and to note that transfer from England to Greece has by no means ruined the city, and to hear Mr. Gladstone roundly abused for what was done by Lord Palmerston.

"At Corfu we shipped for Egypt 245 Arnauts, the sweepings of the Albanian hills. These men, who were popularly described as 'Bathmen (Hammámjís) in Stambul and Pharaohs in Cairo,' are now returning to Nile-land, whence they were expelled by Said Pasha. We know them a mile off by their broad brows and long straight uncombed locks; their cats' moustachios and peaky chins; their felt caps and 'shaggy capotes;' their foul _fustanella_-skirts, girt with leather-belts for the nonce void of weapons; their archaic leggings (_knemides_) and their barbarous hide-sandals, the Slav _upanke_. These savages would doubtless train to good light infantry; but they are engaged as police. Set a thief to catch a thief may be true, but when the latter is caught how does the former occupy himself?

"Six hours beyond Corfu we draw inshore, but not too near on account of a lately found shoal, the deposit of a supposed submarine volcano. Hard by us to port a tall white precipice, Leucatos, in inverted bow-window-shape, breaks the seaward front of Leukadia Island, _alias_ Sta. Maura; and a long red streak shows 'Sappho's Leap.' Like Abel, whose slaughter-place is near Damascus, the poetess must have contained more 'curious juice' than a school of whales. A narrow strait separates Leukadia from Theaki (Ithaca), and we see distinctly the cause why Ulysses could not rest from travel. A double lump of grey-red limestone patched with dwarf evergreens, a few olives, and fewer cypresses; here and there a slip of field-slope no larger than a courtyard; sundry windmills on the hill-tops and rude tenements on the lower levels; a road gashed on the scaur-side leading to a 'port,' that consists of a covelet and one house and the general look of a place fit only for convicts, could have offered few charms to the crafty one who had seen the manners of many men and their cities. Cefalonia, the opposite feature, shows more fertility, because we see her landward face, and her tall cones Georgio and Elato, which make sunset about three p.m., condense the vapours and water her with 'Scotch mist.'

"Then comes the Zante-Morea day, the fair island fronted by the Skopo block with its white-walled monastery. Its huge old citadel overhanging the town, which stretches herself lazily upon the sunny slope, is still desert; not so the inner valley, 'O Kampos,' bounded by a hill-range which Zantiotes compare with the Jura line. On the fronting mainland south of grey Cape Glarenza (Clarence?) rises the once doughty pile Kastro Tornesi. Leaving the Zante-Channel we run near enough to distinguish the features of Pylus Bay, now Navarino ('of the Avars'), with its natural breakwater, Sphacteria, _hodie_ Sphagia, Island, where the Spartans were made captives. Then Methone (Modon) Port and Town, sister of Pylus,[1] whence the Mekhitaris Fathers spread through Upper Italy and Lower Austria; Cervera Islet, with its lighthouse; and Matapan, where Southern Europe ends. A very bad name has this terminal point, Tænorum, the Matapan (forehead) amongst Moderns as amongst Ancients, despite the good auspices of Poseidon, Herakles, and Orion. A western in-draught through the Sicilian and Gibraltar Straits or the return current of the same blows up high side-seas. The Corinth cut is intended for a cure, but will it ever be cut? Dim in haze beyond Matapan we see the long outlines of Malta or St. Angelo Promontory, distinguished only by a hermitage which is never vacant.

"Despite frequent disillusions we open our eyes at the sight of Cerigo and Cerigotto. What dull, commonplace, miserable lumps of limestone to represent poetic Cythera! Did Greek fancy go mad when it chose such a home for lovely Cytheræa? During the night we run by Candia, Crete, a huge front of calcareous wall, with green-flecked sides and copings snow-powdered and mist-feathered. The last land we shall see (thirty-six hours from Corfu) is the Gavdo or Gozzo Islet, distinguished only by its French lighthouse. And now patience after Gavdo day (No. 4); we shall have nothing in view but air and water, and look forward to Alexandria on the morrow.

"At length a passenger, with eyes glued to his binoculars, screams that he sees _le Phare_ or Eunostus light. All crowd around him, striving to see as much. Presently it stands up distinct, a white thimble-top capping the sheet of indigo. Running in we note the effects of the bombardment. Far to starboard rise the Marabút works, all knocked to pieces. Meks, over the bow, shows as much light through it as the shell of bulbous palace which it guarded: only one high flank now stands upright. Eastward lie the battered mainland batteries, between the harbour and Mareotis, the lake basin which we attempted, and this time failed, to flood. On the seaward side of the port are the works of Ras el-Tín, the headland (not 'of figs,' but) of clay, where rude potteries were once made. The walls are smashed, the big guns point wildly in all directions, and a white patch upon the tall light-tower marks where one of the heaviest bolts struck. The interior was found in fragments, but the sailors soon rigged up the apparatus. Further east Adda stands disconsolate, a series of breaches. Towered Fort Pharos, traditional site of the World's Wonder, at the heel of the Alexandrian sock, also shows huge chasms in the masonry. Picnics visit the ruins, but the artists of the various 'Illustrateds' have made the scene perfectly familiar to us. There has, however, been treasure-trove among the _débris_, such as stones with hieroglyphs, and a Latin inscription built up in the ashlar.

"A good result of this 'knocking about' will be to abolish the Alexandrian bar, which has kept thousands of tall ships rolling in the dangerous offing through livelong nights. The City of Zu'l-Karnayu (Alexander of the Two Horns) has built for herself a fine house, neglecting only the doorway, even as Balzac forgot only his villa staircase. The object of retaining the obstacle was to prevent the entrance of a fleet in war-time--incredible; but such was the policy of modern Egypt's short-sighted sons! The Bughaz, or Central Passage, flanked by Corvette Passage east, and west by Marabút Passage, is the main line, marked by buoys invisible at night--hence the delays. The scattered reefs of coralline must be blown up and the fragments removed, otherwise bad will wax worse. The work should be entrusted to an English contractor of repute, say Sir G. Elliot: a host of Levantines, Greeks and others, are proposing to do the job cheaply and badly. I heard £40,000 as the inadequate sum proposed.

"Very gay and lively is the glorious new Harbour, where warships of all nations, even Turkish, are alive with martial sounds. Steamers are puffing in and out, tugs are plying, and small craft under sail and oar are dotting the broad expanse. Three transports embark homeward-bound. The much-abused hospital ship _Carthage_, a whited sepulchre, lies apart, sulking as it were. Colliers and merchantmen line the landing-places, and even the Dry Dock is at work. Near the inner Mole stand the old Egyptian men-of-war, suggesting Greenwich pensioners; the sooner they are sold and broken up for building material the better. Presently appears the ubiquitous Cook's boat, as we learn from white calico letters sewn upon raiment red as the mediæval Headsman's. We surrender at discretion, leave a card at the custom-house, and take carriage at the Marina or quay.

"The burnings begin at once in the Darb el-Gumruk (Custom-house Street). A 'house of refreshment' was fired by the mob because frequented by the hated Frank, and the flames spread, but not far. Reaching the Darb Ras el-Tín, which connects the sea-palace with the main square, the ruins show in force, and extend in lines and patches through the Place to the walls that defend the city on the south and east.

"The Place des Consuls, or de Mahomet Ali, now shows its third phase. That of utter bareness and barrenness was described by the Pilgrim in 1852.[2] Then came the polished epoch of tall trees, round tanks and flower-plots, heavy chains, band-stand, and gravelled walks, which attracted hosts of nursery-maids and their sallow charges. The Great Old Man of Cavala still sits his bronze steed, but since 1882 he looks upon a Fair, a Kermesse, or rather a brand-new mining city in the Far West, set in a framework of ruins, an unburied Pompeii.

"On the west side of the square the huge Okem (Wakálat) Gharbi and its large _café_ have bodily disappeared. Its northern neighbour, the Palazzo Zizinia, is reduced to a mere shell eight feet high. The northern houses between the main square and the old or eastern harbour are burnt in blocks, but the Club and Penasson's Library show no damage: the English church also escaped; and, as a rule, little harm was done to places of worship, Giaour or Moslem. More 'loot' was to be had out of the laity. The fire began, they say, with the English and French Consulates, a kind of poetic justice for the _Condominium_. At the east end of the square the large building labelled 'Tribunal and Police Office' is wholly unhurt, and the Redcoats on guard are good to see. The long block to the south of the square, and dividing it from Place Sainte Cathérine, formerly the fine property of Prince Ibrahim Pasha, displays the typical scene of destruction. The bases have been piled up to clear the thoroughfares. The midway heights show shells of painted and papered chambers, with here and there a scorched chair or bedstead still standing on the airy edge of the precipice; there are _débris_ of archways and balconies, charred timbers and fragments of furniture, windows, doors, and shutters; iron work curiously twisted by the fire, toasted inscriptions and blistered advertisements, and fallen blocks of limestone burnt to lime. The sky-line of broken and blackened wall forms points and pinnacles of chimney and coping, thrown well out by the gold and azure of sun and air; many of these frets have fallen, and the first high wind after the first heavy rains will bring down showers of stones upon workmen's heads. The latter, however, are few. Little or nothing has been done, or will be done, till 'indemnity' is forthcoming. But--

'Wait: my faith is large--in Fire,'

as in Time. Cities gain by being burnt. Several companies have submitted plans for rebuilding; and now the only want is a Town-architect to regulate the façades, and to see that the masonry is good and solid. Only let him avoid arcades which shelter damp and Greek coffee-houses.

"A stroll through the Place des Consuls shows a parallel line of board-booths along the northern and southern faces. Gaps were left where men caught red-handed had been carefully shot and carelessly buried. Now tables are spread, and people dine merrily over the dead. This is essentially Egyptian, the mummy at the feast. The booths supply everything, from a needle to a ready-made suit: the staples, however, are bad liquor and worse women. The names mostly appeal to the fighting class; for instance, 'Admiral Seymour's Bazar,' 'Crocforde's,' 'Duke of Connaught's Rest,' and the 'Hole in the Wall.' Here and there are Birrerie, generally next door to the coiffeur's; καφφενεῑα, _a cucina economica alla Triestina_, and unclean card-tables, domino-tables, and billiard-tables. The number of tobacco-shops is a study.

"During my thirty years' experience I never saw Alexandria look so picturesque or so happy. The magic word INDEMNITY has much to do with her high spirits, and the indemnistists jauntily fixed their figure somewhere between four and five millions sterling. Life swarms and surges through the burnt thoroughfares. All are bustling about, busy as bees, except those who are eating and drinking, smoking and fighting. It is a _Pays de Cocagne_, where money seems to be a drug. About mid-September, 1882, not a carriage was to be seen; before the year ended they were everywhere; and the 'bus, a new introduction, heralds the advent of the tramway. Donkey-boys, never more free and easy than now, group, grin, and chatter at every corner. Cheeky shoeblacks, here the unerring test of well-doing, assail you like swarms of Nile-flies. The Redcoats give points of light, and riders in brown with M.P. (military police) on the arm afford a sense of security. The topboot-and-revolver period of invasion soon passed away, but the military tailor soon came well to the fore; and not a few uniforms reminded old hands of a Volunteer Review in London after the Crimean War.

"Alexandria is ordered to be in bed before twelve, but she enjoys her evenings. The Café Paradiso offers a hall full of billiard-tables ('balyards far unfit'), like bagatelle-boards, and music in the normal shape of a masculine and feminine Austrian band. The demoiselles-violinists are bound by contract to the best of behaviour during engagements. In descending scale is the Café Bel Ain, and a host of estaminets, groggeries, and beereries, till you touch bottom at depôts for Greek dancing and native music. Of the Teatro Rossini the less we say the better. The Theatre Zizinia opened with an Anglo-American troupe, distinguished by _Le Cabinet infernal, Le Negre Paganini,_ and _Le Jolly Coons, excentriques et high Kickers_. It finally rose to _Madame Angot_ in Italian.

"Standing before the ruins, we ponder over the events of June and July 11th, which confounded all 'old Egyptians'--myself included. The universal belief was that Alexandria had everything to fear, not from her Moslems, but from her mean white Christians--Italians, Greeks, and Levantines. Numerically they had the advantage, and all were more or less armed with long pistols and longer knives.

"How then came they to show such utter poltroonery? The only explanation is that they were surprised, scared, demoralized, by the soldiery and the murderous police taking part with a mob, dastardly, fanatic, and bloodthirsty as it was in the days of Hypatia. Whenever and wherever a knot of Europeans combined to defend themselves against the _canaille_, they fled like a flock of sheep. It is well to note and remember the fact, especially in the country parts of Egypt, where bad days may still be coming. Men who run are rarely merciful; after order was restored they would be cruel as they were cowardly. It was a sight to see their hangdog looks when they learnt that Arábi and Co. were not to be _sus. per coll._, or even shot.[3]

"For the English garrison of Alexandria much remained to be done. Of two thousand men (round numbers), four were buried per diem, at the yearly rate of 1460, and at an expense of £20,000, against £3200 per mensem. This excessive mortality of last autumn did not extend to the officers. The men died because fed with over-driven beef where mutton should have been preferred, and the horses were killed by rations of heating oats, where the natives use only cooling barley. The chief scourge, enteric fever, was attributed to 'bad water,' for which I should read 'strong waters.' It was the same in the time of Abercrombie. Men of both services might be seen at midday 'half-seas over' amongst the poison-selling booths. A Maltese lately convicted of 'hocussing' (vending drugged coffee) was let off without a flogging--_-pour encourager les autres_. It is to be feared that in a land where the rod only is respected, we shall govern too little, and thus distinguish ourselves from our French 'friends' who govern too much. The prime want was a Soldiers' Home in addition to canteens, where good liquor is to be bought. Men must leave their barracks for change of air and scene, but they should be ordered to walk about in knots, not singly, and they should be under agreement to drink nothing stronger than tea or coffee in the booths.

"The Police has been another serious consideration. The new 'Gendarmerie,' as it was called, consisted of a mongrel lot--jödelling Swiss, chestnut-sellers from Friuli, veteran soldiers from Dalmatia and Bosnia, Albanian shepherd-brigands, and a scatter of cosmopolitan mongrels. Far better to raise a brigade of three thousand 'Bobbies,' officered, drilled, and dressed (with due modification) after our London fashion. These men, who would not speak a word of any language but English, should be stationed in the port and capital, with detachments, relieved every quarter, at the six important towns, Damanhúr and Tantah, Zagázíg and Mansúrah, Port Said and Suez. Those who object forget that Swiss and Italians, Dalmatians and Arnauts, are as ignorant of Arabic as Englishmen are. The difference is, the latter are to be trusted; the former proved that they were not: some mutinied, others deserted, and all were dismissed.

"The environs of Alexandria had escaped any damage. The fair gardens and villas on 'the Canal' are as they were. Sídi Gábir was presently altered for better and for worse. The race-course served only to tether mules: the grand stand stood nodding to its fall, and 'Effendina's' palace and outhouses afforded shelter to the 18th Royal Irish. The fane of the old Maroccan Saint looks fresher and more flourishing than before. On the other side of the city the Boulevard de Ramleh suffered severely as its neighbours, Sherif Pasha and Tewfík[4] Streets: the station however remains, and the rails were not injured. As we issue from the land-fortifications we see them still crested by sand-bags. At that ticklish time, when Alexandria was left defended by few men and fewer cannon, Arábi might have attacked, and, aided by the half-cowed mob inside, might have driven us to extremes. Fortunately for Egypt, nothing less heroic than this hero. Ramleh, the 'Sand-heap' suburb, had nothing to complain of save the felling of trees and the plundering of gardens. The only changes we note there are the field-works near the water-tower thrown up to exchange long shots with the Rebels at Kafr Dawár. Here Abercrombie had his head-quarters before he was carried dying into the nearest mosque. Also the gypsy-like Bedawi who claimed the land have struck their foul black tents; and it will be the fault of the Ramleyites if the mean thieves are allowed to return.

"Leaving picturesque Alexandria behind us, we take the rail to Cairo. This, the main artery as well as the minor veins, so far from progressing under English management, of late years has distinctly retrograded. The rails are looser, the carriages dirtier, the _employés_ less civil and obliging; the prices higher and the danger greater than under Egyptian direction. All that can be said for this trunk line is that it appears somewhat less risky than its dependents. One of Egypt's latest curses is the rule of superannuated Anglo-Indian officials, who, with some notable exceptions, draw large salaries for doing little work. Their early training is worse than useless, as we saw in the Crimea, where Sepoy officers were sent to command Turks, _because_, forsooth, they had commanded Hindí Moslems and Hindú Pagans. For the Egyptian services I should prefer to these seniors, juveniles, even clerks, fresh and direct from England.

"The main interest of the railway-trip is the aspect of Kafr Dawár, the 'village of tent-encampments,' which I last saw in the guise of a sleepy little hamlet-station. The outer and inner lines of Rebel-earthworks, with rude batteries commanding the iron road, and resting upon Lake Mareotis and the Mahmudiyah Canal, contrast with the heap of beehive huts and the white villas embosomed in tree-mottes. The framework of the picture is a glorious sky and a flat fatiguing to the eyes as the South American Pampas. The reason for our declining this line of attack is obvious: the land is a bog, cut moreover by deep ditches and drains. Here Arábi made his first fatal mistake. Instead of keeping his half-disciplined troops well in hand, and cuddling their courage for the decisive day, he separated them and allowed detachments to be beaten in detail. But he had neglected the studies of a military college, and his staff did not contain a single officer versed in strategic science. It was a child playing against a master of chess. May the British Army enjoy few such easy triumphs; similar Algerian victories spoilt the French soldiers for European service.

"The main stations, Damanhúr, Kafr Zayyát, and Tantah, all made themselves infamous in the late Rebellion. The 'mild Fellah' and his milder wife tied the limbs of murdered Franks to dogs' tails, poured petroleum upon the poor brutes, and set them on fire. These horrors have sunk a great gulf between native and stranger which will not be bridged over during this generation. One regrets not to see a detachment of Redcoats, or at least a body of British policemen, holding fortified barracks in these three old centres of furious bigotry. The jails of Tantah were long crammed, but the contents were paupers, not rich culprits.

"The villages improve as we approach the capital, and square houses take the place of round African clay huts. The land is the same everywhere--a virgin-mother younger only than the hills. Black ants, brown ants, and white ants crawl over her ample bosom, come and go, are born to work and fight and die, but the Nile flows and floods for ever.

"Cairo promises ruins, but shows none beyond the railway-station. Nizr el-Kahíreh, the city of (planet) Mars, is still rejoicing over her narrow escape: she was saved one day before death by the gallant march of the British cavalry: the mean foreigners jealously suggest the 'horseman of St. George,' which is the golden sovereign. She is gay as Alexandria. The Shubra road that showed in 1879-80 some half-dozen _shandridans_ is now a line of Arab riders and neat equipages, of uniforms, un-uniforms, and of Parisian toilettes. Dinner-parties are the rule; balls are in prospect; Giroflé Giroflá is rehearsing at the Opera-house, and even that abomination the grind-organ has found its way into the city of the Mamelukes.

"Yet good old 'Shepherd's' is half-empty, and the New Hotel quasi-desert. Despite bogus lists and vamped-up reports this year will be, touristically speaking, a failure. And tourists are right. The tone of the population is disagreeable; the situation is unpleasant if not dangerous. Next season will be a success, on two conditions--the absence of cholera, and the non-withdrawal of the occupying army. But Cairo has suffered greatly in the loss of Lord Dufferin. It takes away one's breath (so rare is the sight) to see the right man in the right place; to miss the square peg in the round hole; to meet, for instance, General Feilding (a Hapsburg) at the Austro-Hungarian manœuvres, and to find Earl Dufferin sent to Egypt. The diplomat is a host in himself. His personal experience of 'the East' began nearly a quarter-century ago, when he organized the Libanus. He is a hard and conscientious worker; he has a priest's will with the 'courage of his opinions,' and he owns the gift of common sense which does not always characterize his profession. With one reservation (to err is human) we may hold _primâ facie_ that what Lord Dufferin determines is right will be rightly done. If he fail it will be from being ordered to attempt the impossible, to make an England of Egypt. Meanwhile we ardently wish he would abate the plague of locust-strangers that flock to batten upon the land. They are reviving all the conditions which led to the late troubles; and they will lead to a repetition of the drama with only the part of Arábi left out.

"One of Cairo's marvellous escapes is the unique Bulak Museum. It was offered for sale to a commercial house, _they say_; but here we must now believe little of what we see and less of what we hear. The old station-house is rebuilt, and may now be pronounced safe. MM. Maspero and Brugsch Bey are doing their best, but slowly: they want more assistance, which means money; and their revised catalogue will not be ready for this season. Their recovery of the old Pharaohs reads a lesson not only to the antiquary but to the political. How little the Egyptian has changed from what he was under the Double Crown may be seen in Brugsch Bey's report. The Fellah women ran bare-headed and dishevelled along the Nile-banks, keening the death-cry, as it were, for their husbands or brothers, when they heard that the mummies of their olden kings were being boated down stream by the French. The corpses were pickled some three thousand years ago, but what is that in the land of Kemi?

"Sunday, November 12th, corresponded with the first Muharram A.H. 1300. No Moslem, however, could or would tell me whether A.H. 1299 was, or 1300 is to be, the _Annus Mirabilis_ of Mohammedanism; even the comet had complicated the question by living too long. The popular expectation was a general uprising of the Moslem world, which, however, shows no sign; a kind of 'Battle of Armageddon;' the universal conquest of El-Islam and a general preparation for the end of time (_Akhir el-Zamán_), which is to follow in the fourteenth century. The superstitious noted a terrible omen. The Mahmal-litter, in which Rogers Bey finds a survival of the Covenant-ark (why not go back to Osiris?), was torn off its dromedary by a telegraph wire opposite the British camp, Suez, and (horrible to relate!) was mended by a Káfir, Mr. Campbell, engineer to the Compagnie Khédiviale.

"We wished the compliments of the season, _Kull ám antum bi'l-Khayr!_ (may every year find you fair!), to all our Egyptian friends who were not in durance or under surveillance. Every second man seemed to be in trouble, and with rare exceptions none from Caliph to churl would have come out with clean hands. Even the little black and whity-brown Beys, who haunted English dames and demoiselles at Shepherd's, found it advisable to make themselves 'scarce.' A very few words will resume the long story. Political imbecility, financial mismanagement, and the greed of bourgeois-shareholders raised up a powerful party against Europeans, and it found a fitting leader in Arábi, the Fellah-pasha. The Porte, hoping once more to conduct into shrunken and impoverished Constantinople a Nile flowing _lire_ and piastres, resolved that the Khedivial family should, in Napoleonic phrase, 'cease to reign.' Grand old Mohammed Ali was to be succeeded by a mere Pasha, or general, removable at will and retainable only whilst douceurs, _avances_, and tributes were regular. Hence the scandalous gift of the Medjidiah decoration to a palpable rebel. But the Fellah is _né malin_. He countered the Turkish project by transferring his allegiance from a 'Caliph' (successor), whose claims rest upon no legal base, to the Sheríf (Prince) of Meccah, the lineal descendant of the Apostle of Allah, whose right to succeed, if he choose to assert it, is indefeasible. How England was left to hack at, and lastly to cut, the Gordian knot need hardly be told.

"Finishing my work at the capital, I 'hardened my heart' to face the dangers of the Cairo-Suez railway. It is reported that the old direct line _viâ_ the Desert, where Burckhardt saw ostriches in 1816, will be relaid, and that a section of twenty-one miles is almost ready. Despite the expense and the waste of coin in carrying water, at the rate of three waggons to one full of passengers, our occupation will require this move. Nor must we forget the artesian wells, of which the old Olympiodorus thus speaks when describing the Lybian waste: 'In this oasis the people used to scoop out excavations one hundred to two hundred and fifty feet deep, when jets of pure water rose in tall columns.'

"At the still Burnt Station we found a trainful of half-uniformed peasants, bearing bag and baggage, including Remingtons. They will be mustered to the tune of ten thousand at Suez, and sent to the Sudan or Upper Nile Provinces with the view of putting down the long-standing insurrection. They look already beaten, and I do not envy the man who is to command. The Arch-enemy is the Mahdí, the 'False Prophet' of the European Press, a title which describes exactly enough what he is not. D'Herbelot has told the world that the twelfth Imam, or Antistes, the lineal blood-descendant of the Apostle of Allah and the legal religious head of El-Islam, was born in A.H. 255 (= A.D. 868), was named Abu 'l Kásim Mohammed, and assumed the style of El-Mahdí, or the Director, _i.e._ in the path of the True Faith. He mysteriously disappeared (probably murdered) under the rule of the Abbaside, El Mohtade, the fourteenth of the Baghdad House. Hence his title El-Mutabattan--the Concealed; but of the many _Redivivi_ noticed in history, he declared that he would return before the Last Day and lead a reformed Islamism to universal dominion in preparation for certain other Second Comings. Consequently every great political heave of Mohammedanism, in Africa as in Asia, has thrown up and still throws up one or more Mahdís. Of the latest 'Director' I could learn little, save that he is an inspired Carpenter: Cairo ignored even his real name. 'Mohammed Ahmed' of Dongola means nothing. Great men, religious or laical, always on promotion prefix to their own names 'Mohammed' or some variant. Thus Tewfík is Mohammed Tewfík, and Arábi is Ahmed Arábi. This Mahdí will, probably, like most of his predecessors, meet his death at the hands of his fanatical and infuriated mob of followers. Meanwhile, despite recurring reports of his being beaten, he is still formidable, and he will give trouble during the coming winter. The one only remedy will be an English expedition--costly, but not so costly as doing nothing.

"We detrained at Zagázíg after two hours and a half of dusting, which seemed to begin the process of burying alive. The modern town is the successor of Bubastis, Pi-Pasht, city of Pasht, Isis with the tabby-cat's head. Its position--a central point where roads, railways, and canals meet--has made it a Cottonopolis, and its factories, with tall stacks and huge warehouses, have entitled it the 'Manchester of Egypt.' It is the military key of the Delta; Napoleon Buonaparte, at the beginning of the century, drew his base from Bilbays to Sálihíyah, and the Arabists intended to do the same.

"I passed a day in the house of my friend M. Vetter, for the purpose of consulting with Mr. Charles Clarke, Chef des Télégraphes. He had been the managing man during my two expeditions to the Gold Lands of Midian; and his topographical and linguistic knowledge had enabled him to render the army valuable service during the late campaign. His house was carefully looted by English soldiers, who may have thought it belonged to some employé of M. de Lesseps, and by Indian sepoys, who tore up his wife's dresses to adorn their turbans, and his comfortable rooms were still bare and desolate. He had been invited to join the Palmer Expedition, but although on friendly terms with the powerful Bedawin chief, Sulayman Pasha El-Abázeh, he had declined. The game was not worth the candle. On my next visit I hope to find Mr. Clarke travelling Director of Telegraphs, a post which will suit him and which he will suit down to the ground. As yet he has received only the barren honour of a C.M.G., and H.H. the Khedive has shirked conferring any distinction to show that Mr. Clarke acted in his interest.

"The Zagázítes showed a peculiar, independent, free-and-easy bearing, and the resident Europeans, who lately begged two English officers in uniform to walk through the town, do not hold themselves safe without the protection of a detachment, British soldiers or policemen. For many reasons this should be granted to them. The adjoining villagers absolutely refuse to believe that Arábi has been fairly beaten: his defeat and capture are known in Southern Syria, but not within cannon-shot of Tel el-Kebir. Here, too, the Fellahs are ready to rise again at any given moment. They differ in blood from the inhabitants of the Nile Valley proper, but they are no improvement upon their neighbours.

"Prodigious is the iteration of books concerning the 'poor down-trodden Fellah,' serving sentimentality to contrast him with his Pharaohs, the Pashas and Beys who oppress him and his. This philanthropic and most ignorant twaddle began (not honestly) with the French invasion, endured through the age of Lane and Gardner Wilkinson, and is repeated in the old stock phrases by the latest writers, Baron de Mahortié and Dicey. Foreigners mostly know the city folk; their 'manners and customs of the modern Egyptians' should be called the 'manners and customs of Cairo.' Ask Mr. Charles Clarke of Zagázíg, or Mr. Curzon Tompson of Cairo, men who, never holding high official positions, could study the Fellah in his own home. They will confirm my statement that there is nowhere a more dogged and determined, turbulent and refractory, furious and fanatical, cruel and bloodthirsty race than these clowns of the 'Black Land.' Compared with them the 'finest pisantry' are a weak and violent race; nor do they produce, like the Felláhin, typical and remarkable men. This generation has seen the Mufattish, a son of the soil, who could hold his own against the ablest financiers of Europe, and who had amassed millions of money, when one fine night he was tumbled into the Nile. It has produced Arábi the Reb., who, despite his notorious want of physical pluck, has graved his name upon the memorial tablets of his native valley. Aided by the weakness of his opponents, he placed the captor between the horns of an exceptional dilemma. If put to death he would have become a _Shahíd_ or martyr. If allowed to live, even in exile, it was because the Káfir feared to slay him, and because it will soon be found advisable to recall him.

"A few words concerning the early career of this modern Prætorian may be acceptable; his later career is known to all. Arábi, not Ourabi, and mispronounced Arăby, probably an echo of 'Araby the blest,' is neither a Frenchman, nor a Spaniard, nor an Irishman, nor a green-turban'd Sayyid. His father, an honest Fellah, ploughed the old paternal fields about Kafr el-Taur ('Bull village'), between Tantah and Birkat el-Saba', stations on the Alexandria-Cairo railway. His mother, who has been interviewed by more than one Englishwoman, and who is now living at El-Hurríyyah ('Liberty'), her son's proprietary village near Zagázíg, sent her three boys as volunteers to serve and die for Said Pasha. This remarkable step, for the Egyptian parent invariably did and does the reverse, attracted the ruler's attention to the lads. He placed them in the military college, and he was heard to say, according to his widow, an honest Anglophobe, that he expected great things from Arábi.

"But Arábi preferred studying theology, which means bigotry, at El-Azhar, the University-mosque of Cairo, where professors are numbered by hundreds, and pupils by thousands. He had risen to be _Kaimmakám_ (Major), when his patron died. Ismail Khedive would have nothing to do with him: 'the man,' he said, 'has the eye of a _Hayyeh_' (snake). So he was kept on outpost duty till circumstances brought him to the fore, especially on February 1st, 1881, when his Azhar training proved peculiarly valuable. In 1882 he became the pivot of the situation. His right was that of being, after a fashion, the representative man; his claim was having posed before Egypt, England, and Europe as the Leader of the National Party.

"Returning to the Fellah, I would note that this race stands aloof from and above all its neighbours. As hair, features, and figure prove, the Nilote is of African not of Asiatic provenance, partly white-washed by foreign innervation. Mr. Lane dubbed him an 'Arab,' and derived him from the invading soldiery of Amru and other early Moslem conquerors, a handful whose nationality would be at once absorbed, would disappear in the next generation. You have only to place the Bedawi by the side of the Fellah, and the fallacy of the theory becomes palpable. The Fellah's half-brother is the Copt, who has kept his blood freer from 'miscegenation.' Both are perforce peculiar peoples. The climate of the Nile Valley allows no foreign-born to be viable; in its media neither Greek nor Roman, Persian, Turk, nor Circassian, German, Italian, Frenchman, nor Englishman, can permanently increase and multiply. It has thus an atmosphere of perfect conservatism. From the days of the monuments and of Herodotus, the Fellah has altered little but his faith: he preserves all the good and every bad and bitter quality of his forbears.

"The Home Press, when commenting upon the bloodshed and arson of June 11th, asked with wonder, how these 'lambs had suddenly turned wolves?' Lambs, indeed! why, no fighting ram is more obstinate and pugnacious, or less open to pity and mercy, than an Egyptian Fellah. And if the men are brutal and barbarous, the women are, if possible, worse; as mostly happens in hot damp climates, their morals are abominable, and, as Mr. Lane and the 'Arabian Nights' show, their modes of murdering are unutterably horrible. The account of these bestial beings, promenading the streets of Alexandria with the legs and arms of slaughtered Europeans, borne like flags on long staves, should open eyes that can be opened.

"The morbid philanthropy and the mawkish humanitarianism of modern days have created a theoretical, an ideal, Fellah; the factual man would start to see his own portrait. They must deserve compassion who have anything to do with him. There is hardly a European in Egypt who has frequented the villages as a sportsman or antiquary without being assaulted by the villagers, while several of my friends have been nearly killed. The peasants also act as their own police and 'ministers of high justice,' trying and punishing all criminal cases within their mud walls. If man or woman break the law, especially that of _Rasm_, or immemorial custom, the offence is kept from the guardians of society--policemen and magistrates, the worst robbers in the land. If certain 'commandments' be violated, he, she, or it, is carefully tied and trussed up, gagged, and thrown into the Great River. Father Nilus could tell more tales of murder than all the streams in the United Kingdom.

"Among the Fellah's good qualities we must not neglect his persistence and his bravery. A drive to the Pyramids will show you troops of half-naked urchins running a mile in the forlorn hope of a copper; and in this point the boy is the father of the man. The adult will be bastinado'd within an inch of his life before he pays his lawful rent, and his wife praises him as she dresses his wounds. Under Sesostris, who invented the phalanx, the Fellah-soldier overran the nearer East. Under Mohammed Ali and Ibrahim Pashas he beat the Arabs at Bissel and the Turks at Nezíb. Even a Moltke could not then save the Ottoman, and the late General Jochmus told me that he escaped defeat, when commanding the Tartar cavalry, only by systematically declining battle with Ibrahim Pasha and his Nilotic armies.

"The dogged pluck of the gunners at the Alexandrian forts and at Tel el-Kebir proves, that the stock has not degenerated; the easy final defeat is readily explained. There was treachery in the air, and the best and bravest men will not stand firm when they suspect that their right-hand, or left-hand neighbours, have been paid to leave them in the lurch. Had the rebels been disciplined, and led by English or French Officers, there would have been a very different tale. As a rule the sight of blood does not excite or terrify the Egyptian; it only makes him an 'uglier customer.'

"Such is the Fellah, the peculiar growth of long centuries. There are races, says M. Gambetta bluntly and truly, which want the rule of the rod. 'The green wand,' declares the Arab proverb, 'is from the trees of Paradise.' The abolition of the Kurbáj, or cowhide, had something to do with the late movement. The hill-peasant must either be beaten or beat; be tyrannized over or tyrannize: in the latter case, like the beggar on horseback, he beats to the death. Here it is no mercy to spare the stick; all forbearance is attributed to the ignoblest motive, craven fear; and the fancy that he is 'funked' makes even the coward brave. It is bad to bastinado, but it is better than to hang and shoot.

"From Zagázíg to Suez is one of the most rickety and dangerous bits of railway travelled over by Europeans. I have seen a single train catch fire twice in one day. You are pretty sure to be told of one which, a few hours ago, 'derailed' and made the hapless passengers pass a cold and hungry night in the waste. The only interest of the dangerous line is the casualty of running through the theatre of our latest campaign. War which, they say, teaches the British Public its geography, also brings into prominence and ennobles names known only to a local peasantry. Such are Kassásín, a lock-bridge over the Sweetwater Canal; Tel el-Mahútah, a mean ground-swell, where the Campaign and Mr. Neville have brought to life certain marvellous Pharaohnic remains; Mahsamah, an outpost station on the edge of Wady Tumilát, southern limit of the Land of Goshen; and Tel el-Kebír, which minor poets are invited to pronounce Keb-eer, not Kee-ber. The latter in 1878 was a mean village, distinguished only by tumble-down cavalry barracks of the Khedivial age, the Age of Modern Ruins. The name 'great mound' (Tel) alludes to a rubbish-heap which was removed for building-ground. There is a brother-hamlet, Tel el-Sagher (Little-mound) hard by, and it has suffered sorely in the maps.

"Amongst other _on dits_ the papers report that Sir Garnet Wolseley, before leaving London and Richmond, not only determined mid-September as the term of the campaign, but also, placing his finger upon Tel el-Kebír, predicted that the decisive action would be fought there. Is this possible? The rebels intended their field-works to be a simple outpost, a first line of trenches dug in the desert; the main defence was to be near Zagázíg, where the hoe'd and irrigated ground, cut by a network of small canals, would have been ugly to cross, as that about Kafr Dawár. But with an inconsequence, which denoted all their actions, Arábi and his Arábists wholly neglected to lay out a second line. Thus the battle was fought at the outer and provisional trenches, on open ground, with gentle rises and falls, where half-disciplined and unofficered men had no chance against regular troops, and the admirable arrangements of their General.

"Messrs. Cook, who took charge of the Commander-in-Chief and the head-quarter staff on their homeward journey--right sensibly they ignored those twin pests, the Courier and the Dragoman--and who will personally conduct the future Princes of the West to the 'Morning-Land,' soon advertised a 'trip to Tel el-Kebír,' where a large Dahabíyeh-barge, moored in the Sweetwater Canal, acted hotel. Here sundry sight-seers 'detrain,' each provided with Major Ardagh's 'lithographic sketch showing the attack.' They may find donkeys, but they prefer a four miles' trudge, over sand and gravel, in the November sun, hotter than an August semi-sun in England, to the British right, where the Highlanders attacked. The battle-field was long unpleasant; the dead might have been buried deeper; and the Bedawi took to 'resurrecting' the Egyptians for loot. Spoils presently disappeared and mementoes became rare, chiefly confined to water-bottles and old hats, bundles of cartridges, and fragments of weapons and missiles.

"A shaky stretch of twenty-six miles places us at ill-fated Ismailíyeh. When I first saw the pretty station in 1869, it boasted a delicious climate, combining the perfume of flowers and trees with the ozone and the 'champagne air' of the Desert. In 1878 the Ismailíyeh Canal, carrying Nile-water which sank into the loose gravelly ground, had bred dangerous malaria-fevers; and now the place is pestilential, hardly inhabitable. Worse still, no one knows what manner of sanitation it requires.

"Here the 'great engineer,' as our scribes will style M. F. de Lesseps, a retired Consul, innocent of all engineering but the amateur's, did us, unconsciously and right unwillingly, the best of good turns. His open patronizing of the arch-rebel, his phrasing, his posing, and his promises of immunity from attack, kept the Canal open, although all arrangements had been made for closing it. This is not to be done by shovelling in earth and sand, which can be shovelled out almost as fast. The best way is to lash together two or three ships or dredgers and simply to scuttle them: the obstruction would require blowing up, and even dynamite wastes valuable time. During future troubles merchant-craft should be convoyed with all precaution up and down the line, each convoy headed and followed by a gunboat. But the real want is a second waterway running parallel with the present. The cost need hardly exceed one-third of the first; and the lessons of the past will make the work easy as well as economical. This subject would require an article for itself: it has already appeared before the public, rather unpleasantly, and it will appear again. The pompous claim to monopoly of the Isthmus, the preposterous demands for millions, and the general tone of the Gallic chanticleers, followed by a loud gobbling from the bubbly-jock of Stamboul, rather amused than offended England. But it is no laughing matter, and some measure is the more necessary as the days of the Euphrates Valley Railway are either done or have not yet dawned. With the Russian at Kars, ready to march ten thousand men down south, we should be building a road for the especial benefit of the invader. Ten years ago it would have served to check the enemy; now it can only facilitate his attack. Not that we have any cause for alarm in the final result, whatever the Russophobe may think or say. Chinese armies, led by English officers, will occupy Moscow before the Muscovite reaches Calcutta.

"From Ismailíyeh we enter the wilderness; we are already in Arabia Deserta. The features are familiar, but they are ever fresh and they never pall. On our left, beyond the bush-green, rushy line of the _rigolle_, lies the chain of indigo-coloured lakelets, Timsah and the 'Waters of Marah;' and ships upraised by refraction course over the dry land. To our right rise the cliffy prolongations of Cairo's Jebel Mukattam, fading away into the distance-dwarfened mounds of Jebel Atákah and Abu Diráj beyond Suez. The broken plain around us, uniformly tawny as a lion's fell, dons ethereal tints as day is about to die, and borrows from the evening skies every colour of the rainbow. It has none of the charms of earthly landscape, grassy hill and wooded dale and park-like plain. All its beauties are reflected from the air and are assimilated till they become its own. No rose can be rosier than its blush-tints; no verdure delicater than its green glazing, the blend of chrome with lilac and cobalt; no yellow more golden than its foreground, no Tyrian purple more gorgeous than its middle distances; no azure more soothing and gracious than what clothes its horizon; no shift of scenery more pronounced than its rippling of alternate light and shade, flushing and paling under the acuter angles of the slanting sun-rays. Presently the giant grey shadow, or wall of night, rises slowly in the east; the blazonry of evening waxes faint and wan in the west, and without a shade of 'gloaming;' for here night comes on with a single stride, earth looks old and pallid and cold--_alt, kalt und ungestalt_--the spectre of her former self. Then follows the final transformation scene. The mysterious Zodiacal light, a pyramid whose base is the region of the setting sun, and whose apex towers towards the zenith, stands distinctly out of the black-blue velvety darkness, made visible by the golden lamps of star, planet, and constellation.

'--Contentez-vous mes yeux
Vous ne verrez jamais chose plus belle!'

"Poor Suez is the sole exception to the general rule of gaiety and merry-making in Egypt. She is actually in the throes of house-changing. She knows that the flitting must be done, but she has no heart to do it. This will be her third remove: even as Heroöpolis on the Bitter Lakes shifted to Arsinoë and Arsinoë migrated to Suez, so Suez must transfer herself to the New Docks--Waghorntown. She must rebuild herself, hotel and inns, Consulates and offices, agencies and counting-houses, leaving the-present tenement to Egyptian officials and native population. The causeway run out to the New Harbour, has so swallowed the bays on either side of it, like the Alexandrian Heptastadium, that even light-draft steamers find shoal water, and in a few years there will be dry ground where the wave still rolls. Medieval Suez, like Sandwich, will presently become an inland town.

"And yet another change for the worse awaits her. We shall in a few years land from Malta at Gurnah, the famous old Cyrene south-east of the island which did _not_ shelter St. Paul. Lying near the north-eastern shore of the Sidra Gulf (Syrtis Major), with a safe port distant ten miles, it was famous in Roman days as the Capital of the Cyreniaca, one of the granaries of the Empire; and the splendour of its ruins shows a high degree of civilization. Through this ancient land, Pentapolis, where there are no mechanical difficulties, a railroad will carry us to Alexandria. We shall then run up _viâ_ Cairo to Keneh, turn eastward, and embark at El-Kusayr (Cosseir). This line, proposed about a decade ago, is sure to be built. It will spare us the mortification of the disagreeable and dangerous Suez-gulf, which is ever too stormy or too still; moreover, it will be a gain of three clear days, and in this section of the nineteenth century the shortest line surely wins. I say nothing about the proposed 'Jordan Canal,' which proposes to deluge half the 'Holy Land,' beyond an expression of admiration that men in their senses can be induced to listen to it. The next move will be for the Man in the Moon to apply for a railway.