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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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 GIFT OF 
 
 Gene Fowler
 
 EGYPT IN TRANSITION
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
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 I'fioto 6j/ O. C licrf-tfarii. 
 
 THK RK;HT HONORABLK THK EARL OF CKOMKK, G.C.B., O.M.
 
 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY LOW 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 THE EARL OF CROMER 
 
 G.C.B., ETC. 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS 
 
 Wefa gorfe 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1914 
 
 All rights restrvtd
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1914. 
 
 NortoooU 
 
 J. 8. Cushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 Collage 
 Library 
 
 L 
 
 ' 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE, C.B., LL.D. 
 
 POET AND CRITIC 
 
 WHO HAS VINDICATED THE LITERATURE OF THE SMALLER 
 
 NATIONS AND ILLUMINATED THAT OF 
 
 THE GREATER
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I HAVE been informed on good authority that a few 
 years ago an English gentleman paid a visit to a high 
 official of the Sudanese Government resident at Khar- 
 tum, and, as a preliminary to a searching interrogatory 
 on a number of points of great public interest, stated 
 that he had just arrived and that his intention was 
 'to get at the very heart and soul of the people of the 
 Sudan.' The official in question was naturally rather 
 staggered at the declaration of a programme of such 
 far-reaching ambition, all the more so because he had 
 himself passed many toilsome years in the country, 
 in the course of which he had made strenuous efforts 
 to understand the habits and aspirations of its inhabit- 
 ants, but did not feel at all confident of the degree 
 of success which he had attained. He therefore 
 anxiously inquired of the newcomer how long a time 
 he intended to devote to the accomplishment of his 
 self-imposed task. The reply given by this ardent 
 seeker after Sudanese truth was that he proposed to 
 leave Khartum by the train on the following Friday 
 morning. 
 
 It may be, albeit I was told the anecdote as an 
 authentic fact, that this is a caricature, but in any case 
 it departs from the reality less than many might, as a
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 first impression, be inclined to think. In truth, the 
 rapidity with which casual visitors to the East occa- 
 sionally form their opinions, the dogmatism with which 
 they assert those opinions, which are often in reality 
 formed before they cross the British Channel, and the 
 hasty and sweeping generalisations which they at 
 times base on very imperfect data, is a never-ending 
 source of wonderment to those who have passed their 
 lives in endeavouring to unravel the tangled skein of 
 Eastern thought and have had actual experience of 
 the difficulties attendant on Eastern government and 
 administration. The scorn and derision excited by 
 these mental processes have found expression in the 
 creation of an idealised type, under the name of 'Pad- 
 gett, M.P.,' who is supposed to embody all the special 
 and somewhat displeasing characteristics of his class. 
 There is, however, another side to the question. 
 My personal experience rather leads me to the con- 
 clusion that what Pericles said of women holds good 
 about British officials in the East, that is to say, that 
 the less they are talked about the better. I have 
 noticed that on many occasions the really good work 
 done has varied in the inverse proportion of the degree 
 of public attention which it has attracted whether in 
 the sense of praise or blame. Nevertheless, it is cer- 
 tainly desirable, if for no other reason than to serve 
 as an antidote to current fables, that the British public 
 should have accurate information furnished to them 
 as regards the proceedings of their agents abroad.
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 It is equally desirable, even from the point of view of 
 the agents themselves, that those proceedings should 
 be from time to time scrutinised by intelligent and 
 independent witnesses who are not bound by any 
 official ties. Moreover, it sometimes happens that a 
 newcomer, bringing a fresh mind to bear upon the 
 facts with which he has to deal, may notice points 
 which, owing to custom and familiarity, have escaped 
 the attention of residents, and may thus make sugges- 
 tions of real practical utility. The value of the in- 
 formation thus afforded to the public necessarily de- 
 pends on the intelligence, the powers of observation, 
 the absence from prejudice, and the care displayed in 
 the collection of data exercised by the informant. In 
 the present instance all who are interested in the affairs 
 of Egypt and the Sudan have been singularly fortunate. 
 Mr. Sidney Low entered on his task already equipped 
 with a wide experience gained in other countries. He 
 evidently spared no pains to ensure accuracy in the 
 statements of his facts. His letters testify to the acute- 
 ness of his powers of observation. His pleasing liter- 
 ary style is calculated to attract many who would be 
 repelled by more ponderous official or semi-official 
 utterances. The result is that he has produced a 
 lively and, so far as I can judge, a very trustworthy 
 account of the present conditions of affairs in the 
 Valley of the Nile. I have no hesitation in commending 
 what he has written to the favourable consideration 
 of all who are interested in the subject.
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 The abundant literature which exists on modern 
 Egypt, coupled with the fact that a steady stream of 
 winter visitors now passes annually through Cairo, 
 have contributed to render the public tolerably familiar 
 with the present condition of Egyptian affairs. On 
 these, therefore, I need not dwell at any length. I wish, 
 however, to repeat an opinion which I have frequently 
 expressed on former occasions, namely, that by far 
 the most important question connected with Egyptian 
 internal administration at present is the abolition, or 
 at all events the modification, of the Capitulations. 
 The evils of the system, on which Mr. Low dwells 
 in one of his letters, are universally recognised. The 
 difficulty is to find a remedy, which shall at the same 
 time be both effective and practicable. I have in my 
 official reports, and more recently in an article published 
 in the Nineteenth Century and After, made certain sug- 
 gestions for solving the legislative dilemma which at 
 present exists. I do not attach any exaggerated im- 
 portance to the particular scheme which I have recom- 
 mended, but, without attempting to go fully into the 
 subject on the present occasion, I may say that no 
 plan of reform can, I am convinced, be successfully 
 carried into execution unless it steers between two 
 extremes. In the first place, it would be in the highest 
 degree unjust and also impolitic to deprive the Euro- 
 peans resident in Egypt of their present privileges 
 without providing adequate guarantees against the 
 recurrence of those abuses to guard against which the
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 privileges were originally created. The best guarantee 
 would probably be the creation of machinery which 
 would in some form or another enable European resi- 
 dents in Egypt to make their voices heard before any 
 legislation affecting their special interests was under- 
 taken. There are many ways in which this object 
 may be accomplished, neither have I any sort of wish 
 to dogmatise as to which method is the best ; but 
 whatever plan be adopted it will certainly prove a 
 failure unless the general principle is recognised that 
 personal rule, which must for a long time to come be 
 the predominating feature in Egyptian administration, 
 must in this instance be tempered to such an extent 
 as to enable local European opinion to be brought into 
 council. Equally objectionable would be any attempt 
 to treat all the inhabitants of the Nile Valley as a single 
 or homogeneous political unit, and to amalgamate 
 the machinery for purely Egyptian and for European 
 legislation. 
 
 Between the extreme of personal government and 
 that of parliamentary institutions of the conventional 
 type there lies a tolerably wide field for action. The 
 statesmanship of those responsible for the government 
 of Egypt will be shown by the extent to which they 
 will be able to devise a plan not open to the charge of 
 excess in either direction. In the meanwhile, there is 
 a distinct risk that in view of the great difficulty of 
 finding a practicable and unobjectionable solution to 
 this question ; of the fact that the subject, which is
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 very complicated, is but little understood in this 
 country ; and of the further fact that public attention 
 is at present directed to other and admittedly more 
 important topics, matters will be allowed to drift on 
 as they are, and that the present regime will continue 
 without any very substantial change. Such a con- 
 clusion would be unsatisfactory and disappointing to 
 those who are interested in the well-being of Egypt 
 and its inhabitants. But, on the other hand, it will 
 be better to drift on as at present rather than to take 
 a step in a false direction. 
 
 The public are, however, generally speaking, less fully 
 acquainted with Sudanese than with Egyptian affairs. 
 Mr. Low's letters from the Sudan are, therefore, to be 
 welcomed. They constitute, as I venture to think, 
 the most instructive and interesting portion of his 
 book. It is with very special pleasure that I note that 
 so competent an observer as Mr. Low is able to give 
 a very satisfactory account of Sudanese progress. I trust 
 it will not be thought presumptuous if I supplement 
 his account by stating the main causes which, in my 
 opinion, have contributed towards rendering that 
 progress possible. 
 
 Unquestionably, amongst such elements in the situa- 
 tion as are under human control, the first place must 
 be given to the fact that the form of government in 
 the Sudan is singularly adapted to the special condition 
 and requirements of the country. It is probable that, 
 with the exception of a few experts who might be num-
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 bered on the fingers of one hand, there are not a dozen 
 people in England who could give even an approxi- 
 mately accurate account of what that form of govern- 
 ment is. Neither can the general ignorance which 
 prevails on this subject cause any surprise, for the 
 political status of the Sudan is different to that of any 
 other country in the world. It was little short of 
 providential that at the time this question had to be 
 settled a Minister presided at the Foreign Office who 
 did not allow himself to be unduly bound by precedent 
 and convention. The problem which had to be solved 
 was how the Sudan, without being designated as 
 British territory, could be spared all the grave incon- 
 veniences which would have resulted if it had continued 
 to be classed as Ottoman territory. When the cannon 
 at Omdurman had once cleared the ground for political 
 action, it appeared at first sight that politicians were 
 impaled on the horns of an insoluble dilemma. Lord 
 Salisbury, however, whose memory I shall never cease 
 to revere, said to- me on one occasion that when once 
 one gets to the foot of apparently impassable moun- 
 tains it is generally possible by diligent search to find 
 some way of getting through them. 
 
 So it proved in the present instance. It occurred to 
 me that the Sudan might be made neither English nor 
 Egyptian, but Anglo-Egyptian. Sir Malcolm Mcll- 
 wraith clothed this extremely illogical political conception 
 in suitable legal phraseology. I must confess that I made 
 the proposal with no very sanguine hopes that it would
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 be accepted. Lord Salisbury, however, never thought 
 twice on the matter. He joyfully agreed to the creation 
 of a hybrid State of a nature eminently calculated 
 to shock the susceptibilities of international jurists. 
 The possible objections of foreign governments were 
 conjured away by the formal declaration that no pref- 
 erence would be accorded to British trade. The 
 British and Egyptian flags were hoisted with pomp 
 on the palace of Khartum, and from that time forth 
 Sir Reginald Wingate and his very capable subordinates 
 have been given a free hand. 
 
 The second cause, to which the success of the Sudanese 
 administration may, in my opinion, be attributed is 
 that, broadly speaking, the Sudanese officials have 
 been left to themselves. There has been absolutely 
 no interference from London. Nothing has, for- 
 tunately, as yet occurred to awaken marked parlia- 
 mentary interest in the affairs of the Sudan. 
 Supervision from Cairo has been limited to guidance 
 on a few important points of principle, to a very limited 
 amount of financial control, and occasionally, but 
 very rarely, to advice on matters of detail which has 
 invariably been communicated in private and unofficial 
 form. A system of this sort cannot, of course, be made 
 to work satisfactorily unless thorough confidence is 
 entertained in the agents who are responsible for its 
 working. The agents employed in the Sudan have 
 always been very carefully chosen, and they have fully 
 justified the confidence which has been shown in them.
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 They have been mainly, though by no means exclu- 
 sively, soldiers. The civilian element is, however, 
 being gradually increased. 
 
 I may perhaps conveniently take this opportunity 
 of explaining the genesis of the Sudanese Civil Service. 
 In the first instance, the civil work of the Sudan was 
 carried on almost exclusively by officers of the army. 
 This system continued practically unchanged until 
 the commencement of the war in South Africa. It was 
 not modified by reason of its having worked badly, 
 nor because any special predilection was entertained 
 for civilian in preference to military agency. Speaking 
 with a somewhat lengthy experience of administrative 
 work done by both soldiers and civilians, I may say 
 that I find it quite impossible to generalise on the sub- 
 ject of their respective merits I mean, of course, 
 in respect to ordinary administrative work, and not 
 as regards posts where special legal, educational or 
 other technical qualifications have to be considered. 
 In the present case my feeling was that a certain number 
 of active young men endowed with good health, high 
 character, and fair abilities were required to assist in 
 governing the country, and that it was a matter of 
 complete indifference whether they had received their 
 early training at Sandhurst, or at Oxford or Cambridge. 
 
 But the South African war brought out one great 
 disadvantage which is an inevitable accompaniment to 
 the employment of army officers in civil capacities. 
 It is that they are liable to be suddenly removed. The
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 officers themselves naturally wish to join their regi- 
 ments when there is a prospect of seeing active service. 
 The War Office, although I think it at times allows itself 
 to be rather too much hide-bound by regulations, nat- 
 urally looks, on an occasion of this sort, solely to the 
 efficiency of the troops which it sends into the field. 
 The result is that the head of a Government such as 
 that of the Sudan may suddenly find himself deprived 
 of some of his most valuable agents, and is thus ex- 
 posed to the risk of having his administration seri- 
 ously dislocated at a critical moment. 
 
 Frequent changes in any administration are at all 
 times to be deprecated. One of the reasons of what- 
 ever successes have been achieved in the Nile Valley 
 has been that all such changes have, so far as was 
 possible, been avoided. They are especially to be 
 deprecated at a time when events of importance, such 
 as those which occurred in South Africa, send an electric 
 shock through the whole British Empire, and more or 
 less affect indirectly all its component parts. To any 
 one sitting in a London office the removal of half a 
 dozen young officers and the substitution of others 
 in their place may not seem a matter of vital impor- 
 tance. But the question will be regarded in a very 
 different light by the head of an administration such 
 as the Sudan, who will very fully realise how impossible 
 it is, whether in respect to civil or military appoint- 
 ments, to fill at once the vacuum caused by the abrupt 
 departure of even a very few trained men. As a matter
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 of fact the withdrawal of a certain number of officers 
 from the Sudan to go to South Africa led to conse- 
 quences which were serious, and might well have been 
 much more so. It was manifestly desirable to do all 
 that was possible to obviate any such risks in the 
 future. Hence the embryo of a Sudanese Civil Ser- 
 vice was brought into being. 
 
 I should add that another very potent cause which 
 has contributed to the successful administration of the 
 Sudan is that the officials, both civil and military, have 
 been well paid and that the leave rules have been 
 generous. These are points to which I attach the 
 utmost importance. In those outlying dominions of 
 the Crown where coloured races have to be ruled 
 through European agency, everything depends on the 
 character and ability of a very small number of indi- 
 viduals. Probably none but those who have them- 
 selves been responsible for the general direction of an 
 administration in these regions can fully realise the 
 enormous amount of harm sometimes irremediable 
 harm which can be done by the misconduct or indis- 
 cretion of a single individual. Misconduct on the part 
 of British officials is, to their credit be it said, extremely 
 rare. Indiscretion or want of judgment constitutes 
 greater danger, and, considering the very great diffi- 
 culties which the officials in question have at times to 
 encounter, it cannot be expected that they should not 
 occasionally commit some venial errors. 
 
 The best safeguard against the committal of any such
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 errors is to discard absolutely the practice of selecting 
 for employment abroad any who for whatsoever reason 
 have been whole or partial failures in other capacities 
 at home. Personally, I regard anything in the nature 
 of jobbing these appointments as little short of criminal ; 
 and although my confidence in the benefits to be de- 
 rived from parliamentary interference in the affairs 
 of our Eastern dominions is limited, there is, in my 
 opinion, one point as to which such interference, if 
 properly exercised, may be most salutary. A very 
 careful watch may and should be kept on any tendency 
 to job, whether that tendency be displayed by the 
 executive Government or, as is quite as probable, 
 by Members of Parliament or others connected with 
 the working of party machinery. Imperialist England 
 requires, not the mediocre by-products of the race, 
 but the flower of those who are turned out from our 
 schools and colleges to carry out successfully an Im- 
 perial policy. 
 
 Their services cannot be secured unless they are 
 adequately paid. Of all the mistakes that can be 
 committed in the execution of an Imperialist policy 
 the greatest, in my opinion, is to attempt to run a big 
 undertaking 'on the cheap.' I am, of course, very 
 fully aware of the financial difficulties to be encountered 
 in granting a high scale of salaries. I can speak with 
 some experience on this point, inasmuch as for a 
 long period, during the early days of our Egyptian 
 troubles, I had to deal with a semi-bankrupt Exchequer.
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 But my reply to the financial argument is that if 
 money is not forthcoming to pay the price necessary 
 to secure the services of a really competent man, it is 
 far preferable to wait and not to make any appointment 
 at all. Apart from the consideration that high ability 
 can or ought to be able to secure its own price, it is not 
 just to expose any European to the temptations which, 
 in the East, are almost the invariable accompaniment 
 of very low salaries ; and, although to the honour of 
 British officials it may be said that the cases in which 
 they have succumbed to those temptations are so 
 rare as to be almost negligible, the State is none the 
 less under a moral obligation to place its employes in 
 such positions as to prevent personal feelings of honour 
 and probity being the sole guarantee for integrity. 
 
 Scarcely less important is the question of leave. 
 A period of nine consecutive months is quite long 
 enough for any European to remain in such a climate 
 as the Sudan. After the expiration of that time, his 
 physical health and mental vigour become impaired. 
 Moreover, he is liable to get into a groove, and to attach 
 an undue importance to local circumstances, which 
 loom large on the spot, but which are capable of being 
 reduced to more just proportions by change of climate, 
 scenery and society. 
 
 There is one further point to which attention may 
 be drawn. I have already alluded to the desirability 
 of avoiding frequent changes in the personnel of the 
 subordinate staff. The same holds good even to a
 
 xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 greater extent in respect to the highest appointments. 
 It almost invariably happens that sound and durable 
 reforms take time in their conception and execution, 
 and that they are slow in their operation. It is an im- 
 mense advantage if the same individual or individuals 
 who are responsible for initiating the reform can also 
 for a certain period watch over its execution and opera- 
 tion. The continuity of policy gained by the long 
 tenure of office which has been enjoyed by Sir Reginald 
 Wingate has been of incalculable value to the Sudan. 
 
 I have now, I think, indicated the principal reasons 
 which have enabled the Sudan to progress in the man- 
 ner recorded by Mr. Low. Under one condition 
 and it is a condition of the utmost importance that 
 progress will, I hope and believe, be steady and con- 
 tinuous. It is that the pace should not be forced. 
 
 CROMER. 
 
 36 WIMPOLE STREET, LONDON, 
 December 8, 1913.
 
 NOTE BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 THE chapters that follow were written after visits 
 to Egypt and the Sudan, in which I endeavoured to 
 gain some insight into the political, social, and adminis- 
 trative conditions of those countries. They are in- 
 tended to convey some account, slight, but I hope 
 faithful, of my impressions of the territory in that 
 stage of transition which ensued after the conclusion 
 of Lord Cromer's great period of reconstruction and 
 financial readjustment the stage which lay between 
 the reconquest of the Sudan by Lord Kitchener, and 
 his return to Cairo as British Agent and Consul-General. 
 It was thus the Nile lands, in certain of their aspects, 
 presented themselves to an observer, with some knowl- 
 edge of political and social developments at other 
 epochs, and in other countries of the East and the West. 
 
 Most descriptions of Egypt begin with the Nile 
 mouths or the capital, and work upwards towards the 
 tropical provinces. I have preferred to start with the 
 Sudan, which was the part of the area first examined 
 at close quarters, and thence to follow the course of the 
 great river downwards to the Delta and the sea. 
 
 S. L. 
 
 ZXl
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. THE DESERT TRAIN 
 
 II. A CITY OF ROMANCE ...... 
 
 III. THE GROWING OF KHARTUM . 
 
 IV. OMDURMAN 
 
 V. ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 
 
 VI. CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS . 
 
 VII. SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS . 
 
 VIII. SIMPKINSON BEY 
 
 IX. CONCERNING WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 
 
 X. THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA . 
 
 XI. STATE SOCIALISM IN THE SUDAN 
 
 XII. A NOCTURNE 
 
 XIII. A SUDAN PLANTATION 
 
 XIV. LAND AND WATER ...... 
 
 XV. THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD . 
 
 XVI. THE CLIENTS OF COOK . 
 
 XVII. THE HILLS OF THE DEAD 
 
 XVIII. CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 
 
 XIX. IN THE DELTA 
 
 XX. MR. VAPOROPOULOS 
 
 XXI. THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 
 
 XXII. THE OCCUPATION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 i 
 
 9 
 '9 
 3i 
 
 40 
 
 Si 
 62 
 
 74 
 
 84 
 
 93 
 
 i3 
 
 in 
 
 1 20 
 
 132 
 
 141 
 
 '53 
 162 
 169 
 179 
 192 
 202 
 
 212
 
 xxiv CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXIII. GOVERNING ELEMENTS, OLD AND NEW . . . 223 
 
 XXIV. GOVERNMENT BY INSPECTION 233 
 
 XXV. HALTING JUSTICE 242 
 
 XXVI. SOME RECENT REFORMS 253 
 
 XXVII. THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 270 
 
 XXVIII. CONCLUSIONS 286 
 
 INDEX 311 
 
 PORTRAITS 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF CROMER, G.C.B., O.M., ETC. 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PACK 
 
 FIELD-MARSHAL VISCOUNT KITCHENER OF KHARTUM, G.C.B., 
 
 O.M., ETC 60 
 
 LIEUT. -GENERAL SIR FRANCIS REGINALD WINGATE, G.C.V.O., 
 
 ETC. 122 
 
 SLATIN PASHA, G.C.V.O., ETC 182 
 
 THE KHEDIVE 244 
 
 SIR WILLIAM WILLCOCK.S, K.C.M.G 300
 
 EGYPT IN TRANSITION
 
 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DESERT TRAIN 
 
 THE Egypt of history paused at that gorge among the 
 Nubian rocks where the Nile spouts its way over the 
 Second Cataract. Often it could not get so far, and the 
 frontier fell back to the First Cataract, where now the 
 great dam blocks the stream by the island temples of 
 Philae ; sometimes an ambitious ruler pushed his armies 
 to the south and levied tribute from the tribes and 
 nations towards the Equator ; once or twice in the age- 
 long process the movement was reversed, and the lower 
 valley of the river has been subject to the masters of 
 the upper plains. But nearly always, be it under 
 Usertsen or Ramses, under the Ptolemies, the Romans, 
 the Arabs, or the Turks, a line was drawn at some 
 border fortress below the Cataract, by the site of what 
 in modern times is called Wady Haifa. Egypt, with 
 one hand clasped to Asia, ended here ; all beyond was 
 Africa vast, confused, mysterious, incomprehensible, 
 at once a menace and a temptation ; a land perhaps to 
 prey upon, perhaps to fear, but one that seemed to 
 have little kinship or community with the kindly, 
 habitable earth men knew. There, at Wady Haifa,
 
 2 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 where to-day you first touch the Sudan soil and leave the 
 Nile boat for the train that bears you across the desert, at 
 Haifa, or at Syene, which now is Assuan, was the last 
 outpost of Europe and Asia, the final vedette of civilisa- 
 tion. The level sun flamed across the waste of sand upon 
 the spearheads of Pharaoh's mercenaries and the hel- 
 mets of Roman soldiers as it did upon the bayonets of 
 Kitchener's sentries. Beyond the frontier camp the Nile 
 wound its way slowly upwards towards the Unknown, 
 the region of many names Cush, Ethiopia, Meroe, 
 Napata, where only vague rumour and doubtful travel- 
 lers' tales told of dim kingdoms, rising and falling, and 
 restless tribes of untamable savages. 
 
 But now this vast realm lies open. For the first 
 time in its history it is in full touch with the outer 
 world. When British generals overthrew the Khalifa's 
 hordes they did more than merely reconquer the Sudan 
 for Egypt : they conquered it in a sense in which 
 conquest had never been effectual here before. It is 
 true that previous to the Mahdist revolt the 'Turks' 
 ruled all through the Sudan, even to the Equator on 
 the south and to the farthest borders of Darfur on the 
 west. But, though Egyptian officials took heavy toll 
 from the natives, and though Egyptian and Turkish 
 soldiers lived (and plundered) all over the provinces, 
 the country remained inaccessible, remote, and inhos- 
 pitable. For those who were not officials or emissaries 
 of the Government, the journey into it was difficult, 
 and even dangerous ; for all it was long and slow.
 
 THE DESERT TRAIN 3 
 
 Now the neat and well-appointed express boats of the 
 Sudan Government service float you smoothly up to 
 Haifa in the extreme of comfort. And at Haifa you 
 transfer yourself and your baggage to the train, which 
 is also run by the Sudan authorities, with no greater 
 trouble than you would experience at Clapham Junc- 
 tion. You will make your first acquaintance with the 
 realms of Queen Candace through the windows of a 
 fine dining-room car. You enter the barrier desert 
 to the whistle of a locomotive that will roll you up to 
 the capital of North Central Africa in a night and a 
 day of luxurious travel. It is a very simple business 
 to get to Khartum nowadays. You can book through 
 from Charing-Cross if you please, and the worst ad- 
 venture that need befall you on the way will be a bad 
 Channel crossing or an inadequate luncheon at a rail- 
 way buffet. Measured by time of transit, which is the 
 only practical method of calculating distances, Om- 
 durman is nearer Piccadilly than Inverness when 
 George III was King, or Venice when Charles Dickens 
 discovered Italy. Eight days and a half from door to 
 door from the Thames to the Blue Nile. 'Good 
 going !' said an officer who went up with Kitchener in 
 '98. 'It took us three years to do the same journey 
 the first time we tried it. But we didn't happen to have 
 a railway ready for us then. We had to build it as we 
 went along and fight a battle every few months 
 while we were doing that.' 
 
 Yet, despite the tourist agents and the steamship
 
 4 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 companies and the railways, there is still some vague- 
 ness, outside the ranks of the regular Egyptian holiday 
 crowd, as to where and what the Sudan is. A lady, 
 the wife of a high official in Khartum, tells me that her 
 friends at home seem divided in opinion as to whether 
 the town is a sort of suburb of Cairo or a section of 
 Wildest Africa. 'How awful for you to have to live 
 in a place like that, my dear!' says one sympathiser. 
 'I suppose you hardly see a civilised human being 
 from one year's end to another.' And another will 
 write in this strain: 'Young Blank, you know, my 
 husband's second cousin, has gone to Cairo. Such a 
 nice boy do, please, ask rfim to come out and have 
 tea with you one afternoon.' 
 
 Let us hope these intelligent geographical conceptions 
 are not widely diffused ; though we Britons, unless 
 we have business or social relations with any particular 
 part even of our own dominions, are apt to be curiously 
 ignorant of it. I doubt, at any rate, whether many of 
 us have grasped the real and astonishing truth about 
 the last great Empire over which the flag of Britain 
 flies. Do we all know, for instance, that here, alone on 
 the earth, that ensign floats alongside another ? The 
 Sudan is under Two Flags : on all the public buildings, 
 on the barracks, the Government steamers, the police 
 stations, the palaces, the post offices, at a review of 
 troops, you look aloft and see two flagstaffs the White 
 Crescent of Egypt waves from the one, the Union Jack 
 crackles jauntily from the other. Through all the
 
 THE DESERT TRAIN 5 
 
 length of the Nile, from Uganda to the Mediterranean, 
 England is in partnership with the Khedivial Govern- 
 ment. -In Egypt it is a relation somewhat veiled and 
 not formally admitted, though real enough ; in the 
 Sudan, though Britain is, beyond question, the pre- 
 dominant partner, the joint rights of Egypt itself 
 nominally still a Turkish province are carefully 
 asserted. It is a curious situation, of which more 
 anon. Meanwhile, let us not forget that we are deal- 
 ing with a condominium of a very remarkable and 
 novel kind. The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is a political 
 entity such as does not exist anywhere else on earth, 
 such as never has existed in this precise shape so far as 
 we know. We have here something exceptional and 
 unique, whereof the two flags that greet us before we 
 enter the train at Haifa are the striking symbol. There 
 is the record of many stirring chapters of history, of 
 the epitaph of many brave men's lives black, brown, 
 and white in those two tall masts and those squares 
 of bunting flapping in the dusty desert breeze. 
 
 That is one of the things that perhaps everybody 
 does not grasp touching the Sudan. There are some 
 others. Is it commonly understood that this territory, 
 which has been added to the sphere of British interest 
 during the past fifteen years, is enormous in extent and 
 immense in its potential, if not its actual, resources ? 
 It is twelve hundred miles long and a thousand miles 
 wide, and it has an area of a million square miles 
 two-thirds the size of India, larger than Great Britain,
 
 6 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 France, Germany, and Austria together. One prov- 
 ince alone would hold Spain comfortably and have room 
 to spare. Nor are these vast spaces mere waste tracts, 
 empty squares, such as used to be left blank on those 
 old maps of Africa which are still too often reproduced 
 in our modern atlases. There is plenty of swamp, 
 scrub, and desert in the Sudan. But there is also a 
 large amount which is actually rich and fertile, and a 
 still larger amount which, under certain conditions, 
 such as we are now beginning to apply, might be made 
 so. The population of the whole territory is esti- 
 mated at little more than three millions. But this 
 is due to temporary causes which we have now elim- 
 inated. That is to say, to the ruin and havoc wrought 
 by Mahdism. The Sudan has in former times sup- 
 ported a large number of inhabitants, it was even the 
 seat of populous civilised communities, and it may 
 become so again. It is no Sahara into which we are 
 bringing the light, but a country of great, though 
 unequal, possibilities worth developing and cultivating. 
 Different views are taken of the Sudan by those who 
 may be called Sudan experts ; there are few who do 
 not hold that, in parts at least, it will be more than 
 worth the pains that are being taken by a small knot of 
 Englishmen, assisted by a competent body of Egyp- 
 tians and natives, to bring it into prosperity. The 
 task will be long and difficult : none more worthy and 
 arduous has been undertaken by Englishmen of our 
 generation.
 
 THE DESERT TRAIN 7 
 
 You get some glimmering of it as you travel in the 
 desert train, which bridges the stretch of utter barren- 
 ness that fends Egypt from the south. This railway 
 was, indeed, the beginning of the work which rendered 
 the rest possible. At Haifa the Nile bends in a mighty 
 loop to the west, and then turns north again before 
 it resumes its proper southward course at Abu Hamed. 
 Wolseley, in 1884, took the long and tedious way round 
 the bend and over the two cataracts it passes. Kitch- 
 ener, in 1898, determined to take the short cut across 
 the 230 miles of desert. And such desert ! Africa, 
 the world, has scarcely its equal. Treeless, waterless, 
 lifeless, it glistens on either side a sea of dead sand 
 that washes to the base of scarred hills, without a leaf, 
 a patch of green, the twinkle of a mountain torrent. 
 Through this ruined wilderness, in the heat of a tropical 
 summer, Girouard's men made the track, laid the 
 sleepers, and spiked down the rails at racing pace, one 
 gang ahead preparing the way for the next as it came 
 along. Between that fiery May and that fierce Decem- 
 ber the young Canadian lieutenant of engineers got 
 the road begun and finished never less than a mile of 
 rails laid in a day, sometimes three miles. Often as 
 you have read of that wonderful achievement, it is not 
 till you are looking from the windows of the desert 
 train that you comprehend its full meaning. Even in 
 December, with all the comforts of the train de luxe, 
 wicker chairs, iced drinks, smoked glass panes, and 
 lattice shutters you gasp at the heat and cough with
 
 8 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 the dust. The glare of the level yellow plain makes 
 your eyes ache ; you are glad when a mirage comes to 
 rest them, so that the jagged rocks on the horizon seem 
 floating in sheets of cool white water and the fronds 
 of delusive palms wave mockingly on the horizon line. 
 And you may think of the men working against time 
 there in the open, not in the winter, but in July 
 think what the dust, and the furious sun, and the 
 burning sand, and even the cruel irony of the mirage, 
 must have been to them. At Abu Hamed, where the 
 Nile is touched again and there are groves and fields, 
 you slip comfortably into a well-kept bath they 
 have ready for you at the railway station, and with 
 soap and hot water wash off the desert dust and go 
 back to your car, refreshed and clean, for breakfast. 
 And then you glide past Berber, where roofless mud 
 houses still tell of the ruin wrought by the dervishes 
 before we came to stay the devastation, over the 
 great iron bridge across the Atbara, and the branch 
 line to the Red Sea coast which Girouard's successors 
 have built ; along the river, past Shendy and Metem- 
 meh and in sight of that other desert of the Nile bend 
 which our men trod wearily in the fruitless advance 
 that came too late to save Gordon. The sun has set, 
 and the pall of the tropical evening rests darkly on the 
 land, as your journey ends at the railway station of 
 Khartum.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 A CITY OF ROMANCE 
 
 KHARTUM ! 
 
 It is a name which many Englishmen cannot hear, 
 even when it is prosaically called at a railway station, 
 without a certain thrill. To some, indeed, of my fellow- 
 travellers who arrived with me by the desert train that 
 dark, warm evening in December, it may have meant 
 little. 'Also sind wir zuletzt am Ende !' says the stout 
 German, who has been grumbling and perspiring for 
 many hours. For him, coming into the Sudan with 
 strictly commercial aims, Khartum is only a town like 
 any other. So it is to the American lady tourist, under 
 the disc of a vast white felt helmet and a blue veil like 
 a mosquito-curtain ; to the good-looking young Briton, 
 bound for Gondokoro and the pursuit of big game, it 
 is merely the starting-point of a sporting expedition ; 
 to the bimbashi of a Sudanese battalion going back 
 to duty after his three months' leave it means another 
 spell of hard, hot, dusty toil before the moist greenness 
 of 'home' can be felt again. The aliens have no part 
 in the associations that gather round the spot where 
 the two Niles join. The youngsters were not old 
 enough to share in the long tension of that unavailing 
 march which ended in futility and retreat; they were 
 
 9
 
 io EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 only schoolboys during the progress of the later vic- 
 torious expedition which avenged the failure. So many 
 things have happened since Stewart fell at Abu Klea 
 and Wilson took the Bordein under a rain of bullets 
 past the swarming walls of Omdurman : many things 
 since Wauchope's Highlanders and Hector Macdpnald's 
 Sudanese mowed down the Khalifa's dervishes at 
 Kerreri. Nations have risen and fallen since then : 
 great armies have fought greater battles. No wonder 
 the story of Khartum has waxed dim. 
 
 But to those who lived through it, who followed at a 
 distance the whole strange dramatic series which began 
 with the massacre of Hicks Pasha's hapless regiments 
 and ended with the death of Abdullah the Khalifa, 
 it must be a romance merely to breathe the air of 
 Khartum. The very names of things and places recall 
 events which once stirred us to the marrow with hope, 
 or fear, or anger, or suspense. As I traced our route 
 on the railway by the guide-book the long-forgotten 
 geography of the Sudan came back to me. How well 
 all England knew it once. How they used to pore 
 over the maps behind windows lurid with the London 
 fog, till Dongola and Berber, and Korti and Metem- 
 meh, the Atbara, and Abu Hamed, were burned into 
 our memory. I saw Safiyeh herself in that brisk little 
 dockyard a Portsmouth in miniature where a 
 captain of the British Navy builds boats and repairs 
 engines and keeps the Sudan Government's flotilla in 
 order. A battered, empty, mastless, and unfunnelled
 
 A CITY OF ROMANCE 11 
 
 hulk was the famous Thames penny steamer which 
 went through such vicissitudes in her heroic day. A 
 mere shell of shabby planking; but to set foot on the 
 poor old lighter is to recall the breathless nights spent 
 when the tale was being told in England of the gallant 
 dash to save Gordon at the last, of the rush up the 
 Nile, of the mending of the boiler under the dervish 
 fire, of all the desperate efforts that came too late. 
 After Lord Charles Beresford had used the little steamer 
 to rescue Sir Charles Wilson's party from a very per- 
 ilous position she fell into the Khalifa's hands again ; 
 thirteen years later Lord Kitchener's gunboats re- 
 captured her, in the course of that hurried expedition 
 up the White Nile to settle matters with Captain Mar- 
 chand at Fashoda. What things she has seen, that 
 dishevelled Safiyeh \ If her mouldering timbers could 
 speak, they could tell some tales worth hearing. 
 
 It is one of the romances of Khartum ; but all 
 Khartum is a romance. Its wide streets, its forts and 
 barracks and palaces, its groves and gardens, its mud- 
 walled suburb villages, its two great confluent rivers, 
 the dusty plain that stretches round it to the hard blue 
 sky, bear witness to a chapter of history none the less 
 marvellous because it is recent. A generation ago the 
 whole vast Sudan was a sort of outlying Turkey. The 
 'Turk' misruled in calm insouciance; Egyptian pasha- 
 dom buttoned its frock coat round its pockets at 
 Khartum, and shared its gains grudgingly with official- 
 ism at Cairo ; Egyptian conscripts kept guard sulkily
 
 12 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 in the provinces, dreaming of the wheatfields and water- 
 meadows they would never see again ; the slave trade 
 went on briskly under the eyes of plundering ruffianism 
 which took toll of the grain and ivory, the gum and 
 the women, in the name of the Khedive. The empire 
 which Mehemet Ali founded seemed no more evanes- 
 cent than many others in the East : it was abominable 
 barbarism at bottom, but it had the externals of civili- 
 sation. The telegraph wire went striding down to the 
 Equator ; military bands were playing Austrian dance 
 music outside the officers' messes at Wadelai and Lado. 
 Who could imagine that raiding Arabs and tribes of 
 African blacks could overturn all this elaborate edifice ? 
 But it collapsed, so to speak, in a night. A strange 
 magnetic impulse brought these scattered, helpless, 
 peoples together about Mohammed Ahmed, the Mahdi, 
 and Egyptian rule shrivelled up in a blast of flame. 
 Few things are more remarkable in their way than this 
 swift linking up of an oppressed heterogeneous popula- 
 tion by the bond of a common Islamism ; few more 
 deplorable than the ruin and desolation that followed 
 the coming of the Dongola Messiah. 
 
 It was a reproduction of those convulsions and cata- 
 clysms, of those displacements and migrations and 
 colossal butcheries, we see moving dimly through the 
 darkness of past centuries in the pages of Gibbon. 
 We had it under our eyes ; we have the results, the 
 survivals, before us in Khartum to-day, and in Omdur- 
 man. The towns are full of memorials of that brief
 
 A CITY OF ROiMANCE 13 
 
 crusading fury of Moslem puritanism, of the long carni- 
 val of blood and rapine that followed, of the heroic 
 struggles to stem the tide, of the final, disciplined, de- 
 liberate effort to beat it back, of the steady, successful 
 labour to repair the ravages. We have forgotten much 
 of the story. We live too fast in these days to keep 
 our memories green. But in the Sudan capital it is 
 not easy to forget : the associations of that stirring 
 recent past are before you everywhere. Even the 
 tourist cannot miss all of them. 
 
 You may go out to the battlefield of Omdurman 
 which here they call Kerreri with one of Mr. Cook's 
 dragomans, or, as I did, with a native officer who had 
 been through the fight, and hear over again the details 
 of Kitchener's great victory. Not long ago the ground 
 was all white with unburied skeletons, and dervish 
 skulls, and even dervish jibbahs and spears were to be 
 had at will. Now most of these relics have gone, and, 
 though there are a few dry bones lying conspicuously 
 in the sunshine, there is some doubt whether they are 
 not the mortal remains of camels and oxen, thoughtfully 
 placed in situ by the donkey-boys for the benefit 
 of inquisitive and acquisitive visitors. Perhaps there 
 is no more reliance to be placed on the testimony of 
 the donkey-boy himself, who, on being questioned, will 
 tell you that he was himself in the battle. He was a 
 Sudanese slave of the Baggara, he says, who was given 
 a gun and taken into the fight, and crawled away 
 wounded (he shows you a conspicuous scar) to Omdur-
 
 I 4 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 man when it was over. You supply him with piastres 
 and receive his story with due scepticism. Yet it may 
 be true. Khartum and Omdurman are full of the 
 living remnants of Mahdist triumph and Mahdist 
 oppression, now engaged in quite peaceful avocations. 
 
 In that Government dockyard I have mentioned I 
 noticed a little old man with a shrewd, bronzed, semi- 
 European face and an iron-grey moustache, working 
 assiduously at a drilling machine. He was a Cypriote, 
 and was a mechanic in the Government arsenal when the 
 Mahdists came. Skilled artisans being wanted, his 
 life was spared ; after a disciplinary interval of chains 
 and prison, they set him to labour in the Khalifa's 
 workshops, and there we found him when we took over 
 the plant and business. Now he drills and hammers 
 for the Sudan Government, and gets his wages regu- 
 larly, which was an advantage he did not enjoy when 
 he was drilling and hammering either for the Khedive 
 or the Khalifa. He had to become a Mohammedan, 
 and they gave him a forlorn captive negress (nominally 
 a Mohammedan too) as a wife. I did not ascertain 
 what had become of the lady ; but the man himself 
 has reverted to the faith of his fathers. 
 
 People had strange religious as well as matrimonial 
 experiences in the Sudan while the Khalifa ruled and 
 since. There is, for example, Signora X, who now 
 presides over the household of an Italian tailor in 
 Khartum. I became acquainted with this artist in the 
 course of an attempt to get certain ink stains, pro-
 
 A CITY OF ROMANCE 15 
 
 duced by an erring stylographic pen, removed from 
 my trousers. In the temporary absence of her hus- 
 band the Signora confided to me portions of her bi- 
 ography. She was born in Marseilles, and came to 
 Egypt in the flower of her youth as a governess in a 
 family of position, where her charms captivated an 
 officer of rank in the Khedive's forces, who married 
 her. Here I think she must have embroidered a little ; 
 I suspect she was only a lady's maid and her husband 
 no more than a corporal. She followed this warrior 
 to the Sudan, and was herded into the compound at 
 Omdurman, in which they placed all the women young 
 enough to be worth keeping, the day after the taking of 
 Khartum. One of the Mahdi's fighting Emirs claimed 
 her as the prize of war, and proposed to add her to his 
 harem ; but she contrived to appeal to the Mahdi, 
 who had decreed that European women with resident 
 husbands should not be made over to Moslems. Un- 
 happily the Signora's Egyptian spouse had disappeared, 
 having been no doubt killed ; but one of the brothers 
 of the Austrian mission kindly allowed her to become 
 his wife pro forma, and this situation subsisted during 
 the Khalifate. After 1898 the proper ecclesiastical 
 steps were taken to annul the nominal union, and she 
 joined her fortunes with those of the Italian tailor, 
 whom death had relieved of a Sudanese wife imposed 
 upon him (deeply against his will, the Signora averred) 
 during his days of servitude and Mohammedanism. 
 Or, again, you ask a question concerning the pleasant-
 
 16 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 faced native 'boy' who ministers to you when you 
 are lunching at a friend's table. Your host requests 
 Abdullah to tell his story. He does so, and you learn 
 that his father was a Baggara Arab, that he was taken 
 young to be water-bearer to the Khalifa himself, that 
 he was captured by Sir Reginald Wingate's men not 
 far from his master in the last fight of all, when the 
 Pretender and his chosen lieutenants perished. They 
 took the boy and sent him to school in Khartum ; and 
 now he deftly pours soda-water for the unbeliever, as 
 though no weapon more lethal than a corkscrew had 
 ever swum into his ken. 
 
 There are other and sadder memorials. In the 
 beautiful new palace of the Sirdar, which has risen from 
 the ruins of the old one, they take you into a ground 
 floor corridor, on the walls of which is the tablet : 
 'Here Gordon died.' The palace is built on the site 
 of its predecessor, though its plan and arrangement are 
 different, and the actual staircase on which the hero 
 fell has disappeared. But a little above the spot is a 
 new staircase, sweeping up in a handsome curve from 
 the gardens to the broad verandah on the first floor, 
 on which the principal rooms of the present residence 
 open. As we stand on the second step we must be 
 very near the actual space in which the tragedy occurred 
 on that night in February 1885, when the dervish horde, 
 fifty thousand strong, made its final swoop upon Gor- 
 don's disheartened, decimated, famished garrison cower- 
 ing behind its ineffective walls. With one rush the
 
 A CITY OF ROMANCE 17 
 
 feeble ramparts were carried and the Mahdists were 
 slaughtering the Egyptians like sheep. Gordon had 
 gone up to the roof of the palace, where day after day 
 he had watched for some sign of that belated, slow- 
 moving army, whose advance guard, after its boggling 
 with the sands and the cataracts, was even then so 
 close. Seeing that all was over he put on his Pasha's 
 uniform, girded on his sword, and calmly stood at the 
 head of the staircase awaiting what should befall. 
 Through the palace grounds, trampling over his own 
 flower-beds and rose-bushes, came the shrieking fa- 
 natics, brandishing their great spears. 
 
 The Mahdi, it is said, had given orders to spare him ; 
 alive Gordon was worth more than dead. But the 
 howling mob, maddened by their orgy of blood, did 
 not stop to answer the hero's disdainful challenge. 
 They threw themselves upon him ; pike and two- 
 handed sword stabbed and hewed ; the head was cut 
 off and the body was hacked to pieces, there, on the 
 blood-stained steps, close by where we stand. Some- 
 body tells the story again in quiet tones ; before us lie 
 the lawns and rustling sycamores of the gardens, sleep- 
 ing under the silver rain of the southern stars ; behind 
 us the broad, lamp-lit terrace, where gay little after- 
 dinner groups of men and women are chatting and 
 laughing. It is one of those contrasts between the 
 present and a past so little remote that we seem to 
 touch it with our hands, which make your first few 
 days in Khartum so like a dream.
 
 i8 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Indeed, as I look back upon those days my mind 
 retains a mingled impression of scenes and memories 
 almost equally vivid : of a beautiful city, green and 
 white in the midst of the grey desert dust ; of sunset 
 in a superb pageant of rose and lemon, yellow and 
 violet, glowing upon great lake-like reaches of gleaming 
 water ; of pleasant villas set back behind trees and 
 flowers ; of date palms bending their gracious heads 
 above the golden bells of the tocoma and the crim- 
 son clusters of the poinsettias ; of a busy bazaar and 
 market full of cheerful, laughing negroes and lithe 
 brown Arabs, keen-eyed and straight ; of stalwart 
 Sudanese soldiers in white uniforms and Egyptians in 
 khaki, disciplined and respectful ; of many Englishmen 
 and a few Englishwomen, all young, all well-dressed, 
 apparently all good-looking ; of a whole world of active, 
 vigorous life, moving upon a background of shadows. 
 Such was my vision of Khartum, as I came to it at first, 
 haunted by those memories from which Khartum itself 
 has emerged. For it is only the sentimental traveller 
 who has time to indulge in retrospective meditation 
 here. Khartum does not meditate over the past. 
 It is far too well occupied with the present and the 
 future.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 
 
 YOUR first emotion over Khartum yields to a senti- 
 ment of surprise as you begin to look around you, a 
 surprise abundantly justified when you recall the recent 
 history of the place. Fifteen years ago, when it fell 
 into the hands of the victors of Kerreri, Khartum was 
 a heap of ruin and rubbish. Founded by Mehemet 
 All in 1834, it had been a town of some importance and 
 pretension as the centre of Egyptian rule in the Sudan. 
 For that reason, as soon as Mohammed Ahmed, the 
 Mahdi, got possession of the town he set about to 
 destroy it utterly. The public buildings were burned, 
 the private dwellings, mostly of mud, were dismantled, 
 the inhabitants, or such of them as had escaped 
 massacre, were commanded to transfer themselves to 
 Omdurman, some three miles away on the opposite 
 bank of the Nile. This village became an immense 
 human warren, and, under the Khalifa, it was pretty 
 nearly the largest town, measured by population, in 
 all Africa. Within sight of its festering alleys Khartum 
 crumbled to dust in the sun. When Kitchener entered 
 it, on September 3, 1898, to hold the funeral service 
 over Gordon and hoist the Two Flags on a wrecked 
 battlement of Gordon's Palace, it was lifeless and 
 vacant. An entirely new city had to be created. 
 
 19
 
 20 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 So far this was an advantage. The builders had 
 no hampering vestiges of the past to deal with. They 
 were not encumbered by the hopeless ground-plan 
 of an Eastern town, nor were their efforts after light 
 and sanitation thwarted by the existence of a nest of 
 twisting lanes and interlocking courts. They could 
 start fair and lay out their streets and open spaces 
 with a mathematical symmetry for which municipal 
 reformers at home sigh in vain. This is typical of 
 much else in the Sudan. Its administrators are more 
 fortunate than those who are concerned with countries 
 thickly grown over with the tradition and inheritance 
 of the past, such, for instance, as India and Egypt. 
 War and revolution had cleared the ground for them, 
 and they could lay their own foundations and work 
 from them. Khartum reveals the results of a bold and 
 far-sighted ambition. Its second founders were con- 
 vinced from the outset that they were the holders of 
 no mean city. Though it is so new and young, it 
 bears the aspect of a capital ; it seems to be preparing 
 itself for a great future. I confess that when I con- 
 sidered the situation of Khartum, and the swiftness 
 with which it had sprung up out of the dust of its own 
 decay, I expected to find it makeshift and provisional. 
 I figured it to myself as a sort of frontier camp, or, 
 at the best, like some of the civil stations in India 
 where everything has a hasty appearance, as if prepared 
 for people who are not life-long residents, but only 
 temporary sojourners under alien stars. But there is
 
 THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 21 
 
 nothing of that transient feeling about Khartum ; it 
 has no rawness, despite its youth, and, though still 
 unfinished, it has a settled air, as if it were the work of 
 men who realised that they were planning for the future. 
 It lies in the midst of a brown and yellow wilderness, 
 which we do wrong to call desert, since it needs but 
 water to reclothe it with a garment of verdure. The 
 water is there in the two mighty rivers the Blue 
 Nile, blue with the scour from the Abyssinian hills, 
 and the White Nile, whitened by the flood from the 
 lakes of the Equator that mingle their streams at 
 this point. The water is there, but it is not easy, for 
 political and other reasons, to filter it over this thirsty 
 land. The city of Khartum, however, is allowed to 
 take its toll, and it shows the result in a wealth of 
 greenery, of bloom and foliage, and rustling branch, 
 which delight the tired senses after the glare and 
 barrenness of the long, hot journey from the north. 
 All along the river front and in the gardens behind it, 
 and especially in those of the Palace, the slender, wil- 
 lowy date palms bow their stately heads like tall young 
 princesses, as if in acknowledgment of the nosegays 
 of red and yellow blossoms, which the parkinsonia, 
 the poinsettia, the mustard tree, the sisiban, the flower- 
 ing thorn of the Sudan, and other lesser shrubs toss to 
 their knees. The streets have been planned, as I have 
 said, with a generous amplitude, and, though there are 
 many vacant spaces in them still, they give promise 
 of becoming handsome boulevards with time. En-
 
 22 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 terprising Greeks and venturous Italians have estab- 
 lished thriving shops, which give to the main thorough- 
 fares a busy and mercantile appearance. 
 
 Behind these streets is the quarter of the natives, and 
 it is a native quarter cleaned, regulated, and deodorised. 
 The houses are of mud or mud bricks, like those of 
 Egypt, but they are spaced out with a vigilant regard 
 to sanitation and a conscientious neglect of their 
 owners' feelings on the accumulation and disposition 
 of superfluous dirt. In this part the Government, 
 mindful of the spiritual needs of its subjects, has built 
 a handsome mosque, and, careful of their material 
 wants, it has provided a great market, where are rows 
 of booths and shanties, and where camels and donkeys, 
 tinpots and native damur cottons, and many other 
 vendable things, are bought and sold under the strict 
 supervision of certain Coptic and Egyptian clerks 
 accountable to the mudiryeh, which is the provincial 
 and municipal administration combined. Trade is 
 brisk and varied. I saw a stall largely devoted to 
 the sale of braces, though I cannot conjecture the use 
 of those articles to people who do not wear trousers. 
 To the tourist who visits Khartum this market is a 
 place of joyous resort. Here to his heart's content he 
 can snapshot such subjects as he will not find during 
 his holidays in Egypt negroes lavishly displaying 
 limbs of polished ebony, fierce Arab tribesmen hung 
 round with cutting weapons who have driven their 
 gaunt, striding, desert camels from far up the country ;
 
 THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 23 
 
 giant Shilluks from the Upper Nile ; savages of all 
 sorts from the dark recesses of Africa towards the West 
 Coast and the Congo. Women are numerous, some 
 in veil or yashmak, others in various stages of semi- 
 nudity : in the Northern Sudan there are still more 
 women than men, thanks to the activity of the Khalifa 
 in killing off the adult male population. These may 
 be the reliquice Danaum, but they show no trace of 
 gloom. They are a cheerful, good-tempered, chatter- 
 ing folk, especially the Sudanese. The Arabs are 
 more dignified and reserved, and in their brown keen 
 faces and the easy grace of their walk you seem to 
 detect something of the manner of a conquering, direct- 
 ing, race. They do not forget that they used to be 
 the masters and the negroes their servants. 'Who are 
 these ?' I say to my Arab dragoman, indicating a 
 group of negresses squatting round open trays of Indian 
 corn and millet. 'Those slave women, sah,' replies 
 Abdul, with scorn. As a matter of fact, they are not 
 slave women now ; but a few years ago they were. 
 Many thousands such were found, husbandless and 
 ownerless, when we marched into Omdurman. Many 
 of them live in a couple of native villages in a sort of 
 enclosure or reserve just outside the town of Khartum. 
 Black or brown, Semitic or negroid in blood, these 
 people seem to have an excellent understanding with the 
 latest rulers whom the chances of history have imposed 
 upon them. Furious fighters as some of them have 
 been, they give one the impression of a docile, easily-
 
 24 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 governed folk. Unless all appearances belie them 
 they both like and respect the men from the distant 
 North who are set in authority over them. They 
 are 'casual' towards the Greeks, familiar rather than 
 friendly with the Egyptians ; but towards the English 
 their demeanour is reverential. When a native 
 mounted on a donkey passes an English gentleman even 
 in the streets of Khartum, it is etiquette for him to 
 dismount from his beast and salute ; it is also correct 
 for the Briton to acknowledge the salutation with 
 punctilious courtesy. So it used to be in India when 
 there were only sahibs in that land, and in Egypt, too, 
 I believe, in the pre-Cookian days. In the Sudan even 
 now they are beginning to distinguish between the 
 mere tourist and the important official resident who 
 wears the gilt crescent on the front of his pith helmet ; 
 presently the European may find himself treated as 
 brusquely by brown elbows and toes as he is in the 
 streets of Cairo and Bombay. Meanwhile, the ma- 
 jority of the Sudan natives are still in the unsophisti- 
 cated stage ; and the travelling Briton, who is less 
 than nobody in his own and most other countries, can 
 taste for a moment the unwonted sensation of belonging 
 to a superior order of beings. 
 
 The good manners of the Sudanese cannot, I think, 
 be set down to our credit ; they are naturally polite, as, 
 indeed, are most of the Oriental and primitive peoples. 
 But there are other things we have been teaching them 
 during the past twelve years, and they have been learn-
 
 THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 25 
 
 ing their lesson with gratifying rapidity. The con- 
 dominium of England and Egypt has been exhibited 
 in an administrative partnership. The official hier- 
 archy is mixed ; in every department there are English 
 chiefs, with native subordinates, from somewhere 
 down the Nile. So far, work requiring some intelli- 
 gence, as well as elementary education, has had to be 
 entrusted to the Misraim, the Copts and Mohammedans 
 from the north, with some little assistance from the 
 handy Greek, the useful Syrian, and the adaptive 
 Armenian. But the new rulers of the Sudan hold that 
 its own population should be enabled to provide the 
 requisite skill and brains, as well as muscle, without 
 drawing upon an alien element, which is not altogether 
 happy in these tropical regions, and often stands 
 the climate badly. You will remember Mr. Kipling 
 has endeavoured to impress it upon the public mind 
 in some oft-quoted verses that even before Lord 
 Kitchener had completed the work of conquest he set 
 about the task of education. He thought that as we 
 were proposing to extinguish the staple trade of the 
 country, which was fighting, we ought to create a few 
 others. So his lieutenants and coadjutors set to work 
 to turn the Sudanese into efficient members of a pacific 
 society. The children of the Arab warriors and their 
 black dependants are being sent to school, and are 
 taught not only reading and writing but also various 
 industrial arts, with the result that the Sudan will 
 soon be able to find itself in mechanics, blacksmiths,
 
 26 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 carpenters, and artisans of all kinds, without assistance 
 from outside ; and presently also in architects, sur- 
 veyors, engineers, doctors, schoolmasters, officials, 
 and clerks. The muscle and physique of the negro, 
 combined with the alert intelligence of the Arab, should 
 contribute all that is needed. Already there is abun- 
 dant work, at wages which would not sound wholly 
 contemptible in the East End of London, for both 
 kinds. The Government railways, shops, and dock- 
 yards, employ thousands of men, and an industrial 
 city, still newer than Khartum, has sprung up on the 
 opposite side of the Blue Nile. Passing through these 
 workshops, filled with whirring machinery, one saw 
 Sudanese fitters and enginemen and boat-builders 
 and riveters toiling briskly, under the direction of a 
 few skilled foremen from the Clyde, the Tees, or the 
 Don. All honour, by the way, to these canny Scots 
 and quiet, clean-faced young fellows from the North 
 and the Midlands. The Sudan owes much to them. 
 
 At the far end of the long river-front of Khartum, 
 beyond the Palace, and the club, and the houses of the 
 European residents, and just within the enceinte of 
 barracks and defensive works for Khartum, remem- 
 ber, is a fortress and place of arms stands the Gordon 
 College. It is an imposing building, in solid brick and 
 stone, with wide corridors and cool, academic cloisters. 
 This is the seminary of the higher education for the 
 Sudan, and here the young Sudanese, who has learnt 
 the elements in the primary schools, may carry his
 
 THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 27 
 
 studies further by the aid of Arabic-speaking teachers, 
 under the general superintendence of certain young or 
 youngish gentlemen who have acquired proficiency in 
 cricket and other ingenuous arts at the universities of 
 Oxford and Cambridge. The boys are a mixed lot. 
 One was pointed out to me as the son of an Egyptian 
 clerk in the War Department ; another was the child 
 of a former bitter and formidable enemy of ours 
 a great and prosperous slave trader; a third was the 
 son of one of the Khalifa's famous Emirs, a foeman who 
 proved himself worthy of our steel ; two more were 
 closely related to the false Prophet himself. Some of 
 the boys had marched across from the Cadets' College, 
 a few yards away a sort of Sudanese Sandhurst - 
 where the sons of officers in the black battalions and 
 some others, mostly belonging to the first fighting 
 families of the country, are qualifying for the military 
 career. The Commandant takes an especial pride in 
 his cadets, and has brought them to a high state of 
 efficiency. He was kind enough to parade them for 
 my inspection, and a smarter lot of young soldiers 
 I have not often seen. The boys take a passionate 
 delight in their studies ; when they are not in the class- 
 rooms or on the parade ground they sometimes play 
 football ; but their favourite amusement is to drill 
 one another, or practise their gymnastic exercises, or 
 read military text-books. Thus is the inherited war- 
 like instinct turned to good account. Before long the 
 Sudanese contingent will be able to find its subalterns
 
 28 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 and non-commissioned officers without drawing upon 
 Egypt. 
 
 Throughout the Gordon College there is a similar 
 practical aim. The Director of Education has very 
 wisely determined that a high literary culture is a 
 luxury with which for the immediate future the Sudan 
 can dispense. The young Sudanese is not encouraged 
 to read Burke and Mill, and Herbert Spencer and Berg- 
 son, nor is he induced to browse vaguely over English 
 literature and modern politics. That peculiar intel- 
 lectual stimulus so liberally purveyed to the youthful 
 Bengali is denied him. I did not hear the boys recite 
 any English poetry, for they do not learn English poetry, 
 which would certainly confuse and probably upset 
 them. But I went through the drawing office and the 
 surveyor's class, and saw young students, working out 
 plans with metre-rule and T-square, and calculating 
 quantities with a neatness and precision which would 
 do no discredit to Great George Street. The students 
 learn sufficient English for all such purposes ; not 
 enough to denationalise them or cause them to forget 
 that they are the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of a 
 Mohammedan country. Instead of qualifying his 
 pupils to become disappointed office-seekers or active 
 political agitators, the Director endeavours to produce 
 a steady stream of young fellows, with the elements 
 of a sound technical training. It seemed to me that 
 he had chosen the better way ; and I even thought 
 that some more highly developed communities might
 
 THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 29 
 
 learn something from the educational experiment which 
 is being conducted in the heart of Africa. 
 
 Khartum, however, is doing more for science and 
 learning, and education in the highest sense, than this. 
 The most notable building in the place in some re- 
 spects the most notable building in the Sudan or in 
 all North Africa is the Wellcome Institute. Here, 
 thanks to the enterprise and liberality of Mr. Henry 
 S. Wellcome, the head of the famous firm of manu- 
 facturing druggists, there are well-equipped labora- 
 tories and consulting rooms in which a staff of bacteri- 
 ologists and medical experts is engaged in examining the 
 problems of tropical vegetation, germ-life, and disease. 
 Results of the utmost value may be expected from their 
 researches, which may end in extirpating or bringing 
 under control the worst of the maladies which have 
 hung like a blight over the vitality and the progress 
 of the sun-lands. It is the beginning of a work com- 
 parable in importance to that of the great Portuguese 
 travellers and explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries. Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco da 
 Gama, and Bartolomeo Diaz laid open the coasts of 
 Africa to the exploitation and commerce of Europe; 
 but through all the intervening centuries the interior 
 of the Dark Continent has remained inhospitable and 
 deadly. It seems as if modern science and hygiene 
 may once more restore it to civilisation and render it 
 habitable and wholesome for the northern races. And 
 in this great peaceful reconquest of the South the
 
 30 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Wellcome Laboratories of Khartum will be in the van- 
 ward files. If Britain had done no more in the Sudan 
 than to provide a secure centre for this scientific work, 
 we should have justified our efforts to get back to the 
 Upper Nile.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 OMDURMAN 
 
 THE transmutation of Omdurman is as strange in its 
 way as that of the sister city across the Nile. Omdur- 
 man has had a curious history. Some thirty years ago 
 it was an unimportant native village. When Moham- 
 med Ahmed, the Mahdi, had swept up all the Sudan, 
 save only Khartum, he made Omdurman his camp, 
 where he assembled his armies for the siege of the last 
 stronghold of Egyptian rule. After the fall and destruc- 
 tion of Khartum he turned the camp into his capital, 
 and brought together a vast concourse of his friends 
 and subjects. The policy was continued by his suc- 
 cessor, Abdullah, the Khalifa. That sensual and 
 suspicious tyrant would have liked if he could to collect 
 the entire population of his dominions about the walls 
 of his own residence. No one knows how many people 
 there were in Omdurman fifteen years ago. I have 
 heard the number put at half a million or even eight 
 hundred thousand. It is an immense place still, 
 straggling some five or six miles along the river bank; 
 but two-thirds is empty space, though its population 
 now is well over sixty thousand. Under the Khalifa's 
 regime of blood and famine the inhabitants of the
 
 32 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Sudan had decreased by at least seventy per cent. 
 The figure seems incredible ; but the best authority on 
 the subject, the Sirdar, who knows everything about 
 the Sudan that is worth knowing, regards it as an 
 unduly moderate estimate. When we came into posses- 
 sion the eight or nine millions of the Sudanese peoples 
 had been reduced to less than two ; and perhaps a 
 quarter of them or more were gathered under the 
 Khalifa's eye, in the nest of reeking lanes round the 
 barracks where he kept his servants and his women, 
 and the great enclosure in which he held his prayer 
 meetings. 
 
 There were willing and unwilling tenants in the 
 houses and huts of Omdurman. Many thousands were 
 the Khalifa's janissaries, the dervishes of the Baggara 
 and other fighting Arab tribes, on whose spears his 
 power rested. These men lived at free quarters, 
 plundering the negroes, and making booty of the 
 cattle and corn and women of those who were suspected 
 of disloyalty to the Prophet. Others were the warriors 
 of rival Arab clans who had been brought into Omdur- 
 man so that they could be watched and guarded. 
 Here, too, were all the European and Egyptian prisoners 
 whose lives it had been deemed desirable to spare. 
 In a little house adjacent to the Khalifa's lived Slatin 
 during the ten precarious years of his captivity, some- 
 times petted by the capricious tyrant, sometimes in- 
 sulted and bullied, but always, in spite of his forced 
 conversion to Mohammedanism, treated as a slave
 
 OMDURMAN 33 
 
 and aware that his life hung by a thread. Now he is 
 Sir Rudolf von Slatin Pasha, K.C.M.G., C.V.O., C.B., 
 Inspector-General of the Sudan, the second greatest 
 man in the country, next only to the Sirdar. You 
 may meet the gallant Austrian officer riding his pony 
 through the streets of Khartum, looking not at all as if 
 sixteen years of his life had been passed in exile and 
 captivity, amid trials and dangers enough to shake 
 the nerve of any man. And in Omdurman, or, perhaps, 
 at a pleasant afternoon party under the trees of the 
 Palace Gardens at Khartum, you could till lately have 
 seen a very tall old man in a rough brown cassock, 
 girdled with cord, a man with a long beard, a face all 
 lined and seared that was a history in itself, and deep 
 earnest eyes with a glint of humour in them. This was 
 Father Ohrwalder, who likewise was one of the Mahdi's 
 captives, and suffered many things in the prison-houses 
 of Omdurman, before he escaped through the skilful 
 contrivance of Sir Reginald Wingate. When the end 
 of the dervish rule came, Father Ohrwalder went back 
 again, not to a palace or to high office, but to live 
 simply in Omdurman and to work among his 'people,' 
 some of them Christians, who had shared his own cap- 
 tivity. Everybody liked the good priest. Moslems 
 made way for his tall figure as he passed through the 
 bazaars ; he was friendly with the Greek priests and 
 the Coptic ecclesiastics ; with the chief of his own 
 Austrian mission, as well as with Bishop Gwynne, the 
 genial and popular head of the Protestant community
 
 34 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 in the Sudan, himself the friend of men of all religions 
 and of none. 
 
 Omdurman was like Peking in that it was a town 
 within a town. There was a kind of ' Sacred Forbidden 
 City,' a walled enclosure in the core of the huge un- 
 regulated mass of mean buildings, which was appro- 
 priated by the Khalifa, his dependants, his personal 
 followers, and his Baggara praetorians. In this stood 
 his own house, a somewhat pretentious edifice, fitted 
 with a bath-room, mosquito curtains, carpets, brass 
 bedsteads, doors of inlaid wood and other luxuries ; 
 the houses of his sons, his arsenal and armoury (where 
 you may still see an odd collection of miscellaneous 
 armour and weapons, from mailed helmets of crusad- 
 ing pattern to Tower muskets and Remington rifles 
 taken from Hicks Pasha), his treasury, and his harem; 
 here, too, was the Mahdi's tomb, which Kitchener 
 deemed it politic to destroy ; and the great Mosque ; 
 and the gallows. One part of the Khalifa's house has 
 been converted to the use of the present administra- 
 tion of the town. On the ground floor I saw a couple 
 of rooms very simply furnished with a writing table, 
 a deck chair, a shelf with a few books, a camp bedstead 
 and metal tub, and the other modest articles of an 
 Englishman's toilet. These were the quarters of the 
 junior civilian, fresh from Oxford, who was assisting 
 the Mudir of Omdurman and learning from him how 
 to govern natives. It made one reflect a moment on 
 the odd revenges and juxtapositions of history to hear
 
 OMDURMAN 35 
 
 the young gentleman's name. For this youthful Sudan 
 civilian was a son of Mr. Asquith, the liberal Prime 
 Minister who owed his rapid advancement in official 
 life to the favour and high regard of Mr. Gladstone, 
 that other great liberal statesman whose action in send- 
 ing Gordon to Khartum was the indirect cause of the 
 founding of Omdurman. 
 
 Another portion of the Khalifa's abode has been con- 
 verted into the residence of the Mudir, the governor. 
 The position, at the time of my visit, was rilled by 
 Captain Young, a very able officer lent to the Sudan 
 service by the British Army; and Mrs. Young was 
 then the only English lady in Omdurman except the 
 wife of the officer commanding one of the Sudanese 
 battalions. English ladies are rare in the Sudan ; 
 the officers stationed up the country are, I believe, not 
 expected to enter the matrimonial state without the 
 permission of the Sirdar, and even in Khartum itself 
 ladies are few. They make up for the paucity of their 
 numbers by being exceedingly charming and more 
 hospitable, even to the passing globe-trotter, than 
 that peccant person usually deserves. After a morning 
 in Omdurman I lunched with great satisfaction in 
 Mrs. Young's shady dining-room ; and my enjoyment 
 of this agreeable repast was increased by an ever- 
 present sense of incongruity. I could not dismiss 
 the thought that these pleasant, English-seeming 
 apartments, with their quiet, home-like air of comfort, 
 were, in fact, those in which Abdullah had carried on
 
 36 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 his orgies and taken counsel with his trembling satel- 
 lites. As I sat on the broad verandah, with its rugs 
 and tea tables, I had before me the dusty plain where 
 the Khalifa assembled his fanatics and worked them 
 up to the right pitch of more or less genuine enthu- 
 siasm. My eyes could scan the spot where he held 
 his daily revivalist meetings, his daily floggings, his 
 not infrequent hangings. The civil gaffir, or watch- 
 man, who held my pony at the gate, might have been 
 one of Abdullah's victims, or one of his executioners, 
 a few years ago. 
 
 The Mudir devoted more hours of a busy day than I 
 had any title to expect to showing me round Omdurman. 
 Shrunk as it is from its former proportions, it is a large 
 place, and takes a long time to see. We rode through 
 street after street, and lane after lane, mostly occupied 
 by small bazaar shops doing a brisk business. Om- 
 durman is the mart and entrepot for a wide tract of 
 north Central Africa, and natives come from great 
 distances to sell and buy here. You can find good 
 opportunity for studying the different types and nations, 
 from the Levantine, in black trousers and pith helmet, 
 who was born, perhaps, by the shores of the Bosphorus, 
 to the Bahr-el-Gazal negro, in a loin cloth, who first 
 saw the light not far from the Equator. I was intro- 
 duced to certain of the local manufacturers. We went 
 to the quarter of the silversmiths, where grave-looking 
 Arabs sell heavy bracelets and anklets of hammered 
 metal, and little trays and ornaments neatly woven in
 
 OMDURMAN 37 
 
 silver wire. They are good handicraftsmen, with 
 their primitive tools, but they have no originality or 
 sense of design. On the other hand, they can copy 
 a model with exact fidelity; and Captain Young 
 showed me various articles accurately imitated from 
 the European patterns which he had supplied. In a 
 small back yard, we found the establishment of a 
 local miller, a man of substance, though his plant con- 
 sisted of a couple of grindstones turned by a patient 
 camel, which walked round and round all day in a 
 little covered shed. At Omdurman they weave an 
 excellent cotton cloth called damur, which is very light 
 and strong, and more porous than duck or crash ; it is 
 much liked by European residents in the Sudan for 
 suits of summer clothing. We visited one of the local 
 cotton mills where this cloth is woven. The owner 
 was a woman, and she had half a dozen female assistants 
 and one old man in her employ. This man sat on the 
 ground with his legs tucked into a hole under him and 
 drove the shuttle through the sticks and strings of a 
 flimsy loom, such as you may see anywhere in an Indian 
 village. The proprietress herself twisted the yarn 
 with a spindle, which she operated with a marvellous 
 and baffling dexterity. She took the thing between 
 her two brown, skinny little palms, and rubbed it up 
 and down for a moment, and it became alive and went 
 on spinning and spinning and spinning with a perfectly 
 uniform motion ; and the hank of yarn came out and 
 grew longer and longer, and was spun into a thin fine
 
 38 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 thread and never broke. How it was done you could 
 not tell, for if you took the bobbin yourself and tried 
 to spin it you could not keep it going for half a dozen 
 turns, and the thread snapped off almost at once. The 
 craftswoman smiled, and took the machine from you, 
 and did the trick again as easily as before. It is a 
 queer tool, the Asiatic or the African hand. Its 
 possessor, as a rule, has so few others that he has 
 learnt how to do all he wants with this one. 
 
 We went round the quarter of the grain-sellers, the 
 bazaar of those who sell potter's wares and earthenware 
 of all sorts ; we inspected the vegetable market, and 
 the booths of the butchers. Everybody, of course, 
 knew the Mudir and his Egyptian assistant the Mamur 
 or sub-magistrate, and everybody was polite, attentive, 
 good-humoured, without obsequiousness or servility. 
 The Sudanese does not cringe or crouch even to the 
 man he gladly recognises as his superior ; he stands 
 up and looks him in the face. It was the day appointed 
 for the trial of a steam fire-engine which Captain 
 Young had imported : a necessary apparatus in these 
 clustering rows of huts of dried brick and sun-baked 
 wood and straw. The furnace was lighted, and long 
 jets of water were spouted into the air, to the keen 
 delight of a great crowd of men and women and bright- 
 eyed youngsters who watched the performance. It 
 was all very interesting ; but as I went the round I was 
 haunted by a vague sense that there was something 
 missing, something I was unconsciously expecting and
 
 OMDURMAN 39 
 
 did not find. I discovered what it was when we came 
 to the quarter of the butchers. Therein I saw meat 
 weighed out and sold on cleanly slabs of zinc, which 
 slabs, by the edict of the Mudir, are flushed and scraped 
 daily with as much care and nicety as if they adorned 
 the shop-front of a Westend poulterer. Then I per- 
 ceived what was lacking to the sukh, which is the 
 market-place, of Omdurman. The familiar odour of 
 the Orient, unforgetable when once it has assailed your 
 nostrils, was absent. Here was an Eastern bazaar, 
 without the Eastern smell, that pungent, racy flavour 
 compounded of sun-dried filth and close-packed hu- 
 manity and the miscellaneous products of many 
 animals. The life and colour of the sun-lands were 
 there ; but not the dirt-heaps before the open doors, 
 the prowling dogs rooting in garbage, the mired and 
 feculent ways. Omdurman is genuine Africa ; but 
 it is Africa deodorised, cleansed, regulated, made safe 
 and wholesome by firm and patient hands. When 
 you recall George Steevens's appalling description of 
 that place as it was when we took possession mounds 
 of festering rottenness, stenches that turned the soldiers 
 sick, dead bodies of men and buffaloes putrefying in 
 the lanes you feel that its inhabitants have some 
 reason for gratitude towards their present rulers.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 
 
 THE winter visitor to Khartum comes away with a 
 somewhat exaggerated belief in the amenities of Anglo- 
 Sudanese life. He must be hard to please if he has 
 not enjoyed his trip. The railway journey may have 
 been a trifle long and dusty, even though mitigated by 
 first-rate sleeping cars, a restaurant wagon de luxe, and 
 excellent baths at the half-way station of Abu Hamed 
 to wash the desert dust off the voyager. But the 
 tourist, especially if provided with a few introductions, 
 finds everything delightful. The climate fills him with 
 enthusiasm, as well it may, for in December and Janu- 
 ary it would be perfect, save for an occasional sand- 
 storm. The sun shines hotly all day from a cloudless 
 sky, but a far greater heat could be endured in this 
 dry, exhilarating atmosphere ; there is always some 
 breeze stirring, and the mornings and nights are fresh 
 and cool, without the nipping chill that is apt to try 
 the liver and lungs after sundown in the winter of some 
 other tropical countries. It seems good to be alive 
 in these bracing mornings, as you ride along the river 
 bank, under the palms, with the red and yellow blos- 
 soms glowing on one side of you, and the great white 
 
 40
 
 ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 41 
 
 river gleaming on the other ; or at night, after a pleas- 
 ant dinner party, as you stroll back under the golden 
 southern moon floating through the purple velvet of 
 the sky. 
 
 Then there is so much that is novel and still unhack- 
 neyed. Even the small discomforts of existence are 
 enjoyable. There are few carnages in Khartum, ex- 
 cept those belonging to the Palace and a governess-cart 
 or two. The tourist must go about on the back of a 
 donkey, or in a rickshaw, drawn by the same useful 
 beast. The donkeys are not always up to the best 
 Egyptian standard, and they are often provided only 
 with the stirrupless native saddle, which is a wooden 
 framework, with a sheepskin thrown over it. Conse- 
 quently, locomotion is sometimes slow, and the hotel 
 rickshaws would be outpaced easily by the average 
 seaside perambulator. The residents keep their own 
 donkeys, which are a much superior breed, or ride 
 sleek Arab ponies, and in the plenitude of their hos- 
 pitality they will often let the visitor have the loan of 
 one of these animals. They make him welcome to their 
 houses, and lend him steam-launches, guides, sailing- 
 boats, and other luxuries, and show him all the things 
 worth seeing, and generally put themselves out for this 
 passing sojourner to a quite unwarrantable and un- 
 expected extent. Presently the miscellaneous trippers 
 - the Briton doing the Nile in a hurry, the American, 
 the German will pour in. Then there will be cabs 
 and motor-cars and many hotels, and donkey boys,
 
 42 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 unsophisticated no longer, and a horde of the pestering 
 touts who make Cairo hideous ; and then, I suppose, 
 Khartum society will grow reserved and inaccessible. 
 Meanwhile, it is still new enough to retain the pioneering 
 tradition ; it still feels itself a settlement of the English 
 in a distant land ; and it is still pleased to see the 
 stranger from 'home.' It is particularly pleased if 
 that voyager happens to be feminine, and young, and 
 good-looking; but even to the middle-aged male visi- 
 tant with some credentials, it is ready to open its heart 
 and its doors. 
 
 All these things naturally predispose one to a favour- 
 able estimate of Anglo-Sudanese society. It is indeed 
 a very pleasant and attractive body of people who 
 assemble in the Sudan capital in the winter months, 
 whom it would be difficult not to like. Something of 
 the brightness of the clear oxygenated air has commu- 
 nicated itself to the residents, who have tempered the 
 national stiffness with a certain Southern vivacity. 
 Then it is a society of people in the prime of life and 
 health. Everybody in the Sudan is young or youngish. 
 There are very few Englishmen in the whole territory 
 over fifty ; most are well under forty, many below 
 thirty. Officers in this service do not have to wait 
 till they are grey and bald before obtaining positions 
 of responsibility and power. They are commanding 
 regiments or governing provinces at an age when in 
 England they would be helping to drill a company or 
 sealing documents in Downing Street. The English-
 
 ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 43 
 
 man who wears the Khedivial badge is too scarce and 
 costly an article to be wasted over mere routine. He 
 joins the service at five-and-twenty or so, and after 
 a very short apprenticeship he is placed in some post 
 of importance, where he has to exercise his own initia- 
 tive and direct many native subordinates. The Sudan 
 may not have more than ten years of him altogether, 
 and it cannot afford to let him spend too much time in 
 learning his business. It takes him young and it 
 means to make the best of him before his youth has 
 gone ; it is no country or climate for the old. 
 
 To the advantage of youth it seemed to me that 
 Sudan society added a quite exceptional allowance of 
 good looks. This may be an accident ; I do not sup- 
 pose that the qualifying examination for admission 
 includes a beauty competition. But it is not alto- 
 gether fortuitous. The Government insists on a high 
 standard of health and physical fitness in the soldiers 
 and civilians it employs ; and nearly all of them are 
 tall and strong and cleanly built and have a wholesome 
 and athletic appearance. As for the ladies, I do not 
 know why they should have more than the common 
 share of personal attractiveness, unless it is a case of 
 natural (very natural) selection. I have, indeed, a 
 suspicion that when the young officer communicates 
 his desire to commit matrimony to the Sirdar that 
 shrewd and kindly autocrat expects to have the portrait 
 of the lady submitted to him as well as her dossier. 
 But I hasten to add that I have no official warrant for
 
 44 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 this suggestion. It is no more than a theory of my own, 
 formed when I surveyed the very becoming feminine 
 'gallery' at the Sirdar's review of the Egyptian and 
 Sudanese troops of his garrison. 
 
 Well, sunshine, open air, good health, abundant 
 exercise, and plenty of hard, but thoroughly interesting 
 work ought to make people good-humoured. Nobody 
 has time to loaf or mope in Khartum ; and nobody is 
 idle. Everybody, on the contrary, is extremely busy, 
 for the field is large and the labourers few ; and if 
 the harvest is to be gathered in season and the due 
 amount of 'leave' obtained in the year, the business 
 must be put through with energy. There is no room 
 for 'slackers' in the Sudan, and no tenderness for them. 
 Public feeling is altogether against this class of offender, 
 who soon learns to amend his ways, or if incorrigible 
 is quietly sent elsewhere. What strikes one most is 
 the extraordinary alertness of these young officers and 
 officials, the keenness with which they pursue their 
 work, the absorbing interest they take in it. They 
 find time to play, too ; there is polo or tennis going 
 most afternoons, some cricket, football for the British 
 battalion, a little shooting of sand-grouse and gazelle 
 and bigger game, bridge at the club, tea parties and 
 dinner parties in the winter months, which is the 
 Khartum 'season.' But all these are incidentals. 
 Nobody is sportsman enough to live for sport in the 
 Sudan ; the social amusements are a mere passing 
 episode of the cool weather. The real interest is the
 
 ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 45 
 
 work. Nobody minds talking 'shop' in the Sudan, 
 for often there is nothing else to talk about. Besides, 
 they like it. 
 
 'It is a new toy for them, this Sudan,' said a clever 
 lady to me in Khartum. These young fellows have 
 thrown themselves into the task of ruling, administer- 
 ing, educating, drilling, policing, civilising their miscel- 
 laneous millions, black and brown, scattered over a 
 sub-continent, with the same light-hearted earnestness 
 which you find in the subalterns of a native Indian 
 regiment or in the ward-room of one of his Majesty's 
 cruisers. They do not assume any excessive air of 
 seriousness, but, on the contrary, take everything with 
 a kind of schoolboy, gaiety ; but every man's heart is 
 in the job, and particularly in his own share of it. One 
 tall, smooth-cheeked youth kept me up half a night to 
 discuss the special qualities and peculiar merits of 
 certain machinery entrusted by the Public Works 
 Department to his charge. Another, a bimbashi of 
 the Camel Corps, occupied many hours of a long railway 
 journey in impressing upon me the value of camelry, 
 properly drilled, in the scheme of things. His heart 
 was with the camel ; I never heard so much good said 
 for the ungainly creature before. But the Camel Corps, 
 you see, was this young officer's affair, and he took a 
 deep professional pride in it. I remembered how I went 
 on board a two-funnelled steam-launch at a naval 
 review, and remarked to the infant in command : 
 'This is one of the fastest boats in the fleet, isn't she ?*
 
 46 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 'She's the fastest of them all,' said the boy. 'I 
 thought,' I replied, 'that the Tetrahedron's pinnace 
 was faster.' The boy bounced with indignation, and 
 turned to the bearded quartermaster at his side. 'We 
 can go half a knot better than they, can't we, Wilkins ?' 
 'I should think we could, sir, and a knot too if we 
 liked.' That is the spirit of the Navy ; it is the spirit 
 that also prevails under the Two Flags. 
 
 I have a respect for the British regimental officer, 
 especially when I see him outside the Metropolitan 
 police district, where he is usually at his worst ; but 
 I should not like to assume that his average quality 
 could be correctly gauged by the examples one meets 
 in the Sudan. As a fact, these are all picked men, 
 and they are not unconscious of the circumstance. 
 The Government insists on mind as well as muscle. 
 It will have its young men healthy and strong ; but 
 it wants them to possess a fair allowance of brains and 
 the ability to use them. No officer can be seconded 
 for service with the Egyptian army who cannot produce 
 the highest testimonials from his military superiors, 
 and he must pass a rather severe qualifying examina- 
 tion in addition. The same rule applies to the young 
 civilian nominated from the universities. The novice is 
 given a reasonable time to master Arabic, which is not 
 an easy language, and if he fails to attain the requisite 
 standard he is returned whence he came. 
 
 Many other things he has to learn, and he contrives 
 to learn them. The tradition in the Sudan is in favour
 
 ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 47 
 
 of the exercise of the intelligence. The two men who 
 have had most to do with the destinies of the country 
 so far Lord Kitchener and the present Sirdar have 
 shown that high intellectual interests are not incon- 
 sistent with hard fighting and the winning of battles. 
 Sir Reginald Wingate, like his former chief, but perhaps 
 in a greater degree, is a scholar, a linguist, a student of 
 antiquities and history. But he had to do his share of 
 rough and perilous soldiering work, though the public 
 knew little about it at the time, being just then other- 
 wise occupied. After the great battle of Omdurman in 
 September 1898, George Steevens, who told its story in 
 his vivacious prose, went home, the other able corre- 
 spondents went home, most of the 1 1,000 British troops 
 went home, even Lord Kitchener went home. There 
 came the friction with France, and then in a little while 
 the growing quarrel with the Boers, and we all forgot 
 the Khalifa. But that inconvenient person had got 
 away after his Baggara had been mown down in heaps 
 by the maxim and rifle fire at Kerreri. He assembled 
 another army, 7000 strong, and a year after the great 
 victory Sir Reginald Wingate was in hot pursuit of him. 
 There were no British soldiers at Ghedit, where the 
 final battle was fought : only a few British officers and 
 some 2000 native troops. It was not very far from the 
 scene of Hicks Pasha's defeat; and at one moment it 
 looked as if there might be a repetition of that disaster. 
 For Sir Reginald Wingate was greatly outnumbered, and 
 his troops in their final dash had to march nearly two
 
 48 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 days without water, with the risk of finding the wells 
 occupied in force by the enemy. Yet the hazard had 
 to be run ; for if the Khalifa had been allowed to get 
 away then the tribes would assuredly have assembled 
 round him again, and the conquest of the Sudan would 
 have had to begin de novo. Fortunately the Khalifa 
 had not seized the wells, but the peril was not over. 
 The dervishes, wiser than at Omdurman, made a night 
 attack on the British zariba, and it was awkward work to 
 repel the rush of the spearmen in the dark. But the 
 Sudanese and Egyptian soldiers stood their ground, 
 the attack gradually died away, and Wingate's men 
 advancing drove the dervishes before them. In the 
 centre of the field they found the body of the Khalifa. 
 Before him lay a line of his chosen guard of riflemen, 
 swept away by a blast of fire which converged by some 
 lucky chance upon this spot in the darkness. Every 
 man died where he stood, with his musket at his shoul- 
 der. Behind his escort Abdullah had seated himself on 
 his carpet, with his Emirs about him ; and here they met 
 their death with the calm and silent dignity of the 
 children of Islam when it is the will of Allah that the 
 end shall come. Many evil deeds were done by Ab- 
 dullah the Khalifa ; but he died better than he lived. 
 And his Africans were faithful to him to the last, as 
 African troops have so often been faithful in defeat 
 to the Chief who has led them to victory. As the tale 
 of Ghedit was told me, I thought of Hannibal's Old 
 Guard of Numidians, dying grimly under the swords
 
 ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 49 
 
 of the legionaries, in that battle at Zama which sealed 
 the fate of Carthage two thousand years ago. 
 
 But the final blow at the Khalifa was struck, as I 
 have said, by one who was not only a soldier but also a 
 student, a man of books and ideas as well as a man of 
 action. There is enough of this spirit in the Sudan to 
 keep it from that deadness to all intellectual interests 
 which does unhappily sometimes oppress a British 
 community, predominantly official and military, in 
 the outlying parts of the globe. But then, also, you 
 must recollect that the British bey or bimbashi in the 
 Sudan is much more in touch with 'home' than most of 
 those who serve the Empire in distant regions. He gets 
 his three months' clear 'leave' every year so far as the 
 exigencies of his duty permit ; which is enough to 
 enable him to reach England and freshen himself for 
 eight weeks or so under a Northern sky. In India, 
 even now, people still talk of 'Europe' and 'Europeans,' 
 not of England and English ; they feel themselves so 
 far away from the continent of their nativity that minor 
 distinctions are merged. In the Sudan there is no such 
 suggestive nomenclature ; they would stare at you 
 if you spoke of a European policeman or a European 
 soldier. They are at home too often to talk the 
 language of exile. This ample allowance of holidays is 
 one of the attractions of the service ; it is also one of 
 the things that lead the winter visitor to exaggerate 
 those attractions. He does not see Khartum in the hot 
 weather, when all the ladies have left, when the ther-
 
 50 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 mometer is at 120 degrees in the shade, when a piece 
 of metal in the daytime cannot be touched without 
 burning the fingers, when storms of redhot dust are 
 driving over everything. Still less does he realise that 
 Khartum, with its nice houses and gardens, is merely 
 the administrative and military centre. The hardest 
 work of the country is done away in the provinces, in 
 Kordofan, in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, almost to the Equator, 
 or far up the Blue Nile towards the Abyssinian frontier, 
 where men are toiling under a vertical sun, sometimes 
 amid swamps, deserts, or fever-haunted bush. No 
 club for them, no tea parties, no Palace, with its informal 
 little court, sometimes no white companion to speak to 
 for months at a time ; and that in a climate which, 
 pleasant enough as it may seem in December, with a 
 good roof above you and an ice-machine handy, is 
 uncommonly trying without such amenities in the 
 month of August. I have heard it hinted that in 
 Khartum and in Cairo the officials are rather too 
 generously served in the matter of leave ; but nobody 
 denies that the men up the country need all they get 
 and deserve all they can take.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS 
 
 THE Government of the Sudan is an anomaly within 
 an anomaly, as I was forcibly reminded one bright 
 morning in Omdurman when I watched a battalion 
 of the Egyptian army on parade. The sun glanced on 
 a long line of swarthy Arabs and absolute negroes, 
 arrayed in uniforms which only the genius of Anglo- 
 Indian military tailoring could have devised ; three 
 or four young Englishmen in brown helmets and khaki 
 rode along the ranks ; the band was drumming and 
 trumpeting vigorously to the tune of 'Men of Harlech' ; 
 the colour party bore a green and gold flag with the 
 Khedivial crescent. Suddenly the colonel rapped out 
 half a dozen sharp orders in --Turkish. Not in Eng- 
 lish, you perceive, which is the language of the officers, 
 not in the colloquial Arabic, which is the language of 
 the men ; but in Turkish, which is as much a foreign 
 tongue to all grades as Chinese. And it was brought 
 home to me by this curious linguistic performance that 
 I was under the shadow of the Sultan, in a land which 
 is still, according to vague political fiction, linked on 
 to that queer conglomerate, the Ottoman Empire. 
 
 Egypt is not an independent country, still less, I need 
 hardly say, does it 'belong' to England ; it is a province
 
 52 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 of Turkey, and its ruler is theoretically the Viceroy of 
 the Sultan, who has kindly permitted some British 
 troops to 'occupy' the country temporarily to assist in 
 maintaining order, with some British officials to help the 
 Egyptians in the business of government. In this con- 
 dition of dependence, formally on Turkey, practically 
 on Great Britain, Egypt has a half-share in the Sudan, 
 England having the other half. It is a condominium 
 regulated by the agreement of 1899, which declares 
 that the English and Egyptian flags shall be used to- 
 gether throughout the territory ; that the military 
 and civil control shall be vested in the Governor- 
 General of the Sudan, who must also be the Sirdar of 
 the Egyptian army, and cannot be removed by the Khe- 
 dive without the consent of the British Government ; 
 that the 'capitulations' and consular jurisdictions are 
 not in force as in Egypt ; and that the import and 
 export of slaves are absolutely prohibited. The 
 Sudan is divided into fourteen provinces, each presided 
 over by an English Mudir, or Governor, responsible 
 to the Governor-General, who is nominally responsible 
 to the Khedive and the King; actually responsible to 
 nobody, unless it be the British Agent in Cairo, who is, 
 in theory, one of the foreign Consuls-General, and in 
 reality the representative of the British Government, 
 which controls the Government of Egypt. 
 
 It is a situation distinctly mixed when one tries to 
 put it upon paper. In effect it is simpler than it looks. 
 The truth is that the Sudan is a vast territory, inhabited
 
 CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS 53 
 
 by African natives, administered by English officials, 
 with the assistance of Egyptian subordinates, and de- 
 fended by a force of Egyptian and Sudanese troops 
 under English command. A single battalion of the 
 British 'Army of Occupation' is garrisoned in Khartum. 
 But in this town and in Omdurman and elsewhere in 
 the Sudan are stationed four-fifths of the Egyptian 
 army. There are some cavalry in Cairo, chiefly to do 
 escort duty for the Khedive, three infantry battalions 
 in Upper and Lower Egypt, a few guns, and military 
 police. The rest of the Egyptian army infantry, 
 mounted men, and artillery are beyond the frontier. 
 There is an Egyptian War Office in Cairo, but it has not 
 much to do. Most of the business is conducted in 
 Khartum. The Commander-in-Chief is there, the 
 Headquarters Staff, the military secretary, and adju- 
 tant-general. It is in the Sudan that the Egyptian 
 army is trained, for it is in the Sudan that it is most 
 likely to have to fight, if any fighting comes to be done. 
 The duty of looking after Egypt devolves mainly upon 
 the small British force which is called the Army of 
 Occupation so called because we are only 'occupying' 
 Egypt, just to see that things go right, in a quite casual 
 and temporary way, meanwhile obligingly assisting 
 the Egyptians to govern themselves in a decent and 
 tolerable fashion. 
 
 In the Sudan, however, we have no need to keep up 
 the fiction of being 'advisers' to native administrators. 
 Englishmen are running the territory without disguise,
 
 54 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 to the great advantage of its inhabitants. To all intents 
 and purposes, these provinces are under British rule. 
 The military and civil hierarchy is entirely English in 
 its higher grades ; the subordinates are mostly Egyp- 
 tian, but their nationality is only, so to speak, inci- 
 dental ; many, in fact, are Syrians, Greeks, and Levan- 
 tines, and some are Sudanese natives. Egypt at pres- 
 ent furnishes the best available supply of intelligent 
 Arabic-speaking persons with education enough to 
 become company officers, minor magistrates, railway 
 officials, post-office employes, and the like. But they 
 do not stand the Sudan climate very well, and they are 
 not particularly happy in the country. They are 
 being supplemented, and, perhaps in time will be 
 supplanted, by the young Arabs and young negroes 
 whom we are training at the Gordon College, in 
 the military school, and in the technical workshops. 
 There will be Sudanese captains and subalterns, Sudan- 
 ese schoolmasters, kadis, and clerks, Sudanese sur- 
 veyors, irrigation officials, and tax collectors, and they 
 will gradually replace the Egyptian functionaries, who 
 are in reality almost as much foreigners in the country 
 as we are ourselves. In time, also, it may be possible 
 to dispense with the conscripted fellahin of the Lower 
 Nile valley, who fill the cadres of the Egyptian regi- 
 ments, leaving the defence of the Southern territory 
 entirely to the black battalions made up of voluntarily 
 enlisted natives of the Sudan. The majority of their 
 company officers and non-commissioned officers are
 
 CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS 55 
 
 now Egyptians ; but the sons of the fighting chiefs and 
 other scions of the 'first families' of the Sudan are being 
 made ready to take these positions. Then we shall 
 have a Sudan army exactly analogous to that of India - 
 commanded by English generals and colonels and 
 majors, with natives of the soil in the ranks and in 
 the intermediate grades. 
 
 Egypt, meanwhile, had to foot the bill, and some 
 Egyptians, especially those who contributed to the 
 Nationalist newspapers, complained bitterly of the 
 burden. In practice it was not very onerous. When 
 the Sudan was reconquered it was recognised that for 
 several years this devastated and depopulated tract 
 could not be expected to pay its way, and that the defi- 
 cit must be made good from the Egyptian revenues. 
 This was a mistake, due to the customary tenderness 
 of all British Governments for the British tax-payer. 
 We should have put ourselves in a stronger position 
 if we had become responsible, jointly with Egypt, for the 
 deficiency ; and the liability, as it turns out, would have 
 been light and transient. The Sudan now is paying its 
 way and requires no external assistance. Its Financial 
 Secretary, Colonel Bernard, a military officer whom 
 Lord Kitchener 'discovered' and turned into a highly 
 competent Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been 
 reducing the deficit year by year. In 1898 the annual 
 revenue was 35,000; by 1906 it has risen to 804,- 
 ooo; in 1912 it was 1,710,000. The contribution 
 by the Egyptian Government in the last-named year
 
 56 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 was 335,000; but against this was to be set off a 
 return payment of 172,000 for maintenance of the 
 army in the Sudan, so that the net cost to Lower 
 Egypt of the Upper Provinces is only 163,000. But 
 in the current year (1913) this charge disappears alto- 
 gether, under a new settlement of the financial rela- 
 tions between the Cairo and Khartum Governments. 
 By this settlement, the contribution of Egypt to the 
 Sudan Exchequer and the payment for the maintenance 
 of the army are abolished, on condition that the Egyp- 
 tian Government hands over to the Sudan the customs 
 duties on goods destined for the territory collected in 
 Egypt. Thus the Sudan is now self-supporting. Its 
 revenue and expenditure, if all goes well, will balance 
 without external subventions. But even if Egyptwere 
 still called upon to contribute a hundred thousand or so 
 per annum it would not be an excessive amount to pay 
 for the maintenance of a settled government along the 
 whole course of the Nile, right up to its sources, and 
 for the removal of the menace which hung over Egypt 
 so long as the southern territories were in a turmoil of 
 warlike barbarism. For the present Egypt secures re- 
 pose and immunity ; and in the future she will double 
 her irrigation supply, and add many millions to the value 
 of her lands, by those great engineering works which 
 can only be undertaken by a Government having full 
 control of the upper waters of the two great rivers which 
 mingle at Khartum to pour their life-giving fluid 
 through the lower valley. For the first time in history
 
 CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS 57 
 
 a civilised Power can deal with the Niles and their 
 tributary streams, as a whole. Egypt, which thirty 
 years hence, thanks to the engineers and administra- 
 tors of the Sudan, may be twice as rich as she is at 
 present, need not grudge her contribution towards the 
 cost of the process in its initial stages. 
 
 The present task of the English rulers is to maintain 
 order, heal the wounds caused by the Mahdist fury, and 
 restore civilised conditions of life. Create, perhaps, 
 would be a better word than restore ; but it must be 
 remembered that we have some vestiges of an old civili- 
 sation to work upon. Modern scholars and historians 
 dismiss the idea that these Central African regions 
 were never anything but a mere welter of savagery. 
 We know now that Ethiopia shared in the culture and 
 in the social development of ancient Egypt, as its monu- 
 ments show ; and we know, too, that this old Nilotic 
 civilisation lasted on in the upper regions long after it 
 had succumbed in Egypt to the attacks from the north 
 and west. Christianity assimilated, but did not de- 
 stroy it ; for centuries after the Arabs had overwhelmed 
 Egypt there was a Christian empire in Africa, cut off 
 from the north by the Moslem wave, with its churches, 
 its schools, its monasteries, its walled towns, its industries, 
 and its well-organised society. As late as the four- 
 teenth century these Ethiopian States maintained their 
 individuality, nor were they finally engulfed in the 
 Mohammedan tide till the seventeenth. Up till that 
 time and even later there were the relics of an
 
 58 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 indigenous civilisation, which had in it, perhaps, the 
 germs of something higher than the Asiatic Orientalism 
 with its bad European veneer, introduced by the Turks 
 and Arabs. The conquests of Mehemet Ali did more to 
 demoralise than to raise the Ethiopian races. There 
 were military stations, barracks, forts, steamers, the 
 telegraph ; but the people were plundered and preyed 
 upon by ruffianly soldiers and corrupt officials, the 
 flourishing caravan trade was broken up, and whole- 
 sale slave-hunting was encouraged. The 'Turks' had 
 rendered their own tenure precarious by their oppres- 
 sion, even before the pseudo-Messiah united all the 
 elements antagonistic to them by the bond of a common 
 fanaticism. 
 
 In that period of disruption and unrest which even- 
 tually brought us upon the Nile strange things happened 
 and strange figures appeared. I had been lunching 
 at Khartum with a high official of the Government in 
 one of those charming villas on the river bank. 'Don't 
 go,' said the host, as we were rising to take our leave ; 
 'Zubeir Pasha is here, and I dare say you would like 
 to see him.' Certainly we would like to see him. What 
 would you say if Godfrey de Bouillon or Bertrand du 
 Guesclin strolled in for a chat over the teacups ? To 
 see Zubeir Pasha face to face was as if some long dead 
 and buried adventurer had come to life out of the pages 
 of the history books. His name was well enough 
 known to the British public through the newspapers 
 and the parliamentary debates of the Gordon period ;
 
 CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS 59 
 
 for this old man, who lived right down into the second 
 decade of the twentieth century, 1 had played a 
 great part in Sudan affairs long before the Mahdi 
 rose, and might have played a greater part still 
 had Gordon been allowed to have his way at the 
 last. He was an Arab of the Berber region, who 
 plunged into the wilder parts of the Sudan many years 
 before the 'Turk' had been shaken out of the tropical 
 provinces, while Ismail Pasha's regiments were still 
 patrolling the country, bullying the tribes, levying 
 contributions, pretending to suppress the slave dealers, 
 and meanwhile taking toll of their illicit gains. In 
 this welter Zubeir was at home. He was energetic, 
 capable, ambitious, with abundant courage, and no 
 scruples to spare ; a keen trader, an excellent organiser, 
 with some talent for soldiering and leadership. He 
 built up a great personal and commercial influence 
 in the Sudan provinces. He traded, he fought, he 
 brought the tribes together, he made a sort of confedera- 
 tion which included Darfur, Kordofan, and the Bahr-el- 
 Ghazal and the Khartum district; he was the most 
 powerful man in those provinces. Then Gordon, in 
 his crusade against the slave trade, came into conflict 
 with him ; his son was killed by Gessi, one of Gordon's 
 lieutenants ; Zubeir himself was seized, exiled to Cairo, 
 and forbidden to set foot again in the Sudan. But his 
 influence had not left him ; and when Gordon went out 
 on his fatal mission he urged that his old enemy should 
 
 1 He died at Berber in 1913.
 
 60 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 be brought back to aid him in the work of pacification. 
 ' Send me troops or Zubeir.' The Imperial Government 
 refused. Zubeir was kept in Cairo, and afterwards 
 enjoyed the hospitality of England in Gibraltar. 
 Eventually Lord Cromer caused him to be released, 
 pensioned, and returned to the Sudan. He lived patri- 
 archally amid a whole tribe of his kinsfolk and descend- 
 ants, near Khartum, drew his pension, managed his 
 great estates, and was on excellent terms with the 
 authorities, albeit he had a still unsatisfied claim for, I 
 think, a matter of four millions on account of the dam- 
 age done to his property in the time of the sequestra- 
 tion. 
 
 He was, when I saw him, a brisk, hale, vivacious old 
 gentleman, with a twinkling brown eye, a short grey 
 beard, and a kindly manner. Four score and one were 
 the years of his life, but he was alert and vigorous. He 
 scrambled upon his donkey unaided, and scrambled 
 off again like a schoolboy when somebody expressed a 
 desire to take a snapshot of him. He was very com- 
 municative, and did not in the least mind being ques- 
 tioned about his past career and his private affairs. 
 'Gordoun Pasha,' he said, was the best Englishman he 
 ever knew ; he never believed that Gessi had Gordon's 
 authority for killing his son Suleiman. He denied 
 that he was a slave trader ; he found the trade going 
 on when he took to organising the provinces. Topics 
 even more delicate he was willing to discuss. He was 
 asked how many children he had had in the course of
 
 FiKLD-M.AK.snAi. 
 
 From the ml //>u 
 
 VisoorsT KrrrnKNKK OK 
 O.M. 
 
 Hig hy i/,, Hon. John Cottier . 
 
 , (J.C.B.,
 
 CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS 61 
 
 a much married life. He could not say ; there were 
 some twenty-six alive. And wives ? One does not 
 usually put that question to a Mussulman, but Zubeir 
 was a man of the world. He had had sixteen wives 
 altogether, he believed, but it had pleased Allah to 
 take several of the ladies from him. He was still 
 engaged in supplementing the deficiency; only last 
 year he had taken to wife a girl of his own tribe, the 
 good-looking and intelligent Jaalins. Wasn't he a 
 little old for matrimony ? some one mildly hinted. 
 Not at all, responded the gay veteran ; on the contrary, 
 he thought that the marrying of wives tends to keep 
 an elderly person young. Certainly he tested his own 
 prescription faithfully, and it seems to have agreed 
 with him. Thus did this fierce old fighter end his 
 peaceful days, seeking the delights of domesticity, 
 cultivating his gardens, making friends with the new 
 rulers who were bringing peace and order into the 
 wide sun-baked lands through which he had ploughed 
 his stormful, man-hunting, filibustering way. Com- 
 fortably enough he reposed under the shadow of the 
 Pax Britannica, this lean, brown, lively veteran, who 
 might, one reflected, if things had fallen but a little 
 differently, have founded an Empire, or have died in a 
 dungeon, like many an Eastern adventurer before him.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 
 
 * WELL,' I said to the courteous official who was trying 
 to get some business done for me in Khartum, 'I 
 suppose, since this is Saturday night, I must let the 
 matter stand over till Monday.' 'Not at all. Come 
 to my office to-morrow morning and I will arrange it 
 for you.' 'To-morrow ! But you forget that to- 
 morrow is Sunday. Surely you do not go to your office 
 on that day ?' 
 
 'Certainly I do. My office is open on Sunday 
 mornings. We take our holiday on Friday. This is a 
 Mohammedan country, you know.' 
 
 And that was another new light to me. As a rule, it 
 may be said of the Englishman in the remote parts of 
 the earth, cesium non animum mutat : he changes his 
 climate, but not his habits. So to hear that he 
 went to work on the Sabbath and rested on the 
 Friday was as startling as if one had learnt that he 
 was prepared to sit down to dinner without a dress 
 coat or, at the worst, a dinner jacket. 
 
 The task of the Sudan administrators, as I have said, 
 is that of creating, or reviving, a civilisation out of 
 chaos. They have many difficulties, and one great 
 advantage. The ruin wrought by the Mahdist move- 
 
 62
 
 SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 63 
 
 ment was so complete that they can start with some- 
 thing like a tabula rasa. A society and a civil polity 
 had been totally wrecked ; only the foundations were 
 left, and the new rulers had a fairly free hand to rebuild 
 the structure as they pleased, within reason. There 
 is a large field for experiment and for bold innovations, 
 which could not be attempted in older and more com- 
 plex communities with a highly organised structure 
 and an unbroken tradition. 
 
 Some fundamental considerations had, however, to 
 be taken into account. One of these is the existence 
 and prevalence of the Mohammedan religion. The 
 Sudanese profess the faith of Islam. Many of them, 
 especially the negroes, are very bad Moslem ; but they 
 are not on that account the less fanatical, and we 
 cannot forget that our presence in the country is due 
 to the most striking Islamic revival of the nineteenth 
 century. In the Sudan, as well as in Egypt, the 
 Mussulman religion is still living, and its hold is as 
 strong as ever. Its votaries believe not only that there 
 is one God, but also that there is only one faith ; those 
 who do not accept the teaching of the Prophet may have 
 many virtues, but they cannot stand on the same foot- 
 ing as the true believers. We have to contend against 
 an undoubted prejudice. As Englishmen, we may be 
 respected or even liked ; as Christians, there is a feeling 
 against us which is very difficult to overcome. The 
 Egyptian of the old regime, the hated and oppressing 
 'Turk,' was at least a Mussulman ; we are 'Nazarenes,'
 
 64 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 and it is not a point in our favour. 'Ah ! if you could 
 only be Moslem,' said an old Arab Sheikh to a British 
 officer, with whom he had been spending a long day of 
 travel and sport, 'how glad we should all be.' 
 
 Such a sentiment demands tender handling. Lord 
 Kitchener determined that his new Sudan should not 
 be troubled by religious dissension. He impressed it 
 upon his lieutenants and coadjutors that they were 
 dealing with a Mohammedan community, which, 
 having a quite respectable religion of its own, was not 
 to be regarded as a fair subject for proselytism. Noth- 
 ing, he believed, would do more to set Moslem parents 
 against education than the notion that it was to be 
 employed as a means of turning the children from the 
 faith of their fathers. Consequently, the instruction 
 imparted is strictly secular. Conscientious Mohamme- 
 dans can send their boys to the Gordon College, the 
 primary schools, and the technical classes, with a com- 
 plete conviction that no attempt will be made to 
 undermine the foundations of their faith. The obliga- 
 tion rests alike upon the Protestant and the Catholic 
 clergy, who are both enjoined against giving religious 
 teaching, except, of course, to the members of their own 
 communions. One of the most useful institutions in 
 Khartum is the school for girls, which is much appre- 
 ciated by an increasing number of Mohammedan 
 mothers. But the pupils are taught nothing which 
 would shake their belief in the doctrines and customs 
 of Islam; and no Mohammedan husband, who in due
 
 SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 65 
 
 course marries one of these young ladies, will find that 
 he has unwittingly acquired a convert to Christianity. 
 On the same ground missionary effort is not en- 
 couraged ; indeed, over a great part of the territory 
 it is absolutely prohibited. After the reconquest some 
 of the missionary societies, British and foreign, thought 
 that a great door and effectual was opened in the Sudan, 
 and were anxious to send in their agents. But Lord 
 Kitchener put his foot down at once. An able and 
 zealous young clergyman came out from home to 
 establish an Anglican mission in Khartum. 'No,' 
 said the Sirdar, 'this is no field for missionary enter- 
 prise. But I should think there would be abundant 
 scope for your energies among your own countrymen 
 here. You can stay and convert them, if you like. 
 But there must be no attempt at proselytism among 
 the Mohammedans.' The embargo extends to all the 
 northern and more civilised provinces of the Sudan, and 
 includes all those in which the Arab population is most 
 numerous, from the Egyptian frontier to Fashoda. It 
 is only in the Equatorial provinces of the Far South that 
 the missionaries may teach their religion, and make 
 converts if they can. In these districts we are con- 
 cerned mainly with true African negroes, who are 
 practically heathens, and have hardly been touched by 
 Mohammedanism. With them the ulema and the 
 minister have an equal chance ; and if the latter can 
 teach them the Bible before the former gets at them 
 with the Koran, the Government at Khartum makes
 
 66 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 no objection. And with them, it may be added, the 
 missionaries do make some progress ; with the Moham- 
 medans, even without the administrative veto, they can 
 do little or nothing. The Mussulman world is rather 
 less likely to become Christian to-day, than it was 300 
 years ago. 
 
 Another matter in which it is necessary to move with 
 a good deal of caution is that of slavery. Legalised 
 slavery ceased to exist with the annexation. No man 
 is entitled to make any human being his property in 
 the Sudan any more than in England, or to constrain 
 him to labour against his will ; and any person held as a 
 slave can, if he pleases, claim immediate manumission. 
 The buying and selling of slaves is prohibited and 
 severely punished ; there is a special slave trade de- 
 partment, with its own police, engaged in the repression 
 of the practice, which, however, is far from extinct 
 in the remoter districts. Domestic and agrarian 
 slavery is dying, but not dead. Many thousands of 
 slaves have asserted their right of emancipation, and 
 converted themselves into free labourers, much stimu- 
 lated thereto by the excellent wages which any able- 
 bodied person can obtain in the Government workshops, 
 on the railways, and in private employment. The 
 Khalifa left us a legacy of a horde of female slaves when 
 he bolted from Omdurman, and these were all manu- 
 mitted, not in every case to their own advantage, for, 
 after all, it was somebody's business to feed them as 
 long as they had owners. That illustrates one of the
 
 SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 67 
 
 difficulties that beset the process of abolishing slavery 
 in a community long accustomed to this 'peculiar 
 institution.' Peculiar or not, it has existed in Africa 
 and in Asia from time immemorial, and society has been 
 built up round it. To overthrow it in haste necessarily 
 produces grave economical disturbance. The land- 
 owner finds himself deprived of the means of cultivating 
 the soil, and the labourer sometimes discovers that he 
 has exchanged a stable and secure existence for one 
 that is uncertain and precarious. He may even learn 
 in some cases that the 'cash nexus' by which he is bound 
 to an employer, only anxious to make the most of his 
 labour, is a harsher tie than that which linked him to a 
 master who had some interest in keeping him contented 
 and healthy. Slaves in Africa, as in Asia, were, as a 
 rule, treated with kindness, though no doubt the most 
 fiendish cruelties were perpetrated in the process of 
 obtaining them for the market. 
 
 With the slave trade we can have no compromise. 
 But with the emancipation of the slaves actually held 
 as servants or dependants we need not hurry matters 
 unduly. A good deal of social disorganisation has al- 
 ready been caused, and it will take some time to settle 
 itself. It is most felt by the powerful land-owning and 
 cattle-owning Arab tribes, who have been accustomed 
 to rely on their negro serfs for the cultivation of their 
 fields and the care of their flocks and herds. The chiefs 
 of these clans are still highly important and influential 
 persons, and we do not want to rouse their opposition
 
 68 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 unnecessarily. This history of the past conveys a 
 warning. There is no doubt, I think, that Gordon's 
 impetuous crusade against slavery had much to do with 
 the final rising against Egyptian rule. If there had 
 been no Gordon there might have been no Mahdi. 
 To the general resentment which the Khedivial officials 
 excited, Gordon added the opposition of all the vested 
 interests. His furious onslaught upon slavery was 
 regarded as an attack upon private property in one 
 of its most respectable forms. And these property 
 owners, great chiefs with a bevy of spearmen at their 
 backs, were powerful then, and are not powerless now. 
 So it may be hoped that no impatient pressure from 
 home will induce the Sudan Government to move other- 
 wise than gently and cautiously in this delicate business. 
 Three things the Sudan needs above all others if it 
 is to become rich and prosperous : Better communica- 
 tions, more water, and abundant labour. Given these 
 things, and with its fertile and varied soil, its fine climate, 
 and its vitalising sunshine, it will export great quanti- 
 ties of grain and cotton. Under the old Turco-Egyp- 
 tian regime it was lamentably deficient in all the three 
 essentials. Roads it had none, beyond the few made 
 about the towns of the north and the camel tracks 
 through the deserts. For centuries it has done without 
 wheeled transport of any sort ; such commerce as it had 
 was carried on the backs of camels and donkeys, and the 
 shoulders of men. By this means the caravans tra- 
 versed the roadless deserts, and somehow contrived
 
 SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 69 
 
 to keep up communication right across the fiery con- 
 tinent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and from 
 Morocco to the Equator. Where time is no object, 
 marvellous distances can be covered by the legs of men 
 and of animals. The African is a tremendous walker, if 
 you give him time for his journeys. At Suakin I met a 
 man who had walked all the way from the West Coast. 
 He was going to Mecca, and had, so far, been seven 
 years on the route. At a plantation on the Nile near 
 Berber, my attention was directed to certain of these 
 fellatah, as they are called, natives of Nigeria, who 
 were working their way, in a similar leisurely fashion, 
 towards the Holy City, and would no doubt get there 
 in time, if they did not happen to die first. But this 
 pedestrian method is unsuited to modern trade. The 
 caravan is out of date. 
 
 It is being superseded by the railways, which the 
 Sudan Government is building. In these enterprises it 
 has exhibited a most creditable energy, and a lofty con- 
 fidence in the future of the country. Of the line from 
 Wady Haifa to Khartum I have already spoken. From 
 Khartum the Sudan Government railway has now been 
 carried to Sennar, two hundred miles up the Blue 
 Nile, a town which had once a great trade till it was 
 captured and destroyed by the Mahdists. On the way 
 it passes Wad Mcdani, a large native town with streets 
 of straw-roofed African huts, and a 'Palace,' with fine 
 gardens for the Governor of the Blue Nile province. 
 At Sennar the line turns westward and crosses the White
 
 70 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Nile by a great steel swing bridge, wrought by skilful 
 hands in the English north country. Thence it runs on 
 to El Obeid, in the heart of the Kordofan province, a 
 place as remote and inaccessible a few years ago as 
 any spot on earth. Wild tribesmen, spear-armed and 
 riding bullocks, come in from the wastes, but they are 
 on business bent. They have discovered that there are 
 merchants in the old capital of the Emirs who will give 
 them good prices for their gum, and grain, and hides, 
 and sell them coloured calico and other products of 
 civilisation. They understand the railway and are 
 beginning to travel by it to Rahad and Kosti, the Nile 
 port, and other local centres to which their occasions call 
 them. Before long, I dare say, we shall find them 
 suitably arrayed in tweed trousers and bowler hats 
 running down for a week-end at Khartum to do the 
 cinema-theatres. At present they are still primitive 
 and picturesque, and keenly appreciative of improved 
 possibilities for trade. 
 
 From El Obeid the railway will in due course pene- 
 trate still deeper into Central Africa and perhaps 
 eventually join hands with a French railway from 
 Timbuctoo and the West Coast, or with an English 
 railway from Northern Nigeria. Long before this 
 connection is achieved the direct north and south line 
 will have got on to Gondokoro, where in due course it 
 will meet the Cape-to-Cairo line and the Uganda rail- 
 way, and so carry us, if we please, to the Indian Ocean 
 or the goldfields of the Transvaal.
 
 SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 71 
 
 Another extension is projected from Sennar to the 
 Abyssinian frontier, through the fertile district between 
 the Blue Nile and the Atbara. Already there is a 
 westward extension, much lower down than Khartum, 
 branching off from the main line to Egypt near Abu 
 Hamed into the Dongola province as far as Kereima. 
 Here are the pyramids and temples of Merowi, impor- 
 tant and interesting, but not to be compared with those 
 other temples and pyramids at Meroe higher up on the 
 railway, which are being unearthed by Professor 
 Garstang. This was the ancient capital of Queen 
 Candace, with the Temple of the Sun, and the great 
 Temple of Amon, and other monuments of the flowering 
 period of Ethiopic civilisation. At the junction of the 
 Atbara with the Nile begins the railway to Port Sudan, 
 of which more will be said later. The railways and the 
 river steamers will put most parts of the territory in 
 direct communication with the sea, and so with the 
 great trade routes and markets of the globe. 
 
 But if the Sudan is to load the trucks and freight 
 steamers with sacks of wheat and maize and gum and 
 bales of cotton, it must have water. It is nowhere a 
 quite rainless country; but, until the Equatorial prov- 
 ince is reached, it does not get enough moisture from 
 the heavens to produce crops. Most of the northern 
 part looks to the eye like arid desert, bare and brown or 
 staring yellow ; but it is desert which needs only water 
 to bloom with verdure. And the water is there, flow- 
 ing from end to end of the country along the broad
 
 72 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 channel of the Niles and their tributary streams. 
 But Egypt has first claim upon the perennial waters of 
 the Nile, and until her thirsting fields and gardens are 
 sated the Sudan must touch nothing. Outside the 
 flood season the entire Sudan is limited to as much Nile 
 water as will irrigate a few thousand acres a mere 
 speck in her available millions. Not till the works 
 have been completed which will increase the supply for 
 Egypt will the Sudan be able to add largely to her 
 cultivable area. Thus the fate of the two countries 
 is linked together, and the fortune of the one depends 
 upon the other. 
 
 Even for such crops and tillage grounds as she 
 owns, the Sudan has too few hands. Labour is scarce 
 and dear ; for what are two millions of people in a 
 territory more than half as large as India ? And, 
 albeit the Arab is earnestly devoted to matrimony and 
 the Sudanese are prolific, it will be long before the 
 depopulation of recent decades can be made good. 
 The Sudan, in fact, wants men badly, and it does not at 
 present see where they are to come from. There is 
 talk of increased migration from Egypt ; but the 
 Egyptian, except as trader or official, is not fond of the 
 southern territory. The fellah would prefer to till 
 land nearer his own home, and there will be plenty of 
 scope for him there when the increased water supply 
 reclaims fresh sections of desert in the Delta and on the 
 middle Nile. But if not the Egyptian, who then ? 
 Possibly some negro tribes from the interior of Africa
 
 SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 73 
 
 may move northward, but not much dependence can 
 be placed on them. Sooner or later, I cannot but 
 think, our fellow-subjects in British India will come 
 in to fill the gap. From her teeming bosom India 
 could spare a few million cultivators, and never miss 
 them ; indeed, they are straining to get away, and 
 moving towards all sorts of places where they are not 
 wanted or will do no good. In the Sudan they would 
 find a climate to suit them ; a (virtually) British Gov- 
 ernment to protect them, with no white British colonists 
 to object to their presence ; and a fair opening for their 
 industry and their skill as husbandmen. For Indian 
 Mohammedans the country seems specially suitable; 
 and it might be worth while for the Indian and Sudan 
 Governments to consider whether concerted measures 
 might not be devised, in order to promote a moderate 
 migration from a region where agricultural humanity 
 is rather too thick on the ground to one where it is too 
 sparse and scattered.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 SIMPKINSON BEY 
 
 'I AM afraid you are not interested, Captain Simpkin- 
 son,' remarked the vicar's wife, with a certain asperity. 
 
 'I beg your pardon,' said the captain hastily; 'I -- I 
 was thinking of something else for the moment.' 
 
 The 2nd Battalion of the Royalshire Regiment was 
 At Home to its friends at its depot in the highly re- 
 spectable British garrison town of Cokechester. The 
 'County' was there, and the fringe of the county - 
 florid local magnates, sporting solicitors, and land 
 agents, anxious matrons keeping a careful eye on 
 marriageable daughters, stout rectors, slim curates. 
 The regimental band was beating out the famous 
 regimental tune of the Royalshires on one square of 
 enamelled sward ; flannelled youths and short-skirted 
 maidens were playing tennis on another; the servants 
 were preparing tea and ices in the buffet under the long 
 marquee. The vicar's wife had chosen this occasion to 
 impart to the young officer he was still young, though 
 there were lines and wrinkles on his lean, brown cheeks 
 her ideas on the proper management of soup kitchens. 
 But the captain's thoughts were far away. 
 
 As the good lady prosed on, under the mild sunshine 
 of an English June, his mind wandered drowsily to a 
 
 74
 
 SIMPKINSON BEY 75 
 
 different scene and a hotter sky. The green turf and 
 the red roofs of the quaint old town faded away. Before 
 him a great space of dusty plain, baked and parched 
 under the merciless glare, stretched away to where, in 
 the dim distance, jagged spurs of rock stood black 
 above the shimmering waters of the mirage. On the 
 edge of the visionary lake a long string of camels stalked 
 slowly across the horizon line. In the foreground the 
 dreamer saw rows of mud huts, roofed with corrugated 
 iron ; in front was drawn up a company of soldiers, not 
 the trim little red-coats of the Royalshires, but tall, 
 lathy black men, in white uniforms, with Martini rifles 
 and long, triangular bayonets. A couple of young 
 Englishmen, in khaki, rode up and down. Presently 
 the company sprang to attention, and rigidly pre- 
 sented arms ; the while another Englishman, who was, 
 in fact, himself, emerged from the largest of the huts, 
 mounted a white Arab pony, and, with the adjutant at 
 his side, and native officers and orderlies in attendance, 
 rode towards a group of stalwart barbarians, with 
 spears and turbans and flowing garments, waiting 
 humbly on his pleasure. For Captain Simpkinson was 
 Simpkinson Bey then, Mudir of a province, with a 
 Sudanese battalion at his orders ; and the Sheikh of a 
 great tribe of the Baggara was craving audience, to 
 learn his pleasure concerning a certain matter of cattle 
 raiding, whereof some of the clansmen had been guilty. 
 The captain's errant thoughts went back to other 
 scenes : to long marches through the desert when he
 
 76 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 was bringing up a convoy of camels from the coast, and, 
 night after night, for many weeks, he camped, with his 
 beasts and his Bisharin drivers, under the stars ; to the 
 time when a sudden rising occurred at an isolated post 
 far up in the province, and he pressed on breathlessly 
 with a handful of his Sudanese on mules and donkeys, 
 wondering if he should be, after all, too late to save the 
 beleaguered Englishmen and Egyptians ; to awful days, 
 all alone in his tin-roofed shanty, with the thermometer 
 at 1 20 deg. in the shade (if there had been, any shade), 
 and the khamsin wind blowing up clouds of red-hot 
 sand ; to brief, delightful holidays, when he was able to 
 get down to Khartum, and enjoy a week of polo, and 
 wear evening clothes, and sit long on the cool verandahs 
 of charming villas after dinner ; to busy mornings in his 
 mudiryeh, where he worked in regal fashion, receiving 
 reports, issuing commands, giving directions to a whole 
 staff of assistants, subordinates, clerks, officials, the 
 unquestioned autocrat of a vast district, with none 
 greater than he, save the Governor-General 300 miles 
 away. Now he was drilling his company of languid 
 Tommies, and trying to satisfy the major and earn the 
 approval of the colonel, and discussing soup-kitchens 
 with the vicar's wife. 
 
 ' You must be glad to have got away from that terrible 
 country and be back in England,' said the lady. 
 
 'M yes; awfl'y glad. No place like home, you 
 know,' answered ex-Bey Simpkinson. 
 
 But he said it without conviction, and the vicar's
 
 SIMPKINSON BEY 77 
 
 wife was confirmed in the opinion that he was a dull 
 young man. 
 
 In fact, it had been a good life while it lasted, if often 
 a hard one. At five-and-twenty, a subaltern in the 
 Royalshires, of no particular importance in the scheme 
 of things, he had managed to get seconded for service 
 in the Egyptian Army. Here he was at once a bim- 
 bashi, which is a major, one of the four European 
 officers in a Sudanese regiment, with mature native 
 captains and lieutenants, be-medalled veterans some of 
 them, who had served at the Atbara and Toski, obeying 
 his orders. Being a smart young fellow, with a certain 
 organising faculty, he was presently transferred to the 
 administrative side ; and thus it came about that he 
 found himself, at little more than thirty, a colonel (in 
 the Egyptian army list), a Bey, and the Governor of a 
 province twice as large as Wales. He had all sorts of 
 duties and responsibilities ; he was commandant of the 
 troops, head of the police, home secretary in his own 
 cabinet, inspector of education (so far as there was any 
 education), chief collector of taxes, and guardian of 
 public order, law, and morals. Sometimes he pushed 
 out with a party of his troops on a miniature campaign 
 against slave runners or raiding tribes from the hills ; 
 sometimes he went down to the frontier and engaged in 
 delicate diplomacy with the officers of the Sovereign 
 State of the Congo. Captain Simpkinson chuckled 
 when he recalled the mingled game of bluff and finesse 
 they had played against one another out there on the
 
 78 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 remote border of the Lado Enclave, very far away from 
 the Foreign Offices and the newspapers. But they were 
 good fellows, that young Verhaeeren and young Flan- 
 drin ; and the English and the Belgians had had some 
 genial nights at bridge together after the day's wran- 
 gling was done. 
 
 But the full and busy years, punctuated with wel- 
 come intervals of leave at home, rolled out swiftly. 
 Simpkinson Bey was only let on lease to the Sudan 
 service. The British army, which graciously lends its 
 officers to Egypt, requires repayment of the loan ; in 
 seven years, or ten at the outside, the seconded soldier 
 is reclaimed. He may, if he chooses, and if a place can 
 be found for him, pass permanently into the Egyptian 
 Civil Service, in which case he retires from the British 
 army, and abandons his pay and claim to further pro- 
 motion. Otherwise he returns with the rank which 
 would have been his, in the normal course of things, if 
 he had spent his years of absence with his own corps. 
 The result is occasionally a rather emphatic step down- 
 ward in outward dignity and actual importance. A 
 man may have been the ruler of a province ; he may 
 have been a Bey or a Pasha ; he may have been the 
 head of a department in the Khartum Government, 
 virtually a kind of Chancellor of the Exchequer or 
 Secretary of State; or he may have been Kaimakam 
 (which is Colonel), with a full battalion of 900 men 
 under him; perhaps even El Lewa, or Major-General. 
 And after all this, he may come back to his regiment as
 
 SIMPKINSON BEY 79 
 
 a major, or even a mere captain, with other men to 
 order him about, and only the dull routine of garrison 
 duty to occupy him. Simpkinson Bey might have 
 stayed in the Sudan Administration if he had wished ; 
 he had done good work, and they would have made 
 room for him. But after ten years of dust and sun he 
 was growing a little tired of the tropics ; he found him- 
 self thinking rather frequently of wet English lanes and 
 tangled hedgerows ; with certain blue English eyes and 
 rose-leaf English cheeks also a good deal in his thoughts. 
 So he 'chucked' the Khedivial uniform, and returned 
 to the regiment, and the company, and respectable 
 Cokechester ; and another young man harries the 
 raiders in his stead and keeps the Dinkas in order. 
 
 If Simpkinson Bey never got on to the Staff or ob- 
 tained an administrative appointment while he bore the 
 Crescent badge, but remained with his battalion, he 
 would still have found plenty to occupy and interest 
 him. The Egyptian army is like the Indian army, in 
 that its European officers are in close and constant 
 contact with their men. There are no English non- 
 commissioned officers. 'Sergeant What's-his-name 
 has disappeared. The European drill instructor has 
 gone, and the European subaltern ; it rests with the 
 colonel and the bimbashis, or majors (the English 
 officer is a major, whatever his rank in the home ser- 
 vice), to drill, train, and discipline the men with the 
 help of the native captains, lieutenants, and non-coms. 
 There is some difference in the nature of his task, ac-
 
 8o EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 cording as the Englishman finds himself posted to one 
 of the battalions composed of Egyptian conscripts or 
 one of those recruited in the Sudan by voluntary enlist- 
 ment. The work is easier and duller in the former case. 
 The fellah of the Nile Valley has no martial tastes ; 
 he is so little inclined to be a soldier that he tries various 
 devices to escape service when the lot falls upon him in 
 the annual balloting. Sometimes he borrows 20 from 
 the Agricultural Bank or the Greek moneylender, on the 
 security of his fields, to buy himself off ; sometimes he 
 has been known to snip off the top joint of his trigger 
 finger. But in the ranks he does very well. He is 
 patient, obedient, and teachable, a good marcher, and 
 really fond of his drill, which he learns with a machine- 
 like precision. He is very amenable to discipline, and 
 gives comparatively little trouble in camp and barracks ; 
 so that it is deemed requisite to have no more than three 
 European officers in some of the Egyptian battalions, 
 while four of them have only native officers, from the 
 colonel downwards. 
 
 In the 'black' regiments there is always an English 
 commandant and three or four English bimbashis. 
 The Sudanese are more difficult to handle than the 
 conscript troops. They are more excitable and rest- 
 less, more impatient of routine, a little too fond of 
 native beer, and the stronger liquors of the West, if 
 they can get them, and altogether they demand more 
 constant supervision, both iathe field and on the parade- 
 ground. Yet I believe that the English bimbashi gets
 
 SIMPKINSON BEY 81 
 
 on better with his negroes and Arab tribesmen than 
 with the Egyptians. There is a fine manliness and 
 simplicity about these blacks ; they are soldiers be- 
 cause they like soldiering (some of them have had no 
 other trade), and they often develop a real affection for 
 their officers. I noticed the difference between the 
 two contingents at a review of the Khartum garrison, 
 held before the Sirdar one morning. The 'Gyppies 
 made a fine show, for they marched past like a moving 
 wall, every bayonet in its right alignment. For phy- 
 sique you would find some'of the companies hard to beat. 
 There is scarcely a stronger man on earth than the 
 Egyptian fellah, with his wide, square chest, his long, 
 sinewy back, and his wiry muscles, developed by forty 
 centuries of Sandow exercises, performed with the 
 spade, the hand-pick, and the shadufor lever with which 
 he swings the water up from the Nile. Compared 
 with him the Sudanese often seems leggy and weedy, 
 with shoulders too narrow for his height ; and he does 
 not march with the same accuracy. But the dash and 
 spirit of the Sudanese companies were unmistakable ; 
 they had the martial bearing of men descended from 
 generations of warriors, as many of them are. 
 
 And then their music ! By dint of infinite pains the 
 Egyptian regimental bands have been taught the notes 
 of the scale, albeit the Egyptian has no 'ear' or, at any 
 rate, an ear of a quite different character from our own. 
 He drums and trumpets in the same fashion as he 
 marches mechanically, though with a stubborn
 
 82 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 precision. But with the black it is otherwise. He has 
 an ear attuned to our melodies and harmonies ; the 
 soul of music is in this savage, and you have but to 
 teach him the use of brass and wood to bring it out. 
 There is one specially selected Sudanese band at Khar- 
 tum which plays with such expression and instinctive 
 feeling as would give it a reputation, I believe, in any 
 European capital. They perform anything well - 
 Viennese dance music, comic opera tunes, the old Scot- 
 tish melodies with the breath of the heather in them 
 that make the Briton's heart beat a little when he hears 
 them under an alien sky. And they have not forgotten 
 the indigenous music. At the close of the review the 
 massed bands of the Sudanese regiments played the 
 columns past to their own tunes. It was a wild riot of 
 barbaric sound, savage and confused, yet blended into 
 a kind of unity. You heard the voices of the African 
 forest, the wail of the desert, the shout of the battle, the 
 laughter of the village : above all, the notes of the native 
 drum with their suggestion of menace and mystery. 
 The African can make the stretched skin speak, and its 
 weird, monotonous voice excites him strangely. There- 
 fore did Mohammed Ahmed Ibn Sayid, the Mahdi, 
 warn his followers against this indulgence. 'Abstain,' 
 said the Puritan prophet, 'from all amusements, for 
 through prayers alone can this world be kept in peace. 
 Abstain also from the pleasures of music, do not beat the 
 big and small drums.' The Mahdi knew his people. 
 He knew that the African tribesman, smiling, good-
 
 SIMPKINSON BEY 83 
 
 humoured, indolently sensual in the ordinary way, can 
 be stirred to paroxysms of animal fury when the right 
 stimulus is applied. That is what makes him a 'first- 
 class fighting man,' on occasion, formidable but uncer- 
 tain, and needing above all things sure leadership and 
 careful handling.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 CONCERNING WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 
 
 OUR friend Bimbashi Simpkinson Bey has varied du- 
 ties to perform in the Sudan, such as will not assuredly 
 fall to his lot while he is with his regiment at home. 
 In the Sudanese battalion these functions are more 
 diverse and complex than in those composed of Egyp- 
 tians. The fellah soldier, a conscript, and practically 
 unpaid, lives in barracks as a bachelor; his wife, if he 
 has one, stays behind in the village with her husband's 
 family. But the blacks, who have enlisted as pro- 
 fessional soldiers for long service, bring their women 
 with them. There would be no reliance on them at all 
 if they were separated from them : they would be use- 
 less for duty, and would probably desert. So the 
 authorities make a virtue of necessity, and regard 
 every married man as 'on the strength' of the regiment, 
 so long as he is married in moderation. That is to say, 
 each soldier may have a wife in the lines ; if he avails 
 himself of his privilege as a Mohammedan to have more 
 than one, he must keep the supernumerary consorts at 
 his own expense somewhere else. But the official part- 
 ner is officially recognised ; the soldier is granted 
 quarters for her and an allowance towards her main- 
 tenance and that of her children.
 
 WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 85 
 
 The ladies, in fact, form part of the regiment, and 
 may be said to be under military discipline. Neat 
 rows of huts are built for them within the lines, which 
 they are expected to keep clean and in good order under 
 penalty. The colonel inspects the haremat, or women's 
 quarter, from time to time, and comments unkindly on 
 any exhibition of negligence or dirt. The women, how- 
 ever, may be said to have their own commandant, in the 
 person of the sheikha, a female of discretion and mature 
 years appointed to control their conduct, manners, and 
 morals. If any tenant of the haremat is disorderly or 
 disobedient, if she quarrels too frequently with her 
 husband or her neighbours, if she neglects her children, 
 or if her behaviour falls below the regimental standard 
 of propriety, the sheikha, having reproved her with 
 more or less effect, brings her to the orderly room and 
 makes formal complaint of her delinquencies. The 
 officer of the day makes grave note of the case, listens 
 with attention to the accusation of the sheikha and the 
 defendant's explanation, and takes such steps as the 
 occasion seems to demand. As a rule the authority of 
 the sheikha is vindicated, since this military duenna 
 bears, so to speak, the King's commission. Some- 
 times a woman will be brought to the orderly room on 
 the complaint of a neighbour, or a rival, or of her own 
 husband ; sometimes, also, a husband at the instance 
 of his wife. 
 
 Delicate connubial questions may fall to be adjudi- 
 cated upon by a youthful bachelor bimbashi, who in
 
 86 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 England might not be deemed an expert in causes 
 matrimonial. But in the Sudan he is a man of the 
 world, and his decisions are accepted with reverence. 
 
 'Oh, thou woman,' says Sergeant Mohammed Yehya, 
 as he leads the erring Zeinab home, having obtained a 
 judgment of the court in his favour, 'did I not tell thee 
 the Bey would have no regard for the word of a light 
 minded female pig like thyself ? Great is the wisdom 
 of the Ingliiz !' 
 
 Nothing that I did in Omdurman interested me more 
 than the visit I paid to the barracks of one of the black 
 battalions at that town. It was the loth Sudanese, 
 which, under the command of its late able and popular 
 kaimakam, Lempriere Bey, had reached a high state of 
 efficiency; indeed, the 9th and the loth Sudanese, I 
 believe, are regarded as the two crack regiments of the 
 Egyptian army. The barrack-rooms are long sheds, 
 with a raised platform, on which the soldiers spread their 
 straw mattresses. As we went round, each man, in full 
 kit (for the regiment was preparing for parade), stood, 
 like a black statue, in his place. The rooms were not 
 quite so well furnished as if they had been in the Marine 
 lines at Portsmouth, but as clean and tidy; and in this 
 dusty land, these men, brought up on dung floors in 
 mud hovels, had been taught to keep themselves and 
 their dwelling-places in excellent order. Fine, soldierly 
 men were the Sudanese non-commissioned officers and 
 the Egyptian captains and the lieutenants who accom- 
 panied us on our tour of inspection : one of these, a
 
 WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 87 
 
 bronzed veteran whose broad breast was covered with 
 medals, for he had faced the dervish spears in all the 
 battles of Hunter's and Kitchener's campaigns. Some 
 of the troops were to be conveyed across by steamer to 
 Khartum ; I watched them march down to the river 
 and embark, which they did with no more fuss and 
 noise than a similar number of European soldiers would 
 have made. 
 
 After we went round the haremat, and I had the 
 honour of a presentation to the head sheikha, and like- 
 wise to the subordinate sheikhas, each of whom is 
 responsible for the discipline of a company. Some of 
 these latter were a little shy ; each of them, however, 
 protested that her own company was one of exceptional 
 virtue and decorum, and as much above the level of all 
 the other companies as the loth Sudanese were, speaking 
 generally, superior to the rest of the army. The rank 
 and file women, dressed in their parade robes of (mostly) 
 clean white cotton, stood at the doors of their huts ; 
 and as we passed by the end of each row, the whole 
 company emitted shrill cries in honour of the command- 
 ing officer. It is a curious sound, something between a 
 scream and a whistle: the English officers call it 'lou- 
 louing,' because of the syllable which is most distinguish- 
 able through the prolonged piercing howl. It has a 
 rather mournful effect, but I believe expresses great 
 exultation when given with energy, as it certainly was 
 by these daughters of the regiment. 
 
 The first Government of the Sudan was a government
 
 88 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 of soldiers. It began with a conquest, the suppression 
 of armed rebellion, and the occupation of the conquered 
 territory by an invading army, which had to organise an 
 administration from its own resources. The officers of 
 the victorious force supplied a contingent of officials, 
 who transformed themselves promptly into provincial 
 governors, tax-collectors, district magistrates, and 
 inspectors. One was turned into financial secretary, 
 another became Minister of the Interior, a third Minis- 
 ter of Railways. The civil administration was neces- 
 sarily subordinate to the military : in an Indian dis- 
 trict the commissioner, a civilian, takes precedence of 
 the officer commanding the troops ; in the Sudan the 
 Mudir of the province, himself a soldier, is the com- 
 mandant of the troops. For in some parts of the Sudan, 
 it must be remembered, we are still a garrison rather 
 than a Government, and are by no means in a position 
 to lay down our arms. That is one of the reasons why 
 we must go cautiously and slowly, and why impatient 
 persons at home must not insist on too many social 
 and domestic reforms in a hurry, thereby repeating 
 Gordon's mistake and playing into the hands of another 
 not wholly impossible Mahdi. 
 
 The transition from military to civil rule was brought 
 about gradually. As the soldier officials retired at the 
 end of the term of service, their place was taken by 
 civilians. There is now an Egyptian and a Sudan Civil 
 Service, recruited from young university men nominated, 
 on the recommendation of their academic authorities,
 
 WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 89 
 
 by a Board of Selection. The selected candidate goes 
 back to his college to study the Arabic language for the 
 year ; then he comes out and gets to work. There are 
 many attractions in this service, including good pay, 
 abundant leave, and a pension; and the Board of 
 Selection has a legion of the prize young men of Oxford 
 and Cambridge offering themselves for the few posts it 
 offers annually. No doubt it succeeds in getting excel- 
 lent specimens of our academic and athletic culture. 
 As to how far these graduates are doing much better 
 than the picked young soldiers they are intended to 
 supersede, it is as yet too early to say. Military opinion 
 in the Sudan itself was, I fancy, inclined at first to be a 
 little sceptical as to the merits of the young civilians. 
 That, perhaps, is not unnatural ; besides, Jones, of 
 Balliol, and Smith, of Trinity, who attained the supreme 
 distinction of a university Blue, and possibly also the 
 minor honour of a First Class, may be disposed to give 
 themselves airs at the outset. It does not last. They 
 speedily discover that these unpolished products of the 
 orderly room and the barrack square have learnt a good 
 many things which are not, as yet, imparted beside the 
 Isis and the Cam. The soldier training, for instance, 
 teaches those humble but necessary virtues of order, 
 punctuality, and discipline, which are, perhaps, as use- 
 ful for practical purposes as the best public school or 
 university 'tone.' If Jones, B.A., strolls into his office 
 with a casual excuse half an hour after the appointed 
 time he is apt to meet with small mercy from a military
 
 90 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 superior, who has learnt in the regiment that it is an 
 uncommonly serious matter to be late for parade. 
 
 Such attainments as he does possess may also inspire 
 rather less respect than they did at home ; and they do 
 not always impress his older military mentors. One of 
 them, a veteran of thirty-seven, who held high office 
 under the Sudan Government, had no esteem for the 
 New Civilian, and imparted to me unfavourable opin- 
 ions of this young gentleman. 
 
 'I am not a university man,' said this unbeliever, 
 'so perhaps you can tell me what they do learn at 
 Oxford and Cambridge that can be of the smallest use 
 to anybody ? When we get them out here we have to 
 begin teaching them the simplest things, which we 
 stupid British officers learnt before we left Sandhurst. 
 We have to teach them manners ; I didn't mind saying 
 "Sir" to the Colonel when I was a subaltern, but these 
 youngsters don't know how to behave to men from 
 whom they have to take orders. We have to teach 
 them book-keeping, office accounts, map measuring, 
 how to docket papers and draw up reports, the elements 
 of land surveying; surely these are things that their 
 schoolmasters might have taught them before they sent 
 them out to us. Of course, they know all there is to 
 know about Latin and Greek - 
 
 'Of course,' I murmured. 
 
 'Yes, of course. But what on earth is the use of that 
 here ? The only foreign language we want, besides 
 Arabic, is French ; and apparently these accomplished
 
 WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 91 
 
 students have not found time to learn French. They 
 can play cricket, I believe ; but that isn't much use in a 
 country where there's no turf. They had much better 
 teach them to ride decently, and to shoot, and give 
 them some military drill, [which, you know, we have 
 to put them through when they have come out. It 
 seems to me that their real education only begins when 
 we take them in hand.' 
 
 It was perhaps unduly harsh criticism, and some of 
 the grievances of which my friend complained have 
 since been remedied. The educational deficiencies 
 of the first batch of civilians are now supplemented to 
 some extent during their probationary period by the 
 authorities of Oxford and Cambridge. But since those 
 seats of learning are laying themselves out to train the 
 servants of the Empire they might do more to fit them 
 for their task. It is rather absurd that at four-and- 
 twenty, after some fifteen years of elaborate and expen- 
 sive education, Jones, B.A., and Smith, B.A., have to 
 be put to school again in the Sudan. In fact the youth- 
 ful British civilian everywhere not merely in the 
 Sudan is apt to be more schoolboyish than befits his 
 years. At twenty-five the young soldier, if he is not a 
 mere 'waster,' has had his eyes opened to the respon- 
 sibilities and serious duties of life. But the graduate 
 is still redolent of the classrooms and the playing-fields, 
 of boyish studies and boyish pastimes. The Sudan, by 
 the way, is pretty well supplied with university Blues, 
 but they are not always appreciated as they deserve.
 
 92 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Not long ago the most ccerulean of all Blues came out 
 to the country. He had captained the eleven at Lord's ; 
 he had played for England ; he had made a great innings 
 somewhere which caused the cricket reporters to grow 
 breathless with rapture ; his bowling had been analysed 
 with mathematical exactitude, and the sporting papers 
 kept libellous stereotype portraits of him ready for use. 
 This hero was at his first afternoon party in Khartum ; 
 and a lady, a very young and pretty and sporting lady, 
 was giving him tea. By way of making conversation, 
 she asked him if he liked polo ; but he had to confess 
 that he was an indifferent performer on a horse. Did 
 he care for shooting ? No ; he was not a shot. Then, 
 in the faint hope of finding some topic to interest him, 
 she said sweetly: 'Do you play cricket at all, Mr. 
 Blenkinsopp ?' I do not know how Blenkinsopp took 
 it; but if he was a young man of sense it should have 
 done him a great deal of good. As a matter of fact 
 these officials soon adapt themselves to the ways of 
 the country, and on the whole, I believe, are doing well ; 
 and they are providing the Sudan with a capable and 
 competent civil bureaucracy. The natives will have no 
 reason to regret the supersession of the military adminis- 
 trators. But these latter deserve their gratitude and 
 the gratitude of their countrymen and the civilised 
 world generally for the manner in which they piloted 
 the Sudan ship of state into smooth water during the 
 years when it was rolling in the trough of the storm.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA 
 
 RATHER more than seven years ago an event occurred 
 which was hardly noticed in the English newspapers, 
 though few happenings of the time were of more impor- 
 tance with respect to the future. 
 
 In January 1906, Lord Cromer, accompanied by the 
 Governor-General of the Sudan, by a bevy of officials, 
 and by guards of honour of bluejackets, marines, and 
 British and Egyptian infantry, opened the Nile-Red- 
 Sea Railway at Port Sudan. 
 
 In January 1907, Lord Cromer's successor, Sir Eldon 
 Gorst, visited the same locality to note what had been 
 done in the interval. He declared himself amazed at 
 the substantial and rapid progress which had been made 
 under the direction of the British officers and officials 
 who control the affairs of the Red Sea province. 
 
 The progress went on steadily and swiftly for the next 
 five years; and in January 1912, the King and Queen, 
 on their way home from India, landed at Port Sudan, 
 were received with due ceremony at that thriving town, 
 travelled some distance up the country as far as Sinkat 
 once a place of unhappy memories in the days of the 
 Mahdist fury and there held a review of native 
 
 93
 
 94 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 troops and tribesmen, in which representatives of all 
 the local clans and peoples, Arab and negro, black and 
 brown, Mussulman and pagan, were present. Then 
 perhaps for the first time some consciousness of the 
 work that is being done at this point on the Red Sea 
 coast came upon those Britons at home who before 
 that scarcely knew where Port Sudan was. 
 
 Not many people, unless they have actually passed 
 through it, have any conception of the activity dis- 
 played in this remote corner of the territory. Until I 
 went to Port Sudan myself, though I had heard a good 
 deal about it in Khartum, I had no idea that the develop- 
 ment of a great commercial emporium and port of call 
 was being carried out on this remarkable scale. I 
 expected to find a railway station, a few shanties, an 
 improvised quay or two. I found, instead, imposing 
 wharves and bridges of stone and iron, a range of mas- 
 sive warehouses, cranes and loading machinery, some 
 fine buildings already erected, others in progress ; 
 streets, squares, and public gardens planned and partly 
 laid out ; a busy population of Greeks, Italians, Levan- 
 tines, and other Europeans or quasi-Europeans, doing 
 a lively trade ; an excellent modern hotel, small but 
 comfortable and well managed ; and many other signs 
 of activity and enterprise. 
 
 Eight years ago Port Sudan was not marked on the 
 map. There was only a miserable native hamlet and 
 the tomb of a local saint, which latter is now carefully 
 conserved in the precincts of the new coal-tipping
 
 THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA 95 
 
 installation, just as the holy rood and pulpit of the old 
 abbey may be found in the railway goods-yard at 
 Shrewsbury. There were no Europeans and no trade 
 and no ships nearer than the ancient Red Sea port of 
 Suakin, crouching behind its rocks and coral reefs, 
 thirty-six miles farther down the coast. 
 
 Port Sudan is a creation of the railway, which 
 branches from the main line to Khartum, a little above 
 Berber, just where the Atbara, the first great tributary 
 of the Nile, flows into that river. It is a railway that 
 had been talked of for many years before it was actually 
 put in hand. If the rulers of Britain had been rightly 
 advised it should have been built nearly a quarter of a 
 century earlier. There was much discussion as to the 
 Suakin-Berber Railway and the Suakin-Berber route 
 in 1884, when the relief of Gordon was being considered, 
 and those who knew the country best held that the 
 expedition should have gone that way. Lord Wolseley, 
 for some reason, took a different view, and the Govern- 
 ment, at his instance, committed itself to the gigantic 
 boating trip up the Nile. Nobody, I suppose, now 
 doubts that this was a grave error, for which we paid 
 dearly. The mistake was partly acknowledged by its 
 author, who, after the abandonment of Khartum, 
 formed a half-hearted project to carry the railway from 
 the coast to Berber. A highly expensive equipment of 
 plant, rolling stock, permanent way, and locomotives 
 was ordered at Woolwich and shipped out to Suakin. 
 Vestiges of it may still be seen forlornly rusting in the
 
 96 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 scrub and desert ; for England presently found herself 
 in difficulties with Russia on the Afghan frontier, and in 
 the war-scare the Suakin-Berber Railway was dropped 
 and forgotten for many years. At length, in the fulness 
 of time, it was taken up by the engineers of the Sudan 
 Government and brought to completion. 
 
 Its terminus was changed. Suakin, the outlet for 
 centuries of the pilgrim route from Inner Africa to 
 Mecca, the last remnant of the old Egyptian dominion 
 in the Sudan, on which the Crescent banner was kept 
 flying all through the Mahdist insurrection, is a pictu- 
 resque town with respectable traditions. But it has a 
 hopelessly bad roadstead, encumbered by rocks and 
 shoals ; and it has no fresh water save such as is brought 
 in by skins and metal casks on the humps of camels. 
 Instead of spending vast sums upon the attempt, which 
 could never have been completely successful, to convert 
 Suakin into a port more or less fit for modern shipping, 
 the Government engineers preferred to deal with one 
 that lay ready to hand. By the tomb of Sheikh Bar- 
 ghut they found a deep inlet from the sea, a splendid 
 natural harbour, which ships can enter at all hours of 
 the day and night, and in which steamers drawing 
 thirty feet of water can be moored in safety. They 
 christened it Port Sudan, brought the railway there 
 with a junction and branch line to Suakin and de- 
 liberately set about to prepare the new entrepot for 
 the destinies that await it. 
 
 The work had to be done from the very foundation ;
 
 THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA 97 
 
 there was nothing to go upon. Port Sudan is the 
 artificial creation of man's hands and brains, as Port 
 Harcourt will be, the new harbour of Southern Nigeria, 
 which will presently come into being on the other side of 
 Africa. Even as the Nigerian fiord is to-day, so was the 
 Red Sea inlet, when the pioneers came down upon it 
 from the Nile : a place left through the centuries to 
 unheeding Nature, which even savagedom had passed 
 by. It was planted, staked out, settled, populated, as 
 rapidly as any mushroom mining or transport town in 
 the Western States of America, and it has sprung up 
 more quickly. But it is not the accidental result of a 
 sudden rush, or the haphazard agglomeration of pioneers 
 and prospectors. It is all the outcome of conscious 
 design. Everything belonged to the Government, 
 and everything has been done by the Government. 
 The place has not grown, it has been made. It started, 
 as towns do not usually start, with a regular plan and 
 a definite scheme of construction and location. The 
 engineers and surveyors and land agents of the adminis- 
 tration took pencil and compasses and tracing paper in 
 hand, and said : 'Here we will have our wharves ; here 
 our docks, quays, cranes, warehouses ; here our public 
 buildings ; here our shops and offices ; here our residen- 
 tial quarter; here our main thoroughfares; here our 
 side streets ; here our gardens and recreation grounds.' 
 Some of those who are concerned with municipal affairs 
 in other places may deem them fortunate in their 
 opportunity. I served for several arduous years of my
 
 98 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 life on the committees of the London County Council, 
 and at times, when we were puzzling over tramway 
 routes and street improvements, I caught myself 
 impiously wishing that another Great Fire of London 
 might make a clean sweep of everything, and allow us 
 to start fresh and fair. 
 
 I made my journey to Port Sudan by the Atbara 
 route. You can go comfortably by sea it is but two 
 days from Suez, and there are regular services by the 
 excellent boats of the Khedivial Mail Steamship Com- 
 pany and those of the Austrian Lloyd and the North 
 German Lloyd but I wanted to see what the Suakin- 
 Berber Railway, that vision of the Gladstonian years, 
 had become in practice. And in practice I found it a 
 wonderfully satisfactory thing, doing great credit to its 
 constructors and to the officers of the Sudan Govern- 
 ment Railway Department, by whom it is operated. 
 The line is well laid, the engines are powerful and rea- 
 sonably fast, and the train, with its sleeping cars and 
 restaurant wagon, is up to the very highest standard 
 of modern locomotive luxury. Indeed, I do not remem- 
 ber ever finding myself in more comfortable quarters on 
 any railway, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or North 
 America. The Sudan Express can quite safely chal- 
 lenge comparison with the best trains of the Continent, 
 the United States, and India. The whole enterprise 
 has been planned with a large ambition : the work of 
 men who believe in the future. 
 
 You feel this very much in the town itself. The
 
 THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA 99 
 
 present bureaucracy and autocracy of military and 
 civilian officers is lodged very simply by the waterside ; 
 but from their modest mess-house they can look across 
 the harbour to the long and lofty stone warehouses, and 
 the solid sea-wall of coral blocks on which the new 
 wharves are built, and the gaunt skeleton framework of 
 iron ribs and girders by which the colliers will unload ; 
 they can glance up the estuary to the point where the 
 great bridge crosses it, a steel hinged bridge that can 
 be lifted out of the way by the mere pulling of a lever 
 so as to allow ten-thousand-ton steamers to pass up to 
 the docks that will lie above it ; or, again, they may let 
 their eyes travel a little way seaward, and there, just 
 at the root of the new mole and breakwater, they can 
 see the new Mudiryeh, the residence of the Governor, 
 and the offices and law courts of the province, a hand- 
 some building with an imposing air of solidity and 
 permanence. Port Sudan is waiting waiting for the 
 argosies of the world to discharge their cargoes on her 
 quays, and meanwhile making ready to receive them 
 with a fine display of all the most modern appliances for 
 dealing with sea-borne commerce. It has cost nearly a 
 million sterling, one way and another; and one cannot 
 but admire the courage of a young and far from wealthy 
 Government, which has poured out this vast sum in the 
 wilderness to bring its territories into touch with the 
 great highways and thoroughfares of maritime trade. 
 Will this audacious confidence be justified ? Port 
 Sudan has always had its hostile critics, especially in the
 
 ioo EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Egyptian Press, who maintained that too much money 
 had been spent in haste on a speculative enterprise. 
 Whether the speculation would prove successful or not 
 depended on the future productiveness of the Sudan. 
 At first, though a good deal was coming in, very little 
 was going out. During the first ten months of 1906 the 
 imports were valued at 312,000, largely Government 
 material, railway plant, and machinery, while the 
 exports only amounted to 40,000. But as the Sudan 
 develops, the wheat and cotton, gum, maize, hides, 
 coffee, and timber will be railed down to the Red Sea, 
 and coal and European manufactured goods will come 
 up in exchange. And that the Sudan, with its perennial 
 sunshine and its vast area, will become one of the great 
 agricultural-producing regions those who know it best 
 do not doubt : when the engineers have settled the 
 irrigation question, and enabled it to take a larger 
 supply of the fertilising water which flows by its swamps 
 and forests and thirsting levels on the way to Egypt and 
 the sea. That consummation achieved there will be 
 millions of acres under wheat and cotton and dhura, 
 and the storehouses at Port Sudan will bulge with bags 
 and bales, and every shilling spent on them will be 
 repaid many times over. So hold the official optimists, 
 perhaps not unduly optimistic. And they point out 
 that without its seaport the Government could neither 
 push on with the irrigation works nor construct railways 
 in the interior. The cost would be prohibitive if every 
 ton of heavy material had to be carried two thousand
 
 THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA 101 
 
 miles from the Mediterranean, conveyed by railway to 
 the First Cataract, breaking bulk there to be shipped 
 on the river steamer to Haifa, and transferred to the 
 railway again at that place. As it is, a cargo can be 
 taken from Liverpool or Antwerp to Khartum (and 
 presently to the Abyssinian border and the Equator) 
 with only one transfer at Port Sudan. In the future 
 the Nile route will be used for passenger traffic and for 
 the lighter and more costly articles. The heavy and 
 bulky goods will come round by sea and the Atbara 
 railway. 'Who knows,' said one young enthusiast, 
 who had laboured in that moist and fiery air over the 
 creation of Port Sudan- 'who knows but that this 
 place in twenty years' time may not be one of the great 
 mercantile towns of the world, a second Buenos Ayres 
 perhaps ?' 'Buenos Ayres ?' I said. 'Yes; why not ? 
 The Argentine trade, I understand, can keep a city of 
 over a million inhabitants in prosperity. But the 
 Sudan is a bigger country than Argentina, and surely 
 its agricultural prospects are as good.' 
 
 It is a sweltering little place, Port Sudan : with a 
 trying climate, damp heat in the winter, the glare of a 
 sevenfold furnace in summer. It lies on flats of salt 
 white sand and powdered coral, through which the 
 estuary draws a broad ribbon of blue ; and it has its 
 difficulties about water supply. But it gets its com- 
 pensations, for it is on the edge of the mountain land. 
 Northward and westward the plain is closed in by the 
 olivine walls and dimly purpled ramparts of a mass of
 
 102 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 rugged hills, that rise in peaked ridges and broken 
 sierras into the hard metallic dome of the African sky. 
 The lower slopes are only a few miles distant, and on 
 these, I take it, in the years to come the merchants and 
 magnates of Port Sudan will have their villas and gar- 
 dens, travelling down to their offices by motor-cars and 
 fast electric tramways. Farther inland the mountains 
 rise higher, and here the Sudan Government is establish- 
 ing its Simla in the hill-station of Erkoweit. Up there, 
 in his Alpine chalet, amid the tinkle of running waters, 
 and the sight of rock and fell and green turf, the tired 
 toiler will be able to leave the tropics behind him for a 
 space, and return to his labours, braced and invigorated, 
 without the expense and the delay of the long journey 
 'home.' We are making the sun-lands habitable in 
 these days ; and thanks to modern science, modern 
 transport, and modern medicine, Port Sudan will not 
 be, even for migrants from Northern Europe, the place 
 of intolerable exile and perpetual suffering such as its 
 situation between the Red Sea and the desert would 
 have made it in the past.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 STATE SOCIALISM IN THE SUDAN 
 
 WHEN I left England that fortunate country was in the 
 whirl of a furious discussion over socialism and anti- 
 socialism. Bound for the Sudan, I assumed that I was 
 going 'to where beyond these voices there is peace'; 
 and it is true I did not hear the topic mentioned in the 
 territory. Yet, in some of its aspects, it was rather 
 frequently brought before me, and I often found myself 
 in contact with certain phases of the question which is 
 agitating our domestic politics. 
 
 The original Government of the Sudan is, as I have 
 said, a Government of soldiers. These gallant officers 
 are not, I take it, political philosophers. Most of them 
 I imagine to be Conservatives by tradition and instinct, 
 disliking Radicals and Little-Englanders and Labour 
 politicians. If they had any opinions on these subjects 
 at home they were probably against 'nationalising' 
 anything, against interfering with private enterprise, 
 and against municipal trading. But in the Sudan they 
 are not swayed by theories ; and dealing with practical 
 necessities as they arise, they have quietly adopted 
 several large items of a system which some people wildly 
 advocate and others angrily denounce in older and more 
 advanced communities. 
 
 103
 
 104 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 State Socialism is in a condition of vigorous activity 
 in the Sudan. Some of its developments were inevit- 
 able. The Government, set up in 1898 in the wake of 
 the invading army, found itself planted upon a ruin. 
 Political institutions there were none ; society was a 
 chaos. The new Government had to be everything and 
 to do everything. The most ardent individualist could 
 not have wished to confine its functions to the main- 
 tenance of public order and the raising of revenue. 
 There was no room for laissezfaire among a people just 
 released from an armed tyranny and theocracy, who 
 looked to the new Administration for the first requisites 
 of existence. The Government, before it had time to 
 turn round, found itself embarked in business of the 
 most varied kind. It was landowner, housebuilder, 
 purveyor of food and clothing, storekeeper, railway 
 manager, importer, retail trader, agriculturist, and 
 tourist agent. If it wanted steamers to ply on the rivers 
 it had to build and man them ; if it desired to foster 
 trade in the country it was obliged to supply the means 
 of transport, if not actually to buy and sell the goods 
 itself. And these things it could do with a free hand ; 
 for there were few vested interests which it need be 
 afraid to traverse, and no prickly hedges of prejudice of 
 public opinion to bar the way against bold experiments. 
 Some of these it tried with the confidence born, perhaps 
 of youth, perhaps of a serene unconsciousness of their 
 full import. For example, it instituted a Central 
 Economic Board, intended to study the commercial
 
 STATE SOCIALISM IN THE SUDAN 105 
 
 situation, to assist traders in their transactions, to 
 advise importers what to bring in, and generally to act 
 as an Intelligence Department for industrial affairs. 
 The members are high officials in the administrative 
 service, and the secretary is Mr. H. P. Hewins, the 
 brother of the secretary of the Tariff Commission. 
 One cannot help reflecting that in a somewhat more 
 important industrial community than the Sudan we 
 rather badly need a Central Economic Board and are 
 not in the least likely to get one. 
 
 The Sudan Government believes I suppose it has 
 had to believe in the public ownership of public 
 services and of various other commodities. It builds 
 and runs all the railways for the excellent reason that if 
 it did not there would be no railways at all. It found 
 itself in possession of a fleet of gunboats and dispatch 
 vessels, and it uses them not only to carry mails and 
 officials, but also to transport passengers and the goods 
 of the general trader. It lets out steamers for hire, and 
 competes with Messrs. Cook in providing for pleasure 
 parties on the Upper Nile. If you want to 'do' the 
 equatorial region comfortably and combine a little 
 shooting with a glimpse of primitive Africa, you can 
 apply to the Commander-in-Chief of the Sudan navy, 
 who will be willing to lend you, at a moderate price, one 
 of the Government steamers, with a crew complete. 
 The Government owns the ferries, which are the only 
 means of communication between the three sister towns 
 on the Blue and White Niles. It refused the offer of a
 
 106 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 company to build the tramways between Khartum and 
 Omdurman in Egypt the tramways and the light 
 railways are in private hands and built the line itself 
 and operates it. Another company would have liked 
 to supply the town with water, but the Government 
 would not have that either, and preferred to be its own 
 Water Board. It also provides electric lighting, though 
 whether private enterprise would have been willing to 
 take up this business I do not know. 
 
 But it is in its dealing with the land that the State 
 Socialistic policy is most marked. A great deal of the 
 extra-urban soil of the Sudan belongs to the Government 
 in default of other ownership. There was a tendency to 
 assume that this amount was larger than it is ; but, as 
 the country quieted down, numerous owners who had 
 disappeared during the troubles of the Mahdist period 
 put in their claims, and many complications ensued. 
 Thereupon an elaborate settlement investigation was 
 instituted, and is now proceeding. When it is complete, 
 it is supposed that good legal titles will be established to 
 most of the land actually occupied or under some sort 
 of cultivation. In any case the Government will be a 
 very large landowner, and it holds all the so-called 
 desert areas which will not always be desert much 
 of Khartum and North Khartum and Omdurman and 
 the whole of Port Sudan. In dealing with these lands, 
 the Government has set its face against complete 
 alienation. It objects to sell freeholds, and prefers to 
 grant leases for a comparatively short term of years.
 
 STATE SOCIALISM IN THE SUDAN 107 
 
 The idea is partly to discourage speculation and partly 
 to secure for the State the 'unearned increment' of 
 urban properties. Not long ago a wealthy syndicate in 
 Cairo made an offer to develop some large blocks of va- 
 cant land in Khartum. The Government declined to sell, 
 though it was willing to grant leases, which were refused. 
 The Sudan was threatened with a minor land boom 
 like that which was followed by so disastrous a collapse 
 in Egypt. Much speculative energy was ready to be 
 directed to the new territory, and in one or two cases 
 some lucky persons did contrive to bring off highly 
 profitable deals. There is a certain site in Khartum 
 which changed hands at 20,000, having been bought 
 two years earlier for 1200; a few years before that, so 
 I was ruefully assured by the individual who refused the 
 bargain, it was offered for 40. But the Sudan author- 
 ities have failed to discern any particular advantage in 
 such transactions, and they discourage them. They 
 profess themselves anxious to admit the genuine settler 
 who wants the land for agricultural purposes and 
 intends to develop it himself; but the financier, who 
 merely 'sits on' an estate in order to sell it when its 
 price has gone up with the general rise in values, they 
 would like to keep away as long as possible. In the 
 towns they think the fee simple of the land should be 
 held by the State for posterity. There are to be no 
 millionaire landlords, drawing steadily increasing rents 
 for ever from the Park Lane of Khartum and the 
 Regent Street, when it gets one, of Port Sudan.
 
 io8 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 It is a bold policy which, to me, at any rate, seems the 
 right one, particularly in its urban aspects. But I have 
 heard it a good deal criticised, not always favourably. 
 Some of its own subjects, and some of those who are 
 rather anxious to become its subjects, complain that the 
 Sudan Government keeps too much in its own hands, 
 and allows too little scope for private enterprise and 
 initiative. There is the charge commonly, and often 
 justly, levelled against every manifestation of state 
 socialism : which is that it tends to give undue power 
 to officialism, with the result of checking progress and 
 deadening commercial activity. One very able busi- 
 ness' man, who has himself a large pecuniary interest 
 in the Sudan, condemned the system unsparingly. A 
 young and poor country, he maintained, could only be 
 brought forward by introducing capital from outside ; 
 and the administrative policy, he insisted, was obstruct- 
 ing this fertilising inflow. He assured me that plenty 
 of money was available for investment in the Sudan 
 some years ago ; but the attitude of the Government 
 was so unfavourable to investors that very little was 
 done. He held that the refusal to sell freeholds was an 
 error, for nobody would risk his money, when the future 
 was still so beset with uncertainty, on a mere leasehold 
 title. Nor would companies embark on trading ven- 
 tures, with a Government always ready to enter into 
 competition with them, and able, moreover, to compete 
 at a great advantage owing to its possession of the 
 means of transport and communication.
 
 STATE SOCIALISM IN THE SUDAN 109 
 
 He pointed to the condition of Port Sudan, which I 
 had not long quitted. That town, as I have said, has 
 fine public buildings and Government warehouses. 
 The works have attracted to the spot a considerable 
 number of traders and shopkeepers of diverse nation- 
 alities. There are Greeks, Italians, Egyptians, Arabs, 
 Abyssinians, Syrians, and others. The place looks 
 lively enough when you walk through it at evening, 
 with its bazaar, its brisk cafes, its pushing little shops. 
 But the straight roads, wider than Northumberland 
 Avenue, the cross streets intersecting them at right 
 angles, according to the excellent Government building 
 plan, were fronted by one-storey shanties of wood or 
 cheap plaster. Hardly anybody thought it worth while 
 to put up a substantial edifice of brick and stone. 
 Why ? My friend insisted that it was because the 
 Government would not sell the sites. The Greek and 
 other immigrants, he said, wanted a security which they 
 could mortgage before they would sink their money in 
 expensive buildings. A short lease was valueless to 
 them for this purpose, and they would not hazard 
 capital over it. I have heard the same explanation 
 given by others, and I believe that, in part at least, it is 
 correct; indeed, I understand that the uncompromis- 
 ing refusal to sell freehold sites will probably not be 
 persisted in. 
 
 One cannot but sympathise with the Sudan Govern- 
 ment in its dilemma : on the one hand it is anxious not 
 to deprive the State of the property it holds in trust for
 
 no EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 future generations ; on the other, it is confronted by the 
 risk that the future generations may not come into being 
 at all, unless a few people can see a chance of themselves 
 growing rich rapidly or laying up treasure for their 
 descendants. Thus do the old questions reappear in the 
 newest societies ; and thus are administrators in tropical 
 Africa finding themselves perplexed to find a practical 
 solution for problems over which we are still theorising 
 in Europe. After all, I suppose the Norman barons 
 were only land speculators of a sort in the conquered 
 and disordered Anglo-Saxon shires ; and the adven- 
 turous Hellenes and Syrians of the Sudan may become 
 the founders of the great landowning aristocratic 
 families of the coming centuries. History has a way of 
 working itself out on extremely threadbare lines.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 A NOCTURNE 
 
 WHEN I left Port Sudan I came back over the railway 
 to the Atbara, and then some way up the Khartum line 
 as far as the small wayside station of Zeidab : having 
 been invited to visit a cotton plantation, which was at 
 that time about the most important example of agricul- 
 tural development on a large scale visible in the Sudan. 
 The railway is on the east bank of the Nile ; the estate 
 on the west, some miles higher up. I was to alight at 
 Zeidab station, where I was to be met by my hosts and 
 provided with a boat to cross the river and conveyance 
 on the other side. 
 
 The south-bound express bustled alongside the little 
 platform, and left me standing there with my luggage 
 piled in a neat mound : nobody seemed to be expecting 
 me. The stationmaster had only a few words of Eng- 
 lish and I only a few words of Arabic ; but with the 
 help of this limited vocabulary I was enabled to under- 
 stand that a hitch had occurred in the programme. 
 Owing to some mistake in transmitting or reading tele- 
 grams, my friends at the plantation had been led to 
 believe that my train would not arrive before midnight, 
 whereas here it was in the afternoon. What was to be 
 done ? The stationmaster, the post-office clerk, an
 
 ii2 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 intelligent young Egyptian, the two Arab porters, were 
 sympathetic ; but it did not appear that they could 
 give effectual aid. If I had been at a Scottish railway 
 station somebody would have said to me within the first 
 five minutes : ' Ye'll maybe no' get away from here the 
 night.' As it was, the unwelcome truth was broken to 
 me in the Oriental manner by stages. I told the 
 stationmaster to send a man across to the plantation. 
 He salaamed, and gave voluble directions to an inter- 
 ested negro, who departed with every appearance of 
 alacrity. Then he brought me a wooden kitchen chair, 
 from the whitewashed room in which he slept and issued 
 tickets, and I sat down on the platform and waited. 
 
 After half an hour or so I asked the stationmaster to 
 expedite the proceedings. He gave instructions to 
 another native, who sprinted off at a very fair hundred 
 yards pace. Another half-hour elapsed, and I called 
 upon the official to report progress. He shouted, 
 'Achmet ! Mahmud ! Osman !' and various natives 
 emerged from nowhere in particular and dashed away 
 into space. I inquired how long it would take these 
 athletes to reach the plantation, and how they proposed 
 to get there ; whereupon it was gently hinted to me that 
 there was not the slightest chance that they would get 
 there at all, because there were no boats on that side of 
 the Nile. In effect, the whole company had gone no 
 farther than the river bank, about a quarter of a mile 
 distant, where I presently found them standing in a 
 group to watch for the arrival of the boat from the
 
 A NOCTURNE 113 
 
 opposite bank. I demanded, angrily, if they saw any 
 signs of this vessel : for it was growing dark by this 
 time, and my unaccustomed eyes could distinguish 
 nothing. They peered intently into the shining levels 
 and long trails of shadow, and reported that the felucca 
 had put off, and was, in fact, in sight. When would it 
 make the landing ? After a spirited debate it was 
 decided though, I think, only by a narrow majority 
 that the relieving expedition might reasonably be 
 expected in forty minutes. Thus encouraged, I went 
 back to the platform and my kitchen chair and dozed 
 uncomfortably. 
 
 Forty minutes passed, fifty, an hour. There was no 
 sign of rescue. I roused myself and looked round. 
 The stationmaster's room was closed, and the post- 
 office ; the entire place was empty save for myself, and 
 dark except for an oil lamp burning dimly on the plat- 
 form. I made noisy researches and uplifted my voice. 
 At last I stumbled upon one of the Arab porters, rolled 
 up asleep in the dust behind the station. Him I shook 
 into consciousness, and sent wrathfully for the station- 
 master. That officer was as polite and benignant as 
 ever. I inquired whether the boat had arrived. He 
 referred the question to Achmet, who transmitted it to 
 Mahmud, who passed it on to Osman and to another 
 man who emerged suddenly from the unknown. They 
 all with one accord declared that no boat had come, or 
 was likely to come. Then I asked desperately : Why 
 on earth did they tell me they had seen it on the way an
 
 114 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 hour ago ? More debate, turning, I believe, on the 
 point whether the previous resolution had genuinely 
 expressed the sense of the meeting, or whether it had 
 not been illegally carried by the casting vote of the 
 chairman. Eventually I had to come to the conclusion 
 that there was no possibility of getting away till the 
 plantation boat should appear about midnight or later, 
 and that I might as well reconcile myself to spending 
 the next six hours of my life at Zeidab station. There 
 was nowhere else to spend the time ; there was no vil- 
 lage, not even a house, visible ; the nearest hotel, as I 
 was aware, was about 200 miles distant. 
 
 I went into the stationmaster's room, made him put 
 a lamp on his rough deal table, got out a book, and pro- 
 ceeded to make the best of things. My hosts were 
 genuinely concerned at the position, and so guiltily 
 apologetic that my ill temper was mollified. The 
 stationmaster and the post-office clerk walked in every 
 few minutes to say: 'You all right, my mister, boat 
 coming n P.M.' Achmet and Mahmud and Osman 
 stole softly in and out on their bare feet, and leaned 
 against the wall, gazing at me, and smiling soothingly 
 when they caught my eye. I got on very well with 
 these good fellows, especially with Achmet. We con- 
 versed chiefly by means of dumb show, and I discovered 
 that he was an Arab of the Jaalin tribe, twenty-two years 
 of age, married, and the father of two sons. He was 
 tall and lithe, with well-cut features, and his smooth 
 walnut-coloured cheeks were scored with cross cuts like
 
 A NOCTURNE 115 
 
 those honourable scars which a duelling German student 
 bears. In Achmet's case they were tribal marks, and 
 they were set off by the pleasantest of smiles and the 
 shiniest of white teeth. He was a notable contrast to 
 his colleague, a soot-black negro, as well as to the pale 
 Coptic clerk, and the little, scrubby, fussy, well-inten- 
 tioned Egyptian stationmaster. 
 
 Presently I was conscious of hunger. I remembered 
 that it was many hours since I had breakfasted in the 
 train beyond the Atbara, and that the comfortable 
 dinner for which I had reserved myself at the plantation 
 house was clearly not for my taking. I made pressing 
 inquiries after food, and was told there was none to be 
 had. But I pointed out to my entertainers that obvi- 
 ously they must eat something, and that a little of that, 
 whatever it was, would do for me. At this the deputa- 
 tion retired and conferred earnestly in the darkness. 
 Presently the Coptic clerk returned and said they were 
 going to kill a hen for me. I remembered now that I 
 had seen some skinny, consumptive fowls scratching 
 feebly about the station yard, and I could not reconcile 
 myself to assimilating one of these martyrs, red from 
 the slaughter. I therefore declined the carnivorous 
 banquet, and suggested that, since there were hens, 
 there were, perhaps, eggs. The proposal was accepted, 
 and my soul leaped within me when the stationmaster 
 proffered tea and bread and butter. Presently those 
 viands appeared. The eggs were the size of marbles, 
 and as hard ; the bread was a leathery brown substance
 
 n6 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 composed of dhura ; the butter, made of buffalo milk, 
 betrayed its origin ; but the tea was grateful to a tired 
 and thirsty drinker, and I have enjoyed some meals 
 less in Pall Mall. Achmet and his friends gazed on me 
 solemnly as I ate, and, I believe, congratulated them- 
 selves with the thought that a violent, and possibly 
 dangerous, lunatic was being fed into comparative calm. 
 
 But their manners were perfect. I was, I felt, much 
 de trop, for I was keeping them awake for hours after the 
 stationmaster would have been asleep on his angarieb of 
 string, with his staff snoring in some corner rolled up in 
 their cotton wrappers. Nobody, however, gave a sign 
 of boredom or hinted at retirement. On the contrary, 
 they remained awake and attentive, and gave me to 
 understand that the presence of a wearied, impatient, 
 bad-tempered Briton was really a distinguished honour, 
 for which they could not be too grateful. Every now 
 and then somebody went down to the waterside to 
 obtain tidings of the felucca, and came back with the 
 entirely apocryphal information that the missing vessel 
 might be sighted at any moment. I had got long past 
 believing them by this time ; but I appreciated the 
 chivalrous courtesy which induced them to keep my 
 spirits up by artistically contrived falsehoods. 
 
 In the end the felucca did arrive, and they put me 
 and my luggage aboard with care, plunging bare legs 
 manfully in the cold, moonlit waters. Zeidab is far 
 beyond the tourist sphere, so nobody asked me for 
 bakshish or seemed even to expect it. The station-
 
 A NOCTURNE 117 
 
 master was with difficulty prevailed upon to accept pay- 
 ment for the tea and marmoreal eggs, and Achmet and 
 his friends received their douceurs with the gentlemanly 
 unconsciousness of a well-bred English butler after a 
 country-house party. We shook hands warmly all 
 round, and they stood long and looked after me as we 
 floated slowly into the darkness. 
 
 My relations with Zeidab station were not quite 
 finished. After two interesting days on the estate I 
 had to catch the train for my return journey from the 
 same place. Now the express from Khartum for Egypt 
 passes Zeidab at 5 A.M. To start at three in the morn- 
 ing is uncomfortable anywhere ; and my hosts told me 
 that the better way was to leave the previous night, 
 cross the river, set up a camp-bed on the east bank near 
 the station, and sleep there till the train came. Even so 
 was it done. After dinner I was put into the felucca 
 again, with my belongings and my friend's Indian ser- 
 vant to look after me ; the lateen sail was hoisted, and 
 we glided down the silent river. Those who know the 
 Nile only from the decks of the admirable steamers of 
 the Sudan Government and Messrs. Cook, or even from 
 the roof of a fine tourist dahabiyeh, do not drink in the 
 full spirit of voyaging on that immemorial stream. 
 For that you must travel by night, in the high-prowed 
 sailing boat with the bending bamboo mast and the 
 great three-cornered sail, with no electric light and no 
 noisy fellow-passengers. I lay under the boom half 
 asleep, while the Arab boatmen moved softly on bare
 
 ii8 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 feet and spoke together in whispers. There was hardly 
 a sound save the faint sigh of the sail, as it shook in the 
 fluttering wind, and the muffled moan of mast and 
 spars. Like the ship of a dream our bark drifted down 
 the strange river that looks as no other river of this 
 earth looks at night, with its flood of silver bordered by 
 banks of ink and funereal trees. By day the date- 
 palm of the Nile waves a graceful head above a slender 
 stem, tall and stately as a young princess ; at night it is 
 a grim, dark skeleton, with all its tossing fronds frozen 
 into stiff black arms and gaunt pointing fingers. 
 
 Our keel slid softly into the mud, and I was carried by 
 strong brown shoulders ashore. I chose a convenient 
 spot, under a big sycamore tree, and here they spread 
 my camp bedstead and laid on it a fur-lined sleeping 
 bag. It is one of the pleasures of a warm climate that 
 you can enjoy sleeping in the open with only the sky and 
 stars above you. But for those who commonly lie 
 beneath a roof of whitewash, that blue-black ceiling 
 of the tropic night, hung with lamps of gold and silver, 
 may be too splendid for sleep. For myself, I lay long 
 awake and watched the constellations till long past 
 midnight ; and awakened again early, and gazed 
 through my light screen of branches, until the false 
 dawn stole timidly in, robed in pearly grey, and then 
 flushed rose-red, like a bride, to meet the fierce caresses 
 of the sun. Whereupon I looked at my watch, and 
 called loudly to my Indian attendant slumbering under 
 a contiguous bush, bidding him rouse the station people
 
 A NOCTURNE 119 
 
 and make ready to depart. It was well I did so; for, 
 albeit my railway friends had promised to ring a bell 
 when the train left the previous station, half an hour 
 distant, they did as a fact delay that signal until the 
 express was all but upon us. On time, and its divisions, 
 the African intellect is still, for the most part, vague.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 A SUDAN PLANTATION 
 
 THE estate of Zeidab, to which I was inducted after 
 and between the incidents described in the last chapter, 
 proved very well worth visiting. It was here that I 
 made my bow to King Cotton in his North African 
 domains ; a great potentate whose sway extends from 
 this point down the Nile to the Mediterranean, though 
 his seats of power at present are mainly by the lower 
 reaches of the river. But the time may come when he 
 will wax mighty in the Sudan also, and when tens of 
 thousands of black labourers will be pulling the woolly 
 pods from millions of acres of cotton bushes to feed 
 the spindles whirling hungrily under the tall chimneys 
 of Oldham. The British Cotton Growing Association 
 has paid commendable attention to the Sudan : though 
 its first overtures were not very warmly received, and 
 some of its principal promoters were more inclined to 
 throw their weight and influence upon the western, 
 rather than the eastern, side of the African Continent. 
 But there is room for the Sudan as well as Nigeria ; 
 and if the former can produce cotton in large quantities 
 it will not want for markets. Sir William Garstin 
 thinks that at present wheat must be the staple crop, 
 
 1 20
 
 A SUDAN PLANTATION 121 
 
 and that cultivators for some time should devote their 
 main attention to this. But cotton is so much more 
 valuable that if there is water available one cannot 
 doubt that it will be produced in conjunction with, 
 though not to the exclusion of, bread-stuffs. 
 
 There is fine cotton and wheat land all about the 
 Atbara region from Berber upwards, and that part of it 
 near the Nile has a welcome air of fertility and verdure 
 as you come to it after passing through the desert 
 country, whether your approach is made by the north 
 from Wady Haifa or from the east by Port Sudan. 
 Palms and acacias and cactus hedges and fields of that 
 emerald-green clover, which is the Egyptian substitute 
 for grass, greet you as you approach the Nile. The 
 district was well cultivated before the Great Depopula- 
 tion, as the ruined villages and the acres of roofless 
 huts in Berber attested. The capacity of the soil and 
 the scarcity of hands to till it suggested the idea out 
 of which the Zeidab estate has developed. Some nine 
 years ago Mr. Leigh Hunt, an American, came into 
 the Sudan with the ingenious project of taking up a 
 concession of cotton-growing land from the Govern- 
 ment, and importing negroes from the Southern States 
 to work it : conceiving, I suppose, that it would be 
 equally beneficial to the one country to acquire these 
 coloured gentlemen and for the other to get quit of 
 them. We were all on the crest of the Americanisation 
 craze in those years ; the Government jumped at the 
 notion, and the New York millionaire I do not know
 
 122 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 whether Mr. Leigh Hunt came under that description, 
 but at that time all American financiers were millionaires 
 to the excited British imagination obtained his con- 
 cession and set to work. The scheme, however, was 
 not very successful in its original shape. Those who 
 know the American 'buck nigger' best would hardly, 
 I think, desire to see him planted down among a 
 primitive people like that of the Berber province. 
 Very few American citizens came, and those who did 
 were of small use as agriculturists, and were soon sent 
 back again. 
 
 The Zeidab estate changed hands. Mr. Leigh Hunt 
 made over his concession to an association called the 
 Sudan Plantations Syndicate, which has a good deal of 
 London and South African capital invested in it, and 
 an uncommonly shrewd managing director in the 
 person of Mr. D. P. McGillivray, an energetic Scot, 
 with a successful business record behind him in Egypt. 
 The property has succeeded in paying excellent divi- 
 dends already, and it will continue to do so if proper 
 management and hard work can avail. It is, at any 
 rate, a striking object-lesson in the agricultural possi- 
 bilities of this part of the Sudan. The original conces- 
 sion was for an area of no less than 30,000 feddans 
 (Egyptian acres), but the Syndicate when I visited it 
 was only dealing with about 13,000. They have to 
 pay the land tax on all the land they are bringing into 
 cultivation, and they do not see their way to work all 
 their property until their water supply can be increased.
 
 LIEUTENANT-GENERAL Sin FKANCIS REGINALD WINGATK, (5.C.Y.O.
 
 A SUDAN PLANTATION 123 
 
 Here, of course, we are in a rainless district ; the grower 
 is absolutely dependent upon the Nile irrigation. 
 
 Now the Nile rolls past the lands of Zeidab, turbidly 
 rushing up the banks and over them in flood time, and 
 flowing in ample volume during the remainder of the 
 year. But that great store must be tapped sparingly 
 and under due restriction by the riparian tenants. 
 Egypt has the first claim upon the liquid treasure, and 
 will not allow the supply to be attenuated before it 
 reaches her own fields. During the flood there is more 
 water than is wanted, and anybody is free to take as 
 much as he requires. This open time has lasted from 
 the middle of July to the end of January, and in those 
 months, technically of flood, though the flood has gone 
 by well before the end, the Sudan as well as Egypt has 
 unlimited access to the fertilising fluid. Since my visit 
 to Zeidab, the open time has been extended for one 
 month, so that the water may now be drawn from the 
 Nile in unlimited quantities for irrigation purposes 
 till the end of February. This is a very welcome 
 indulgence and greatly appreciated by the cultivators 
 of the dry lands of Upper Egypt, Nubia, and the 
 Sudan. 
 
 After the 'flood' season is over at the end of January 
 (or now February), the farmer is left to the 'perennial' 
 water of the Nile, white water which by this time has 
 lost most of the rich mud brought down from the Abys- 
 sinian hills. This perennial water is carefully guarded 
 lest the amount should run short before the next flood ;
 
 124 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 and for the whole of the immense Sudan there was 
 allotted no more than the quantity sufficient to water a 
 bagatelle of 10,000 feddans. How little this is will be 
 seen from the fact that the Zeidab estate alone was 
 taking 40 per cent, of the total, having 4000 acres under 
 cotton, for which its tenants need, or at least prefer 
 to get, the perennial water. The remainder of their 
 land they must keep under crops which do not require 
 irrigation before the middle of July, and can, therefore, 
 be left to the flood water when it comes down. 
 
 There are other smaller estates in the Berber province, 
 in English or native hands. The patriarch Zubeir 
 Pasha, of whom I have already spoken, was a large 
 landowner here and elsewhere, farming extensively, with 
 a whole staff of agents, sons, sons-in-law, and nephews 
 to help him. But I preferred to visit Zeidab, as being, 
 I believe, the largest concern of the kind in the Sudan, 
 and managed according to all the latest scientific and 
 economical ideas. There was at any rate plenty to see 
 and much to wonder at. Considering that the estate 
 had been taken in hand barely three years before, and 
 had not been in full working order for much more than 
 twelve months, the results attained were remarkable. 
 The place had an air of settled and established pros- 
 perity; one might have supposed oneself in some old 
 plantation in India, or even in Louisiana, rather than in 
 a district which five years earlier was running to waste, 
 and five years before that was a ravaged wilderness. 
 The house in which the managing director lives is a sub-
 
 A SUDAN PLANTATION 125 
 
 stantially built, whitewashed, brick edifice, rather 
 reminding one, with its thick walls, two-storeyed 
 verandahs, and lofty rooms, of those solid bungalows 
 which the old-time merchants used to build in Southern 
 India ; and there was almost a Madras compound of 
 blossoming trees and flower gardens round it. Leading 
 up to the mansion is a whole street of stables, store- 
 houses, residences for the engineer, manager, doctor, 
 surveyor, and other officials, and a nice wide white 
 street, with young trees planted along it. The fellahin 
 and cultivating tenants live all over the estate and 
 about it : some in mud-walled villages built by the 
 Syndicate itself, with as much attention to regularity 
 and sanitation as the conditions allow; some in the 
 half deserted hamlets dotted over this country ; some 
 in tents and thatched huts or tukuls, which they put up 
 themselves in a corner of their field. I went into one 
 of these residences. It was the merest shanty, of 
 sticks and dried palm leaves, with absolutely nothing 
 in it but a few cooking pots ; yet outside were some 
 full bags of the owner's cotton which I was assured were 
 worth not less than 20 as they lay. 
 
 One of the conditions on which the Plantations 
 Syndicate holds the land from the Government is that of 
 providing 3O-inch pumps to draw up the perennial water 
 from the Nile and distribute it over the land by means of 
 a system of canals. On this estate they work at an 
 advantage over some others farther down the river; for 
 their level is low, and it is seldom necessary to lift the
 
 126 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 water more than two or three metres. Lower down, in 
 Upper Egypt, at the great estate of Kom Ombo, near 
 Assuan, I saw a magnificent pumping apparatus, which 
 is raising water nearly sixty feet, and pouring it into 
 a huge network of watercourses, including one great 
 artificial stream some thirty miles long. It is a wonder- 
 ful piece of engineering and agricultural science, but it 
 involves, of course, a vast expenditure, and it could 
 only be undertaken by great capitalists, able to sink 
 their money and wait for the return. At Zeidab, 
 however, it seems they did not have so long to wait. 
 They have got their irrigation system complete, one 
 main channel intersecting the property at the highest 
 level, and dropping its waters into a series of secondary 
 and third-rate canals, which again are drawn off into 
 the numerous minor runlets and rills that pass the 
 vivifying fluid into every farm and through every field. 
 The cotton crop was mostly over at the time of my 
 visit ; the barns were full of the cotton wool, ready to 
 be carried across to the railway, and sent down to Port 
 Sudan. The young wheat was well forward, and very 
 beautiful it looked, rippling into waves of green over the 
 level meadows. I am not an agricultural expert, but 
 I was assured by a visitor who is, that for its stage and 
 growth this wheat was as good in quality as any he 
 had seen anywhere. The cotton is not, I believe, 
 quite up to the standard of the best grown in Lower 
 Egypt no cotton in the world is equal to that ; but 
 it does not fall so very far behind, and enables the
 
 A SUDAN PLANTATION 127 
 
 Syndicate and its tenants to sell at a price which gives 
 a very fair return on their outlay. 
 
 The Syndicate farms some of the land itself and sells 
 or lets the rest; and maintains the pumping-station 
 and keeps the irrigation system in order and under 
 proper control both for its own farms and those of the 
 tenants. It is a hard, healthy, energetic out-of-door 
 life for the handful of young Englishmen and young 
 Scotsmen who run this little colony, where already 
 there are some thousands of people living. Tenants 
 are coming in to take up the land ; Arabs and Sudanese 
 from the Berber district and Dongola, fellahin from 
 Nubia, a few shrewd Greeks and others from Lower 
 Egypt, even an Englishman or two, who see the possi- 
 bility of making money in the new country. 
 
 Adult male labour was scarce in the locality; as you 
 went through the villages you saw many women and 
 children and few men. For the people here are of the 
 same race as my friend Achmet of Zeidab station ; they 
 are Jaalin Arabs, and the Jaalins were the victims of the 
 Mahdist fury at its worst and bloodiest, when it was just 
 tottering to its fall. The Jaalins were a high-spirited 
 and rather haughty tribe, who thought much of their 
 pure Arab descent, of the prowess of their men in old 
 frontier wars, and the honour of their women. They 
 despised the swarthy semi-negro dervishes from the 
 South, and submitted to the Mahdist rule with much 
 impatience. In June 1897, when the tramp of the 
 Anglo-Egyptian battalions was heard beyond Dongola,
 
 128 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 and the desert railway was pushing on, the Jaalins re- 
 volted against the Omdurman tyranny. Mahmud, the 
 Khalifa's fighting Emir, swept down upon them with a 
 horde of dervish spears and rifles. The Jaalins, com- 
 pletely outnumbered, retired into Metemmeh, fortified 
 the place, and held it till all their ammunition was ex- 
 hausted. Then the Mahdists broke in, and an orgie of 
 brutal massacre and mutilation ensued. Two thou- 
 sand of the fighting men were butchered as they stood ; 
 others had their feet or hands cut off. The chief, 
 Abdullah, was taken to Omdurman, and left, walled 
 up to the chin, till he died of hunger. The dervishes 
 devastated the whole Jaalin country, killing, plundering, 
 and maiming. You met few middle-aged men in the 
 Jaalin villages ; only young men, who were boys eleven 
 years before, veterans who were old even then, and 
 women and children. When you remember how the 
 brave Jaalins were treated by the Khalifa's savages, 
 you have a certain satisfaction in the thought that if 
 we were just too late to save them, we were able to 
 avenge them ; and you feel that among the swaths of 
 dead lying on the field of Kerreri a year later there must 
 have been a good many who deserved their fate. 
 
 These Jaalins are among the most attractive of all 
 the Sudan peoples good-looking, good-natured, digni- 
 fied, humorous, and thoroughly likeable. On the first 
 evening of my stay at Zeidab we went for a drive along 
 the wide, sandy, road which runs through the estate 
 northward to Khartum. It was made by Kitchener's
 
 A SUDAN PLANTATION 129 
 
 army in '98, and the bones of the oxen killed for the 
 bivouac fires were still whitening by the wayside. As 
 we scuttled along behind two fiery little Abyssinian 
 mules, through meadows dotted with clumps of trees, 
 which in the gathering gloom looked park-like and 
 English, we met an upstanding Jaalin driving a fine 
 young bull. I asked my companion to question this 
 native for my instruction. The Arab, with a broad 
 grin and a roar of hilarious recognition, explained that 
 he was the man who very nearly, but not quite, beat my 
 friend at putting the stone in some sports which had 
 been got up on the estate in the summer. The Jaalin 
 children are as delightful as they are numerous. When 
 I went into one of the villages with my camera a whole 
 covey of them tumbled out of one of the huts, clamoured 
 about me, grouped themselves to be photographed, and 
 chattered and pushed at one another like young 
 sparrows. The boys were naked, brown, shiny, laugh- 
 ing little fellows, as impudent and knowing as London 
 gutter-children ; there were one or two small maidens, 
 with bead necklaces and rudimentary skirts, much more 
 demure and composed than the lads, whom they 
 ordered about rather haughtily, even as Gwendoline 
 commands Billy in Hoxton. There was also a baby, 
 who put his fingers into his eyes and wept aloud when 
 he saw me directing a strange implement upon him ; 
 and was comforted by his elder sister and admonished 
 into silence, and, I have no doubt, informed that if 
 he failed to be good directly the ugly man would have
 
 130 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 him. The young Arabs and I made so much noise 
 that the mother of some of them (she was surely too 
 young to own the whole brood) came to the door of 
 her hut. This daughter of the Jaalins sustained the 
 tribal reputation for good looks. She was tall and 
 straight, with large eyes that shone like black gems 
 in the clear brown oval of her face. In drapery of dark 
 blue, with one shapely, silver-ringed, arm thrown up 
 above her head to shield her from the smiting sun, she 
 stood framed in the doorway regarding our doings with 
 grave and gracious indulgence. Before this noble 
 type of antique, primitive, womanhood one felt some- 
 how ultra-modern, crude, vulgar. 
 
 'You had better not photograph herj said one of my 
 companions. 'These Jaalin women are particular.' I 
 had no such intention. I should as soon have thought 
 of taking a snapshot at the Duchess when she stands at 
 the head of the staircase to receive her guests in her own 
 house. No 'great lady' of our West could have been 
 more calmly dignified than this Arab woman of the 
 people. Will her children and her children's children 
 be like her, when they have been sent to our schools, 
 and acquired a taste for cheap finery, and learnt to 
 'hustle,' and grown fidgety and self-conscious ? Shall 
 we end by turning them into bad imitations of the 
 neurotic town-bred boys and girls who crowd our picture 
 shows ? We have saved them from the spears of the 
 savages and the stripes of the pashas ; but to what ul- 
 timate destiny are all these Eastern folks tending whom
 
 A SUDAN PLANTATION 131 
 
 Europe has snatched into its swirl of 'progress' and 
 unseeing change ? Who shall say ? Well, at least it 
 is something to have redeemed them from slavery 
 and slaughter, to have given them a breathing-space 
 before the New Era sweeps them along its tumultu- 
 ous ways.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 LAND AND WATER 
 
 IN my visit to the Zeidab plantation something of the 
 importance of the irrigation question, which is the 
 question of questions for Egypt at all times, was borne 
 in upon me. As you descend the course of the Nile you 
 see this more and more at each stage, until the Delta 
 itself is reached. And if you have come from the Sudan, 
 you are also in a position to grasp the great cardinal 
 truth that the key to the water-gates of Egypt is in this 
 territory. Whoso controls the Sudan has the power to 
 affect intimately the vital destinies of Egypt, to make it 
 rich and prosperous, or to reduce it to scarcity and, 
 under certain conditions, to starvation. All this on 
 account of the geography and the hydrography of the 
 Nile, which is the most wonderful river in the world, 
 regulated by a natural mechanism unequalled in its 
 delicacy and grandeur. And the power-sources and 
 main working stations of this magnificent machinery are 
 in the Sudan. Egypt lives on and by the results. 
 
 Four hundred and fifty years B.C. Herodotus said that 
 Egypt was the Nile and the Nile was Egypt. Twenty- 
 three centuries later a great English engineer put the 
 same thought into different words. 'Egypt,' says Sir 
 
 132
 
 LAND AND WATER 133 
 
 William Willcocks, 'is nothing more than the deposit 
 left by the Nile in flood.' The wider part of the 
 country where it spreads out into the fan-like Delta 
 has been made by the river itself as it disgorged the 
 silt from its two mouths and pushed back the sea. 
 The remainder is a ribbon of cultivation between the 
 deserts, a ribbon kept green by the mud and waters of 
 the Nile. Cut off this supply for a single season and 
 the entire population of Egypt would be in the grip of 
 famine; curtail it to any serious extent for a very few 
 years, and the strip of cultivation would disappear, and 
 the Arabian desert and the Sahara would come down 
 everywhere, as they do even now in places, to both 
 banks of the river. For the most fertile agricultural 
 region of the earth is only redeemed from being itself 
 barren desert by the gifts of the Nile, and the skill, 
 more or less in different ages, by which the bounty of 
 the great stream is used. 
 
 The phenomena connected with the Nile inundation 
 have been known and utilised in Egypt since the 
 beginning of recorded history. For seven thousand 
 years at least men have been watching and noting the 
 flow and fall of the water and ripening their crops by 
 its fertilising deposit. King Mcnes is said by tradition 
 to have begun the system of basin irrigation, and he is 
 supposed to have lived about B.C. 440x3. Ever since 
 (and probably before) Egypt has not only lived on the 
 Nile flood, but has endeavoured, with more or less 
 success, to regulate, economise, and direct it. No river
 
 134 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 has been so closely studied as the Nile, or handled with 
 such consummate mastery and resourcefulness. The 
 greater Pharaohs of the middle dynasties, the Ptolemies, 
 the Romans, brought to bear upon its problems an 
 engineering capacity which we can envy. Of the 
 behaviour of the Nile, when it emerged below the Second 
 Cataract and through all its course downwards to the 
 sea, they knew as much as could be learned by the 
 most careful observation. But the remoter causes 
 were still hidden from them. It is only since a civilised 
 government has been in power along the whole of the 
 upper waters, and since the entire length of the river 
 has been traced to its source, that we can in part 
 account for that majestic periodicity, and those occa- 
 sional variations, which have amazed and bewildered 
 so many generations. Only since Britain has been at 
 work in the Sudan have these age-long problems come 
 near solution : thanks to the efforts of men like Sir 
 Colin Scott-Moncrieff, Sir William Garstin, Sir William 
 Willcocks, Mr. Webb, and the other great engineers 
 and administrators of the Egyptian Public Works 
 Department. 
 
 The Nile, as we now know, has its true source in the 
 Victoria Nyanza, that vast natural reservoir kept full 
 by drenching equatorial rains and the rivers of the 
 Central African highlands. It plunges over the Ripon 
 Falls into its second reservoir, Lake Albert, and there- 
 after, as the White Nile, flows steadily northward, 
 leaving Uganda to pass into the Sudan. In these days
 
 LAND AND WATER 135 
 
 we may almost claim the Nile as a British waterway. 
 In no part of its course of 3700 miles does it touch 
 territory which is not British or under British influence. 
 Seventy miles after leaving Lado, the Gazell river runs, 
 or rather crawls, into the main stream, which here 
 breaks up into many channels, niters wide over the 
 country in spongy swamps, and winds and creeps 
 deviously through beds of tangled vegetation, the fa- 
 mous Sudd barrier. A little farther north the White 
 Nile spreads into Lake No, a shallow lagoon ; then the 
 Sobat river joins it, and it runs in a broad, equable 
 stream, with little fall, to Khartum, where its turbulent 
 partner, the Blue Nile, flings itself into its placid bosom 
 after a downward rush from the alpine heights of 
 Abyssinia. It is from this impetuous marriage that 
 the land of Egypt is born. For the Blue Nile, scouring 
 the volcanic detritus from the mountains, brings the 
 rich red water that leaves the fertilising deposit. It 
 is helped by its younger brother, the Atbara, also of 
 Abyssinian descent, which joins the family two hundred 
 miles farther north. About 65 per cent, of the flood 
 water that passes the great dam at Assuan comes from 
 the Blue Nile. 
 
 This Blue Nile, fed by the rains and melting snows, 
 begins to rise early in June; and is in full tide, together 
 with the Atbara, in the latter part of August. The 
 river continues to rise through Egypt till the middle of 
 September, when it remains stationary for a fortnight or 
 three weeks. Then a fresh rise occurs in October, and
 
 136 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 the Nile is at its height, and then it gradually sinks 
 back. The flood season is technically over at the end 
 of January, by which time most of the 'red' water has 
 gone by. Through the spring the river continues to 
 fall, and is at its lowest in the early summer, when the 
 flood comes down again to replenish it. And so, 
 century after century, the stately movement has gone 
 on ; and century after century the Egyptian peasant 
 has waited for the spreading of the waters to bring life 
 to his arid fields. 
 
 But the process, though perpetual, is not constant. 
 The rise and fall vary from year to year; and this 
 variation is all-important for Egypt, and has been, and 
 always must be, the subject of the most anxious solici- 
 tude and calculation. Shakespeare, who knew every- 
 thing, knew this : 
 
 They take the flow o' the Nile 
 By certain scales i' the Pyramids ; they know 
 By the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth 
 Or foison follow. The higher Nilus swells 
 The more it promises : as it ebbs, the seedsman 
 Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, 
 And shortly comes to harvest. 
 
 There is an almost technical accuracy in this language. 
 If the Nile rises twenty feet or less there will be famine 
 in Egypt, and great scarcity if the rise is no more than 
 twenty-three feet. A twenty-five feet rise is still in- 
 sufficient for the higher levels, whereas anything be- 
 tween that figure and about twenty-six and a half feet
 
 LAND AND WATER 137 
 
 will give satisfactory irrigation everywhere. A rise 
 much beyond this level is a dire misfortune. It means 
 the bursting of dykes and dams, the flooding of the 
 whole country and many villages, the destruction of 
 houses and cattle, and often much loss of life. No 
 wonder the water gauges have been anxiously watched. 
 There are no objects in Egypt to my thinking much 
 more interesting than the Nilometers, the graduated 
 scales cut on stones or natural rocks on the river banks, 
 by which, for thousands of years, the rise of the water 
 has been measured and by which it is still measured 
 to-day. 
 
 For seventy centuries, more or less, they have been 
 watching the Nile flow ; it is only in our own times that 
 it has become possible to control it, and the control will 
 grow more stringent year by year as we lay hands more 
 firmly on the Sudan. For seven thousand years Egypt 
 lived and was born anew each season by the system of 
 basin irrigation. When the flood came down in the 
 late summer and autumn it was allowed to flow over or 
 through the banks into basins, enclosed by dykes, and 
 communicating with each other and the Nile by a sys- 
 tem of canals. The water, highly charged with the 
 fertilising deposit, stood on the land for a month or 
 six weeks ; then it was allowed to drain back into its 
 parent stream, leaving behind it the rich brown mud 
 on which the fellah cast his seed. No ploughing was 
 needed ; no manuring, for the deposit itself was suffi- 
 cient. Under the old native dynasties, and the Greeks,
 
 138 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 and the Romans, and the Caliphs, the whole country 
 was cultivated by this system, and it supported ten or 
 twelve, or, as some hold, twenty millions of people. 
 Only one crop a year could be grown ; but it was that 
 bounteous crop of wheat, varied by lentils, clover, and 
 maize, which made Egypt the granary of the ancient 
 world. 
 
 But the basin system required good government to 
 police the dykes and watercourses, and keep the river 
 banks in repair. Under the Turks and Mamluks it 
 gradually fell into disorder. By the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century large areas had been abandoned, 
 and had gone back to salt and sand ; and the population 
 of Egypt had dwindled down to a couple of millions. 
 Then came Mehemet Ali, the Albanian soldier of fortune, 
 who was the true founder of modern Egypt. That 
 ruthless but highly capable despot conceived the idea 
 of supplementing the immemorial cereal harvests of 
 Egypt by the more profitable cotton plant. For cotton 
 the annual inundation is not sufficient ; the crop re- 
 quires water at other seasons than that of the flood. 
 Mehemet Ali's engineers began constructing broad and 
 deep canals, which would hold the Nile water through 
 the year, and allow it to be poured over the land when 
 wanted. This is the system of perennial irrigation, 
 inchoate and rudimentary till the British occupation, 
 brought to full development and perfection during the 
 past twenty years. It is the greatest of all the tasks 
 which Englishmen have accomplished in Egypt. The
 
 LAND AND WATER 139 
 
 engineers of the Public Works Department have been 
 busy converting the basin areas into those of perennial 
 irrigation, cleaning out and deepening the old canals, 
 and threading new ones through tracts which have 
 gone back to desert or have never yet been reclaimed. 
 The basins exist no longer in Lower Egypt, and they are 
 fast being superseded in the upper part of the country. 
 One result is that the land of Egypt has been enlarged 
 by tens of thousands of acres ; and the extension will 
 continue. The new Egypt is, to a great extent, the 
 creation of the hydraulic engineer; and if that useful 
 person can only be provided with sufficient water 
 he can go on adding fresh accessions of territory. It is 
 a question not of land, but of water. The land is there 
 in practically unlimited quantities. The water is not 
 unlimited ; and the problem is so to deal with it that 
 the largest possible proportion shall be spread over the 
 soil when the soil needs it, instead of draining away 
 wastefully into the sea. The perennial canals, com- 
 bined with the great dams and weirs, which store up 
 the fluid when the Nile is high and allow it to run down 
 gradually when the stream is low, have gone far to 
 furnish the solution. They have enabled the winter 
 crops of wheat, barley, beans, lentils, and vetches to be 
 followed by summer crops of the far more valuable 
 sugar-cane and cotton. 
 
 Thus not only has the area of cultivable Egypt been 
 extended, but its value has been increased. Rents have 
 more than doubled in the last dozen years, and in some
 
 I 4 o EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 cases they have trebled and quadrupled. Many acres 
 of land, which fifteen years ago was barely worth 5 
 an acre, changed hands in the boom that preceded the 
 collapse of 1907 at 30, 40, 50, and upwards. If the 
 gold-mines of the Rand had been discovered under the 
 soil of Egypt they would scarcely have added more to 
 her wealth than the labours of a handful of British 
 engineers and officials since the great schemes of Sir 
 William Garstin, Sir William Willcocks, and Sir 
 Benjamin Baker were developed. The capital value 
 of the country has been raised by tens of millions, and 
 once more it is able to support a population not far be- 
 low that which inhabited it in the palmiest days of the 
 Pharaohs. The dream of Mehemet Ali has been ful- 
 filled : Egypt is helping to feed the cotton mills of the 
 world.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 
 
 THE irrigation of Egypt is a vast and complicated 
 business. In some respects it is the largest enterprise 
 undertaken by man upon the surface of the globe ; for 
 when it is completed, as it will be sometime by the 
 head-works at Lake Victoria and Lake Albert, it will 
 mean that over a length of 4000 miles human agency is 
 at work, adapting and modifying the forces of Nature 
 to serve its own ends and minister to its needs. 
 
 The problem of the Nile has become more complex 
 in recent years since the old basin irrigation has been 
 superseded. When Egypt was mainly a corn producer 
 this system answered its purpose admirably. For the 
 country then lived on the Nile flood, and the energies of 
 its people were mainly devoted to utilising the flow to 
 the utmost and restraining it within bounds when it ran 
 to excess. Beyond that it could not go. If the rise was 
 insufficient in any year, Egypt for that year suffered and 
 starved ; if the rise was too great the corvee of the 
 peasants was embodied, and all hands went to the dykes 
 to raise and strengthen them. The superfluous tide, 
 doing much or little mischief, as the case might be, 
 coursed away eventually to the sea. It could not be 
 
 HI!
 
 142 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 stored for the next year, which might, perhaps, turn 
 out to be one of scarcity. 
 
 With Mehemet Ali the system of perennial irrigation 
 came in. Deep canals were dug to hold the water 
 through the summer, in order that the cotton and sugar- 
 cane plantations might be kept moist when the flood 
 had gone by. It became eminently desirable to regu- 
 late the stream of the river, so as to have a supply 
 available at all times, and so that the deficiency of one 
 period might be made good out of the superfluity of 
 another. Hence the project of holding up the Nile 
 water by means of dams and barrages, and letting it 
 down gradually upon the land when needed. Seventy 
 years ago Mougel Bey, a French engineer in the service 
 of the great Viceroy, designed the barrage fifteen miles 
 north of Cairo, with the object of controlling the 
 Nile at the Delta bifurcation, and diverting the flow of 
 the Rosetta and Damietta branches into canals by 
 which all Lower Egypt could be irrigated. Mougel 
 suffered the fate of those who serve Oriental despots : 
 he fell out of favour, he was not allowed to complete his 
 great work, and he himself, after the British occupation, 
 was found living in extreme old age and dire poverty at 
 Alexandria. The barrage was nominally finished, 
 after Mougel's fall, by corvee and military labour ; but 
 its workmanship was hopelessly bad, its plan was 
 defective, and it was quite incapable of being used. It 
 lay rotting and rusting, till the English came and 
 brought into Egypt skilled engineers, trained in the
 
 THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 143 
 
 Indian school of irrigation. Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff 
 and his assistants took the weir in hand, repaired and 
 enlarged it, fortified it with solid masonry and concrete, 
 and made it capable of holding up thirteen feet of Nile 
 flood. Three main canals were constructed to draw off 
 the water and spread it over the Delta provinces. The 
 works have been paid for many times over already by 
 the increased value they have given to the lands of 
 Lower Egypt and the rise in the tax which the Govern- 
 ment is able to levy upon them. 
 
 Before this restoration was completed it had become 
 clear that the Nile water must be impounded and stored 
 much higher up, if the whole of Upper as well as Lower 
 Egypt was to be treated under the perennial canal 
 system, and made suitable for the cultivation of sugar- 
 cane and cotton as well as cereal crops. In 1890 Sir 
 Colin Scott-Moncrieff appointed a commission, with Sir 
 William Willcocks as its president, to study the ques- 
 tion of establishing a great reservoir on the Nile. The 
 commissioners reported in favour of damming the 
 river at the First Cataract, just above Assuan ; and a 
 later international commission, composed of Sir Benja- 
 min Baker and a French and Italian colleague, sent in a 
 recommendation to the same effect. It was accordingly 
 decided to build barrages at Assiut and Esneh to regu- 
 late the flow, and to create an enormous reservoir or lake 
 by a gigantic dam of masonry above the Assuan Cata- 
 ract. The firm of Aird & Co. agreed to construct this for 
 about two millions sterling. Egypt was too poor, or
 
 144 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 rather too much tied up by financial obligations, to 
 find this large amount of capital at once ; but Sir 
 Ernest Cassel paid the contractors as the work went on, 
 and received bonds from the Egyptian Government 
 which have to be redeemed by sixty half-yearly pay- 
 ments of 78,613. The Assuan dam and the Assiut 
 barrage and their subsidiary works had cost about 6| 
 millions up to the end of 1908 ; and Sir William Garstin 
 estimated that as a result the annual rental value of 
 lands in Middle Egypt had increased by 2,637,000 
 and their sale value by 26,570,000. So this great 
 engineering triumph may be said to have repaid its 
 cost already. 
 
 But the original designs of Garstin, Willcocks, and 
 Baker had to be modified by a curious outbreak of 
 aesthetic sentimentalism. The dam, as projected, 
 would have held up water enough to cause the complete 
 submersion of the beautiful temples at Philse, with their 
 pylons and courts and colonnades. The archaeological 
 and antiquarian societies of Europe were inflamed at the 
 thought of this sacrifice ; and there was a loud outcry 
 set up by some who knew and valued these monuments, 
 and re-echoed by many who till that time had never 
 heard of them. Some of the engineers proposed that 
 the difficulty should be met by raising the temples on 
 piles clear above the highest level of the reservoir, 
 while others suggested that they should be removed 
 bodily and rebuilt elsewhere. Finally, a compromise 
 was adopted. The dam, originally planned to be 100
 
 THE B.RIDLE OF THE FLOOD 145 
 
 feet high and to keep back 85 milliards of cubic feet of 
 water, was lowered by 26 feet, and it was nominally 
 capable of holding up only 35 milliards of cubic feet, 
 though, as Sir William Willcocks contends, it was able 
 to resist the pressure of double that quantity. The 
 temples were not drowned out ; but every year at high 
 Nile they were converted into islands, with their base- 
 ments and the lower parts of their columns flooded. 
 The engineers maintain that the process has done them 
 more good than harm ; for the buildings, which were 
 fast falling into decay, have been propped and under- 
 pinned, and their annual washing is even said to bind 
 and consolidate their foundations. The sentimental 
 agitation seems to me to have been honoured with much 
 more attention than it deserved. I yield to nobody in 
 regard for the monuments of the past, and would not 
 needlessly disturb a single stone that has been hewn 
 by the hands of the dead ; but, after all, we are con- 
 cerned with the present, and we cannot sacrifice the 
 interests of the millions of Egyptians, living and to 
 come, in order that a few genuine students and a con- 
 siderable number of idle tourists may gaze unimpeded 
 at some interesting, though not supremely important, 
 examples of Ptolemaic art. 
 
 In any case the lover of the aesthetic has his compen- 
 sation in the charm of an imposing and significant con- 
 trast. The temples rise like islands out of the broad 
 sheet of water, the huge artificial lake into which this 
 reach of the Nile has been converted by the dam.
 
 146 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 The stone colonnades, looking more Greek than Egyp- 
 tian in their lightness and grace, are beautiful in their 
 way ; but there is a beauty of another kind, the beauty 
 of stern majesty and purposeful strength, in the mighty 
 bar of granite that lies athwart the river and curbs its 
 pace or holds the tremendous energy of its impact in 
 suspense. When I visited it some of the sluice gates 
 were open, and from the vast white face of the wall of 
 stone there roared a dozen cataracts of sparkling green, 
 which seethed into foamy billows, and danced into 
 snowflakes of spray among the rocks below the fall. It 
 is a thundering head of water, when they let it go, that 
 will rattle ton-weight boulders round like pebbles of 
 the sea-beach. But with the pull of a few levers in 
 the power-house they can close all the gates ; and then 
 the three-thousand-mile flow of the river is arrested, 
 and it laps peacefully against the barrier, a wide and 
 tranquil pool. If the dam gave, there is water enough 
 in that huge reservoir to drown all Egypt, and whirl 
 its cities and villages away like straws. But Sir 
 Benjamin Baker's massive rampart, ribbed upon the 
 solid rock of the river bottom, will hold for ages ; so, 
 at least, the engineers contend, despite the fact that 
 some eminent Cambridge mathematicians have worked 
 out calculations intended to prove that this dam, and 
 all other dams and weirs and similar works, have been 
 constructed on faulty data. But one is inclined to 
 think that the engineers know their business better 
 than the professors.
 
 THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 147 
 
 The Assuan Dam was begun in the summer of 1898 
 and finished in June 1902. As then left it was a mile 
 and a quarter long, 125 feet high at its deepest part, 81 
 feet wide at the bottom, and 23 feet at the top wide 
 enough for a good roadway and a line of rails for trolleys. 
 Between the water level above and below the dam there 
 was a difference of 67 feet. There are 180 sluice gates, 
 and when they are all open they will let the flood through 
 at the rate of half a million cubic feet per second. The 
 reservoir above, or rather the Nile lake a hundred miles 
 long, would store 1300 million cubic yards of water, 
 which sounds a perfectly appalling quantity. While 
 the dam was being made it was of course necessary to 
 keep the Nile navigation open, and a canal, sufficient 
 for the passage of large boats, was cut through the rocky 
 hill on the west bank of the Nile, the hill of living granite 
 from which the great shafts and monoliths were hewn for 
 the temples of Karnak and Thebes. One such may be 
 seen only half torn from its bed, defined by the double 
 tier of square holes mortised in the face of the cliff. 
 Wooden wedges were to be driven into these slots, and 
 water poured upon them till they swelled and the 
 rock cracked under the strain. Our engineers, who cut 
 and squared and lifted their own masonry with hardened 
 steel chisels and steam machinery, were amazed at this 
 evidence of laborious, persistent, indomitable effort. 
 In this wise were the mammoth temples builded, the 
 mighty columns and pylons quarried, carried, shaped, 
 set up, by master-workmen who had perhaps only tools
 
 148 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 of bronze at their command, and ropes, and beams, 
 and wooden levers, and thousands of straining oxen, 
 and tens of thousands of patient human hands. But 
 at Assuan the busy hands were suddenly stilled, per- 
 haps by war, or dynastic revolution, or a barbarian 
 raid, or it may be the bankruptcy of the contractors ; 
 the tools were thrown down, the workers fled, the 
 work was left unfinished as we see it, with the cuts 
 and borings in the rock as clean and sharp as though 
 they were made yesterday instead of forty centuries ago. 
 Egypt, to revert to a former statement, is the creation 
 of the irrigationist, whether he works with the immemo- 
 rial bucket and lever, unchanged on the Nile bank 
 to-day since that of the earliest dynasties, or whether 
 he uses the scarcely less ancient water-wheel, the 
 hand pump, or the perennial canal. By the completion 
 of the Delta barrage, the construction of the new water- 
 courses and the storage of the waters in the Assuan 
 reservoir, British engineers since the Occupation began 
 have added new territory to the country. But the 
 entire cultivable area is not yet provided for. All the 
 available water is at present used profitably, and in 
 the summer time, when the Nile is low, hardly a drop 
 trickles away to the sea without having done its duty 
 first upon the fields. It was found that the milliards 
 of cubic feet of water, held up in the great reservoir, 
 were still insufficient to moisten all the land which 
 might be brought into cultivation. For some years 
 to come it will be the task of our engineers to devise
 
 THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 149 
 
 measures for increasing the supply. Since 1907 they 
 have been engaged in repairing, in part, the mistake 
 made in modifying Sir William Willcocks' original 
 design in deference to the sentimental outcry about 
 Philae. The dam has been raised by five metres, and 
 if this involves a further submersion of the temples 
 it has more than doubled the capacity of the reservoir. 
 The additions were completed in December 1912. 
 When I visited the dam the extension was in course 
 of construction, and the resident engineer showed me 
 round the works, and explained the ingenious devices 
 by which a mass of new masonry had to be riveted 
 to the existing structure so as to render it capable of 
 supporting the additional strain. The increase of 
 storage capacity will supply the perennial canals for 
 some years ; but eventually even that addition will be 
 inadequate and more water will be wanted. 
 
 Where is it to come from ? The engineers answer 
 that question by turning to the 'Anglo-Egyptian 
 Sudan,' and then the full value of that dominion be- 
 comes apparent. For Sir William Garstin and his 
 coadjutors have been considering several audacious 
 schemes for increasing the quantity of water brought 
 down to the cataracts by the Nile, and it is only on its 
 upper courses through the Sudan that the river can be 
 dealt with in this fashion. The volume of the great 
 stream has already been frittered away and diminished 
 long before it touches the Egyptian border. More 
 than half the amount brought down from the equatorial
 
 150 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 lakes is wasted in the swamps and marshes of the Sudd 
 region. Since the collapse of the Mahdist rule British 
 officers have been actively at work here. In the dock- 
 yard at Khartum I saw the gunboats, equipped with 
 big steel saws, which are used for shearing through 
 the tangle of floating weed and reed and papyrus that 
 obstructed, and almost blocked, the flow of the White 
 Nile. The Sudd itself is not wasted : a German in- 
 ventor has discovered a method of converting the 
 dried blocks of vegetable debris into fuel, and a com- 
 pany is at work in the Sudan for carrying out the pro- 
 cess. The Sudd had grown so dense, during the years 
 of neglect under the Mahdist and the later Egyptian 
 rule, that all communication with the upper waters 
 of the Nile was cut off. To the immeasurable benefit of 
 Egypt, the British occupation restored it. The true 
 bed of the river had in fact disappeared; but in 1900 
 Colonel Peake forced a passage through a series of 
 shallow lakes for 172 miles. Next year another 147 
 miles of fairway were reclaimed, and in 1903-4 the 
 whole length of the Nile was laid open. Now, though 
 still with incessant labour and vigilance, a passage 
 is kept clear, so that the river is navigable as far as 
 Gondokoro, and the volume of water brought down 
 has largely increased. The sportsmen and pleasure 
 parties, who get glimpses of Equatorial Africa from 
 the decks of the Government steamers, should give a 
 thought to the resourceful energy which has enabled 
 them to enjoy this comfortable journey.
 
 THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 151 
 
 But, though the Sudd is kept down, the White Nile 
 still soaks its way through swamp and lagoon for 
 nearly 400 miles, and the waste by absorption and 
 evaporation is enormous. By closing all the outlets 
 into the marshes, and widening and deepening the 
 channel, much of this loss will be prevented. Sir 
 William Garstin has even suggested a bolder project 
 nothing less than that of diverting the course of the 
 river, so as to make it avoid the swamp region alto- 
 gether, and turning it into a new straight channel 
 200 miles long. Long before that ambitious enterprise 
 is attempted it is probable that another Assuan dam 
 will be erected south of Khartum for the irrigation of 
 the whole great tract of country above the First Cata- 
 ract. Even more fascinating is the proposal, which 
 will be carried into effect some day, for building a 
 dam to regulate the discharge from the outlet of Albert 
 Nyanza, and so to convert that lake and Victoria 
 Nyanza into colossal storage reservoirs. At the great 
 lakes, says Sir William Willcocks, 'with the sweep of a 
 giant's hand,' the whole Nile system can be handled 
 and controlled. Lake Victoria, adds the same author- 
 ity, is the true key of the Nile, and whoever holds it 
 has the destinies of Egypt in the hollow of his hand. 
 'Modern Egypt, with its cotton and sugar-cane crops, 
 depending on the summer supply of the river, and its 
 new perennial canals, is absolutely dependent on the 
 equatorial lakes over whose outlets flies the flag of 
 Great Britain.' That is a conclusive answer, if there
 
 152 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 were no other, to the people who talk lightly of ter- 
 minating the connection between England and the 
 Nile Valley. England cannot withdraw from the 
 scene, if only because the immense potential resources 
 of the North African river basin cannot be developed 
 to their highest capacity without her direction and 
 control.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE CLIENTS OF COOK 
 
 AT Assuan one finds oneself whirled tumultuously into 
 the full stream of Egyptian pleasure-seekers. Some 
 go by the Nile boat up to the temples of Abu Simbel 
 and the Second Cataract at Wady Haifa ; a few take 
 the train onwards as far as Khartum. But the ma- 
 jority are content to bring their southward journey 
 to a close at Assuan. They sentimentalise over the 
 submerged temples at Philae and stare at the great 
 dam ; the most of them spend a few days, or it may be 
 weeks, sunning themselves on donkey-back or camel- 
 back in the desert, boating on the Nile, wandering over 
 Elephantine Island, or surveying that place of many 
 memories from the terraces of the hotels. 
 
 One has many temptations to linger and 'fleet the 
 time pleasantly.' From my window at the Cataract I 
 enjoyed a prospect which was a never-ending delight 
 and interest. To watch the changing colours of the 
 great river at my feet might of itself have been an occu- 
 pation for an idle man's day. In the morning, before 
 the sun had warmed it into translucency, it lay before 
 one a sheet of oily brown ; it turned to a clear green- 
 grey at midday, and settled into steely white under
 
 154 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 the cold luminosity of the moon. Before evening the 
 tourists, thirsty for tea after the jaunts of the day, 
 would assemble on the terrace to watch the tremendous 
 pageant of the sunset. It is a thing distinctive and 
 unique, that dying of the daylight in Upper Egypt, 
 because all the colours of the changing sky are trans- 
 mitted by the broad refracting mirror of the Nile. 
 Fantastic and amazing are the variations of the setherial 
 tints as they quiver upon the face of the waters and 
 drown in their depths. Like an army with banners 
 the long columns of carmine and orange march across 
 the firmament, and wane above the rugged hills of the 
 western bank into the mauve and violet of the matchless 
 Egyptian afterglow ; and the Nile is mottled in squares 
 and patches of diverse hue. Immediately before us 
 it is a dull purple, in which the shadows of the rocks 
 and the reflection of a passing dahabiyeh hang black; 
 farther to the south lies a space of glowing rose, then 
 one of lemon-yellow slowly burnishing itself to gold. 
 Mighty boulders edge into the stream, or fling them- 
 selves as rocky islets into its course, and force it to 
 cream and splutter over the cataracts. 
 
 Opposite we see the island of Elephantine, with its 
 Nubian villages nestling among the palm-groves : 
 Elephantine, where once Juvenal, an unwilling exile, 
 pointed wrathful hexameters against Egyptian super- 
 stition and Roman officialdom. But Juvenal, groaning 
 for the club life and fashionable society of the metrop- 
 olis, was a mere upstart, modern like ourselves. Aus-
 
 THE CLIENTS OF COOK 155 
 
 terer and more ancient memories face us at Elephantine. 
 Those laughing American boys and girls in the sailing 
 boat yonder are putting across for the Nilometer, 
 which was old when Strabo saw it. Presently their 
 dragoman will bid them notice the inscribed rocks 
 by the waterside, where they will see the cartouches 
 and texts of Thothmes II and Rameses II, sharp cut 
 into the imperishable granite three thousand years ago. 
 Egypt is the classic land of the tourist. Here, at 
 any rate, he need not blush for himself as a parvenu. 
 The late Mr. Thomas Cook, wood-turner, printer, 
 Baptist missionary, and man of genius, did, it is true, 
 re-open the Nile lands for Western and Northern holi- 
 day-makers in the nineteenth century. But his clients 
 were only following a very ancient tradition. The 
 Egyptian winter excursionist is of a venerable an- 
 tiquity. He was perambulating the Nile banks long 
 before the country that gave birth to Cook had emerged 
 from barbarism. Even the globe-trotter, observing 
 the curious details with an eye to publication, may be 
 comforted by the thought that personages of the 
 highest literary respectability were doing the same 
 thing before Greece had grown old and while Rome was 
 still young. The Father of History is his great exem- 
 plar. Herodotus, the first Special Correspondent, was 
 filling his journalistic notebooks with points about 
 Egypt even as his humbler successors are doing to-day. 
 Strabo, another useful member of the craft, was occu- 
 pied in similar fashion four hundred years later. He
 
 156 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 had an introduction to the officer in command at 
 Assuan, who took him out for a drive in the desert, 
 and showed him the sights of the locality, and brought 
 him back to dinner, and, I dare say, spent the evening 
 with him discussing the detestable condition of home 
 politics and explaining to his civilian visitor that the 
 gross incompetency of the Roman war office was simply 
 ruining the Service. Plus qa change plus c'est la meme 
 chose, at least in Egypt, where one counts by centuries 
 as elsewhere by years. And my own belief is that 
 centuries hence, when the Turks have gone from the 
 Mediterranean, and when the English occupation is no 
 more than a scratch on the historic record, the tourist 
 from lands afar will still come to spend joyous winters 
 in Egypt, will still loaf pleasantly up and down the 
 Nile, will still grope his way into the tombs of the kings, 
 will still stand awestruck before the mammoth ruin 
 of Karnak, and will still be hauled by rapacious raga- 
 muffins over the ledges of the Pyramid. 
 
 He was indeed very like ourselves, that ancient 
 tourist, even in his vulgarities ; and he went and 
 scratched his name and his banal observations on the 
 monuments, like any cheap tripper. Excursionists 
 of the Greek and Roman times have left their mark 
 all over the feet and legs of the majestic northern 
 Colossus of Memnon at Thebes ; and some Ionian 
 mercenaries - - a company of Greek 'Tommies,' 
 homeward-bound from the Sudan placed a notice 
 of their journey on the polished granite of the great
 
 THE CLIENTS OF COOK 157 
 
 statues at Abu Simbel. But that which is common 
 and ill-bred in the present is gilded by a ray of romance 
 when it has been perpetrated long ago. For this 
 antique cockneyism we can only be grateful. Those 
 Greek and Latin inscriptions at the base of the Colossus 
 are too trivial to disfigure the monster. They do but 
 add to its impression of permanence and power. Calm, 
 immovable, enormous, gazing for ever in passionless 
 meditation on the grey immensities of the desert, 
 above the palm trees and the villages and the 
 transient towns, the great twin brethren sat as 
 they sit to-day ; and at their feet the little human 
 insects from the ^gean and the Adriatic crawled and 
 chattered, as our great-great-grandchildren may crawl 
 and chatter in the short to-morrow of eternity. 
 
 I do not think that the modern tourist, as a general 
 rule, takes the antiquities too seriously. 'I am getting 
 fed up with temples,' observed one gay youth, as we 
 bucketed on our donkeys over this same monumental 
 plain of Thebes. Most of the visitors, it is true, provide 
 themselves with the volumes of Baedeker, Murray, 
 or Flinders Petrie, and begin with an honest endeavour 
 to assimilate those improving works ; but after a time 
 they get mixed up among the dynasties and the car- 
 touches, and can hardly distinguish Queen Candace 
 from Queen Hatshepu, or Amenhotep from Psam- 
 metichus. They are rather a jolly lot, who have come 
 from the smoke of London, the chills of Berlin, and the 
 wintry rigours of Chicago, in holiday mood, entirely
 
 158 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 resolved to enjoy themselves. Of modern Egypt, the 
 real, living Egypt, they know even less than they do 
 of that ancient Egypt which still lies half buried under 
 the dust ; but the Egypt of Messrs. Cook, the Egypt 
 of the hotels and the palace steamers, the Egypt of 
 the dragoman and the donkey-boy, the Egypt which 
 dines and dances and holds gymkhanas, the Egypt 
 which enables the Northern sojourner to bask and 
 play in the sun that they most keenly appreciate. 
 They visit the monuments in parties and in the highest 
 spirits. There are middle-aged ladies, who have never 
 ridden donkeys since their childhood and are proud of 
 their success with these fiery animals ; middle-aged 
 gentlemen, exchanging jocularities with the guides ; 
 young folks of both sexes, much occupied with one 
 another. Five out of six carry kodaks, and photograph 
 with indiscriminating assiduity. 
 
 For idle people who want to while away a month or 
 two agreeably there is no pleasanter region than the 
 Upper Nile, though most visitors, I believe, come away 
 convinced that the climate hardly deserves its reputa- 
 tion. It can be bitterly cold in the mornings even at 
 Assuan and Luxor; and Cairo in January is sometimes 
 as uncomfortable as London in November. But the 
 tourist need not get up till the day is fairly warmed, 
 and he is indoors long before the evening chill sets in. 
 The temples and tombs at least furnish an excellent 
 excuse for long rides and hilarious afternoons. The 
 hardships of travel are unfelt, since the best Egyptian
 
 THE CLIENTS OF COOK 159 
 
 hotels are not easily to be beaten in any country for 
 comfort and luxury. An admirable table d'hote, the 
 ministrations of a competent chef and maitre d'hotel, a 
 good orchestra, a commodious lounge, a cosmopolitan 
 society in the best of tempers, perhaps a dance, send 
 the visitor happily to bed. Cookian Egypt is run on 
 the probably correct assumption that most visitors are 
 well provided with money to spend and all bent on 
 amusing themselves. The severe voyager who comes 
 abroad to economise has scarcely as yet found his way 
 to the Nile ; though, towards the end of the season, 
 strange cohorts of the personally-conducted, doing 
 the country at a moderate inclusive charge, descend 
 upon the land. But to enjoy the winter Nile trip it is 
 better not to be too earnest or too thrifty. If you 
 want to study the people or the monuments seriously, 
 come earlier or later in the season, before the holiday 
 horde has arrived or after it has gone away. 
 
 Egypt, then, for a certain number of weeks in the 
 winter is a tourist land, and such, under all political 
 and social vicissitudes, it is likely to remain. Whether 
 this is wholly an advantage to the country may be 
 doubted. The visitors bring in some money, but 
 only a small portion is left to 'fructify in the pockets 
 of the people.' Perhaps some two millions sterling 
 are spent in Egypt each year between December and 
 March. But of this sum the greater part goes to the 
 tourist agencies, the steamship companies, and the 
 great hotels, and returns to Europe as dividends and
 
 160 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 interest on the international capital by which these 
 concerns are run. The salaries and wages paid to 
 Swiss managers and German waiters scarcely add to 
 the wealth of Egypt ; nor the money expended in the 
 fashionable shops in Cairo, largely owned by Greeks, 
 Italians and Frenchmen. There remains the harvest 
 reaped by carriage proprietors, guides, dragomans, 
 donkey drivers, bazaar vendors, and miscellaneous 
 appropriators of baksheesh. Many of these persons 
 do pretty well. A young dragoman at Luxor told me 
 that he devoted the entire summer to study and medi- 
 tation and yet was able to make enough in the winter 
 to maintain his wife and family in comfort. He had 
 been drawn for the conscription, and had promptly 
 bought himself off out of his savings : no ten years' 
 servitude in the ranks for this capitalist. But the 
 men and boys who cultivate the tourist field are not 
 the most estimable members of Egyptian society, nor 
 are they improved by their contact with Western civ- 
 ilisation. Too many of the peasantry are tempted 
 away from their villages by this easy method of earning 
 money. The thrifty, laborious peasant is converted 
 into a tout and hanger-on ; he becomes extortionate 
 and insolent, and has grown too lazy by the end of the 
 season to return to the monotonous toil of his hamlet. 
 He idles about all the summer, reserving himself for 
 the excitement of baksheesh-hunting and hotel-haunt- 
 ing in the winter. 
 
 Old residents deplore the demoralisation produced by
 
 THE CLIENTS OF COOK 161 
 
 this annual gamble for piastres and complain that it is 
 aggravated by the careless bounty of the visitors, who 
 treat the natives with a familiarity which they often 
 abuse. One hears lurid stories in Cairo of the rela- 
 tions of some European lady visitors towards certain 
 of the picturesque Arab ruffians who swagger about 
 in the capacity of dragoman. No doubt these tales 
 are greatly exaggerated ; but the lower class native, 
 accustomed for generations to be treated with utter 
 contempt by his 'betters,' easily misunderstands a 
 slight display of courtesy and interest. The donkey- 
 boys, while they remain boys, are often brisk, ready- 
 witted, and amusingly cheeky young rascals ; but, 
 grown to man's estate, they become greedy and im- 
 pertinent, and contrast disagreeably with the unspoilt 
 fellahin, who are respectful, reserved, and not without 
 a certain humble dignity. The visitor usually comes 
 away rather unfavourably impressed by the Egyptian 
 native ; but that is because he sees only the worst 
 specimens of the population in their worst aspects. 
 If he had any opportunity of making acquaintance 
 with Mohammedan gentlemen of the old-fashioned 
 kind, and not merely the smart young men in tar- 
 booshes who read French novels and patronise the 
 hotels, or if he took occasion to see the villagers in their 
 homes and at their work, his estimate might be more 
 indulgent.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 THE HILLS OF THE DEAD 
 
 THESE winter visitors to Egypt are, as I have endeav- 
 oured to explain, for the most part in a buoyant frame 
 of mind. The gloomy grandeur of the ancient monu- 
 ments does not greatly impress, and is far indeed from 
 depressing, them. They have come to the Nile only 
 incidentally to inspect temples and tombs ; their 
 main quest is for a good climate and a good time. As 
 to the former they sometimes have to pretend pretty 
 hard in order to persuade themselves that they are 
 thoroughly satisfied, for Egypt in December and 
 January is not all warmth and sunny sky. They get 
 their best time as a rule in Upper Egypt, when they 
 have exchanged the relaxing air of Cairo for the bracing 
 dryness of Assuan and Luxor. In the latter place, 
 that centre of colossal ruins and amazing monuments, 
 they can enjoy themselves very much ; and, if they do 
 full justice to the excellent cuisine and other highly 
 modern amenities of the hotels, they do not fail to pay 
 their respects to the stupendous remains of Karnak, 
 and make frequent pilgrimages across the river to the 
 plain and necropolis of Thebes. 
 
 One might well come from the ends of the earth to 
 Egypt, if Egypt had nothing else to show but these 
 
 162
 
 THE HILLS OF THE DEAD 163 
 
 overpowering vestiges of a vanished civilisation. There 
 are people who find something barbaric in mere size. 
 By this criterion the ancient Egyptians were bar- 
 barians ; for in actual bigness most modern buildings 
 are bandboxes by comparison with some of theirs. 
 But I cannot agree that the temple of Karnak is im- 
 posing only by its magnitude, like an English railway 
 terminus or an American skyscraper. When you 
 stand inside the great Hippostyle Hall, and let your 
 eye travel about that wilderness of mighty columns 
 and crushing beams, you are conscious of elemental 
 power like that of Nature herself in her more prodigal 
 moods of achievement. So does one survey the mam- 
 moth wedge of the Matterhorn and the splintered 
 peaks of the Rockies. Carry the mind for a moment 
 away to the works of classic or Gothic art : the Parthe- 
 non, in its white beauty, Chartres and Canterbury, 
 with all their wealth of flying arch and fretted buttress 
 and petrified embroidery, seem toy-like before the 
 superb simplicity of those colossal lotus capitals that 
 blossom above the swelling vastness of the columns. 
 But Karnak, as we see it to-day, has the majesty of 
 strength in desolation ; conceive what it must once 
 have been when every smoothed beam and polished 
 shaft glowed with the colours of the desert and the 
 sunset, with blazing red and vivid green and burning 
 yellow ; and when from every wall and roof there 
 waved tapestries of blue and crimson and gold. In the 
 masonry of the pylons at Luxor there are deep slots
 
 164 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 to hold the triple masts from which the long streamers 
 floated masts and streamers, I doubt not, as much 
 greater than the poles and pennants before St. Mark's 
 as the Karnak temple, with its mile-long avenue of 
 sphinxes, was greater than the Venetian casket of 
 jewellery work. It was worth while to be a tourist 
 in Egypt in those days. 
 
 Karnak and Luxor, the cities of the living, lie on 
 the east bank of the Nile. On the west bank opposite 
 is the City of the Dead. In the wide level plain by 
 the river was Thebes, with its temples and streets, 
 and its colonies of priests, embalmers, and mortuary 
 workers, and attendants of all kinds. Some three 
 miles back the desert plateau of the Sahara drops down 
 in rugged slopes and banks, where 'the kings and 
 counsellors of the earth' sleep in the 'desolate places' 
 they hollowed for themselves among the rocks. No 
 tourist omits to visit the Tombs of the Kings. It is 
 one of the show spots of Egypt ; and here more than 
 anywhere else, I think, the traveller loses by the condi- 
 tions under which he usually undertakes the journey. 
 For this pilgrimage to the last habitations of the buried 
 Pharaohs the holiday mood is distinctly inappropriate. 
 The effect lies almost as much in the approach as in 
 the funeral chambers themselves, and it is apt to be 
 missed in the company of garrulous guides and noisy 
 excursionists. 
 
 For myself, I went alone and walked. Nobody ever 
 walks in Egypt; and the hotel porter, when informed
 
 THE HILLS OF THE DEAD 165 
 
 that I proposed to adopt that method of locomotion, 
 regarded me with horror and contempt. I so far 
 agree with him that I should generally prefer to be 
 transported by a railway train, a motor-car, a horse, a 
 camel, a mule, or a bicycle, rather than by that clumsy 
 appliance the human leg, which has always seemed to 
 me singularly ill adapted for rapid and convenient 
 progression. But on this occasion I did well to go 
 afoot. My solitary morning tramp across the Theban 
 plain and up into the Hills of the Dead repaid the 
 fatigue it involved. For a couple of miles or so the 
 road passes through the villages, beside irrigation canals, 
 and over the cultivated ground. Then the fields are 
 left, and you wind your way up among the barren hills. 
 I do not know any place that gives a more absolute 
 impression of forlorn and lifeless solitude. It is desert, 
 not here lying before you in a vast expanse of air and 
 radiance, but desert channelled into narrow gorges or 
 tossed into rifted crags and cliffs of sand ; not a tree 
 or a blade of grass or a rill of water to break the blank 
 numbness of the dry and withered ridges. The path, 
 threading upward through these desolate glens, leads 
 at length to the foot of a bold mountain mass that 
 throws its broad front and heavy sloping shoulders 
 up to the skyline, and looks as if the world ended with 
 its crest. For the ancient Egyptians it did, and, in a 
 sense, it does so still. The mountain has only one 
 side ; it is the stairway to the upland plateau of the 
 North African desert. You can climb to the summit,
 
 166 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 and then you find yourself on level ground again, the 
 infinite level of the Sahara, that stretches for two thou- 
 sand miles straight in front of you. You might ride, 
 if you could carry food and sustenance for yourself 
 and your beasts, for weeks and months, due west 
 across that waste till you came almost down to the 
 shores of the Atlantic. The ancients thought that 
 the other world lay beyond this pathless plain, and 
 they buried their kings and princes and nobles at 
 its edge, that they might find the way from it to their 
 last abiding place. 
 
 In the heart of the mountain are the courts, the 
 palaces, the mansions of the dead. The funeral pro- 
 cession wound up from the populous plains below by 
 that same road I had traversed. Long corridors and 
 passages were hewn in the everlasting stone ; at their 
 inmost end a deep, square chamber where they placed 
 the sarcophagus of the king, and his mummy, perhaps 
 also the mummies of his queens, his sons, and his 
 daughters. Then they walled up the entrance with 
 great stones, and left Pharaoh to reign in his silent 
 kingdom alone. The centuries came and went ; Egypt, 
 Persia, Greece, and Rome passed away; 'the drums 
 and tramplings of a thousand conquests' echoed along 
 the banks of the Nile; and still Pharaoh slept in his 
 palace of the underworld. In the tomb of Amenophes 
 II., opened in 1899, you may watch his slumbers even 
 now. The mummy is there in the stone coffin where 
 they placed it when the king died. It is easily visible,
 
 THE HILLS OF THE DEAD 167 
 
 for the tombs are wired and lighted by electricity to 
 prevent the discolouration of the walls and ceilings by 
 the torches of the guides. Blackened and shrivelled, 
 the corpse is recognisably human, perhaps even in 
 some degree regal, with its stiff legs, its thin hands, 
 the narrow, high forehead, the haughty firmness of 
 the tight-closed lips and eyes. In the massive stone 
 chest the king lies as they left him. All about him the 
 figured walls of his maze of cells and galleries glow with 
 the records of his triumphs and his deeds, glaring and 
 staring at you, as when they stained and chiselled 
 them 3,000 years ago: Pharaoh, magnificent and 
 vindictive, binding his enemies in ropes, dragging 
 captive kings behind his chariot-wheels, building, 
 smiting, sacrificing, destroying ; there are the servants 
 of his pleasures, the ministers of his power, above all 
 the dreadful gods, his guardians, dog-headed fiends 
 and vulture-headed monsters, who have taken Pharaoh 
 unto themselves. A strange and terrible world this, 
 that the explorers laid bare for us when they violated 
 the hiding-places of the City of the Dead ! 
 
 And yet it was not all gloom and wrath and savage 
 magnificence. In the Museum at Cairo you can see 
 the objects taken from the graves, notably the treasures 
 found by Mr. Theodore Davis in the tomb of Queen 
 Thya's parents. Mr. Davis is a wealthy and enthu- 
 siastic American excavator, who has laboured with 
 tireless zeal to rob the hiding-places of Thebes of their 
 secrets. The cases filled by his industry and liberality
 
 168 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 at Cairo are of extraordinary interest. There are 
 beautiful inlaid coffers of sandal-wood and ivory, deli- 
 cate alabaster vases, painted and gilded chariots, 
 chairs and couches plated with gold, elegant and sym- 
 metrical as the best Louis Quinze work ; there, or in 
 other apartments of the Museum, are exquisite rings 
 and bracelets and brooches, gold rosettes to fasten 
 my lady's dress, and gemmed tiaras for the coils of her 
 dusky hair. The men who piled up the Pyramids, 
 and forced myriads of straining slaves to drag immense 
 stone coffins into the cavities of the hills, had a taste 
 for art and beauty and luxury, too. They worked in 
 miniature as well as on the grandest scale, and carved 
 a jade scarab no bigger than a plum-stone, or fashioned 
 a necklace of amber beads to lie lightly on some soft 
 bosom, a jewel to hang from a little brown ear, with 
 the same sure workmanship and unfaltering skill with 
 which they wrought at the great monoliths that stand 
 solemnly among the lamp-posts of the Thames Em- 
 bankment and the statuettes of the Place de la Con- 
 corde. Truly a wonderful people, with more mysteries 
 to them than the antiquarians have revealed.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 
 
 To many visitors I think the first impression of Cairo 
 must be one of disappointment. The untravelled 
 tourist, trained to believe that he is here in the heart 
 of the genuine, unadulterated East, is no doubt easily 
 pleased. He is looking for local colour, and he gets it, 
 mistaking the hotel 'Arabs' for genuine children of the 
 desert, and photographing Coptic clerks and Levan- 
 tine hawkers under the belief that they are representa- 
 tive specimens of the Moslem population. He has 
 come to Egypt with a stock of preconceived ideas, 
 and he takes some time to dispose of them. One of 
 these notions is that it is always blazing hot in this 
 quarter of the globe, a delusion from which he is some- 
 times roughly awakened by a severe cold or an attack 
 of influenza. I went to a garden-party at Ghezireh 
 one afternoon in January. It was dull and cloudy, 
 with a fresh wind blowing, and most of the male guests 
 were attired in dark tweeds or serge coats, with bowler 
 hats or similar head coverings. My sympathy was 
 aroused for a new-comer from Europe, who had arrayed 
 himself for the occasion in light flannels, knickerbockers, 
 putties, and a huge sun helmet. In this respect the 
 Teuton is a worse offender than the Briton. The 
 
 169
 
 i;o EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 latter has a natural dislike for the unconventional and 
 the outre in dress ; but the voyager from the Father- 
 land clings shiveringly to his tropical garb and his 
 helmet on days which suggest thick overcoats and the 
 comforts of the fireside. 
 
 To the stranger, however, who knows something of 
 the East, who has seen it in Persia, or India, or even 
 Turkey, Cairo at the first view must seem a rather 
 cockneyfied place. And to him who comes down, as 
 I did, from the Sudan, it will appear that he has left 
 Africa some way behind, and has stepped back into 
 Europe. As I drove from the railway station on a 
 dark evening, in a drizzle of rain, I thought to myself 
 that if I had dropped down here from the clouds I 
 might well have believed myself in almost any great 
 city on the other side of the Mediterranean. The tall, 
 stucco-fronted houses with iron balconies, the wine 
 shops, the cafes, the tramways, the granite-paved 
 roads, the frequent lettering in French and Italian, 
 were full of Western suggestion. In Cairo the visitor 
 lives and spends most of his time in a quarter which 
 is entirely modern and occidentalised ; a quarter of 
 wide, new boulevards, high blocks of offices and flats, 
 plate-glass shop windows, and huge, staring hotels. 
 
 New Cairo, like most of the Continental capitals from 
 Christiania to Belgrade, aims at a bad imitation of 
 Paris, and succeeds as well as the others. It is a little 
 humiliating for nous autres, we English, to reflect that, 
 in spite of all we have done in the world, in spite of our
 
 CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 171 
 
 success, our energy, our material power, it is not our 
 particular type of civilisation and society that our 
 rivals, our clients, even our dependants, are anxious to 
 copy. It is a case of Grcecia capta over again. Here, 
 in Egypt, we are the victors and the rulers; we 'run 
 the show' politically and economically; we dominate 
 administrative and military matters ; we are the most 
 efficient and potent influence in the country; we are 
 obeyed, and, on the whole, I think we are respected. 
 But we have not insinuated our way into the Egyptian 
 heart. We are not loved ; our habits, our customs, 
 our ideals do not appeal to their sympathies. When 
 Young Egypt casts its eyes outwards it looks to France. 
 It reads French books, it likes to speak the French 
 language, it sees French plays, it relaxes itself in what 
 it supposes to be the French manner; it cultivates, 
 so far as it can, French society, masculine and feminine 
 especially feminine. When it takes a European holi- 
 day it does not seek the coasts of Britain : it finds 
 our manners, as well as our climate, too chilly, and it 
 does not care for our recreations. It prefers Rome 
 and Vienna, and the Riviera, and, above all, Paris, 
 and returns with ultra-Parisian tastes, which it en- 
 deavours, so far as possible, to gratify at home. The 
 tragic shade of the captive of Sedan sometimes seems 
 to me to haunt the Haussmannised avenues of modern 
 Cairo. The Paris of Napoleon III. was the Paradise 
 which Ismail Pasha tried to reproduce on the banks 
 of the Nile ; and he did not wholly fail, though he
 
 172 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 wrecked himself, and nearly wrecked his country, in 
 the effort. 
 
 Of its kind, and for those who like that sort of thing, 
 it is a fine town, this new Cairo, with its palaces, its 
 legations, its handsome public buildings, its hotels, 
 its theatres and cafes-chantants, its pleasant resi- 
 dential suburbs, and its general air of brisk activity. 
 When I saw the city first it was supposed to be a little 
 despondent financially. The Egyptian land boom 
 had collapsed and many people who were very rich 
 on paper a few months before were economising and 
 retrenching ; and, moreover, Egypt had been ad- 
 versely affected by the misfortunes of the European, 
 and particularly the American, stock markets, and the 
 hotel keepers were sadly deploring the paucity of 
 wealthy visitors during the present season. But to 
 the outward eye there seemed no particular sign of 
 depression. The great hotels gave their weekly dances, 
 and the scene was gay with brilliant uniforms and 
 jewelled shoulders ; visitors and residents dined luxuri- 
 ously in the restaurants and took tea on the terraces ; 
 the streets were thronged with lively crowds on foot ; 
 and in the roadways landaus and motor-cars jostled 
 the broughams of Egyptian ladies, their faces visible 
 under the thin gauze veil which Mussulman conven- 
 tion still demands from the one sex, even as it rigor- 
 ously prescribes the invariable red tarboosh above the 
 frock-coat or tweed suit of the most Europeanised 
 members of the other.
 
 CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 173 
 
 The most attractive spot in modern Cairo is the out- 
 let of the great iron bridge which crosses the Nile 
 near the Museum of Antiquities and the Kasr-en-Nil 
 barracks of the Army of Occupation, where you may 
 see T. Atkins, Esquire, leaning out of the windows in 
 his shirt-sleeves, or punting a football about on the 
 parade-ground. Not far off is the British Agency, 
 which every cabdriver knew as 'Lordy Cromer's 
 house,' long after Sir Eldon Gorst had come to sit in 
 the seat of power. In the morning the bridge is crossed 
 by long trains of Arabs and fellahin from the outlying 
 villages, with loaded camels and donkeys ; in the 
 afternoon by strings of polo ponies, and by fashion- 
 able carriages taking out ladies to pay calls upon their 
 friends in the Ghezireh. This Ghezireh is the large 
 island in the Nile where the English live when they 
 can afford it. Here the more prosperous officials and 
 professional men abide in spacious villas with pretty 
 gardens, and here is the Khedivial Sports Club, where 
 the British colony plays polo and golf and tennis in 
 the afternoons, and holds its race meetings. It is a 
 patch of well-to-do middle-class Britain with which 
 Egyptian society has small part or lot. 
 
 This is new Cairo. The old Cairo exists, the Cairo 
 of the bazaars, the mosques, the swarming Moham- 
 medan population, the narrow lanes, and tall, over- 
 hanging houses, with barred and trcllised windows. 
 Some of it is a little cockneyfied too. The main high- 
 way, the famous Musky, is not what it was ; its shops
 
 174 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 are about as Oriental as those in the Tottenham Court 
 Road, and many of the wares displayed might equally 
 well be purchased in London, or New York, or Vienna. 
 But it is still picturesque with its cosmopolitan and 
 diversified throng : Greeks, Syrians, Copts, Arabs, 
 Italians, Jews, Mohammedan peasants, Cairo trades- 
 folk and workpeople, fakirs, beggars, English officers 
 in khaki, American girls, native women, black-robed 
 and (more or less) veiled. Penetrate into the narrow 
 streets leading to the right and left, and you may 
 breathe a somewhat less diluted atmosphere ; but, 
 even here, the Greek and Italian names over the bazaar 
 booths are numerous, and in the very middle of one 
 dark and malodorous lane I saw a bold inscription to 
 the effect that Dr. Somebody, graduate of the Uni- 
 versity of Philadelphia, was prepared to supply patients 
 with advice and medicine. Compared with the bazaar 
 quarter of Indian cities, that of Cairo strikes one as a 
 little dull and neutral tinted ; for the monotonous fez, 
 and the dirty blue and black and white robes of the la- 
 bouring people, are poor substitutes for the brightly- 
 dyed cottons and variegated turbans of Bombay, Delhi, 
 or Jaipur. In one respect old Cairo is Eastern enough. 
 For filth and darkness it need fear no comparison. 
 Its uncleansed lanes are slippery with mud or smothered 
 in dust, and they are lighted ineffectively, or not at all, 
 save by the faint gleam of lanterns from the open stalls. 
 If you chance to get into one of these lanes on the night 
 of a Mohammedan wedding you may see the whole
 
 CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 175 
 
 place lit by a line of waving torches, dancing in the 
 hands of a crowd of friends of the family, and the dark 
 fronts of the houses illuminated by festooned red 
 lamps, and then the scene is one of Salvator Rosa-like 
 picturesqueness. But native Cairo did not strike me 
 as a favourable example of municipal regulation, and 
 for a town which has lived for thirty years under the 
 progressive hand of British officialism it is not quite 
 what one could wish. 
 
 To the judicious visitor the attraction of this city is 
 neither its Western veneer nor its Eastern squalor, but 
 its specimens of Oriental art in some of its most fas- 
 cinating phases. The Museum of Arabian Antiquities 
 is almost as interesting as the Egyptian Museum, where 
 are gathered the mummies and sarcophagi and other 
 treasures from the rifled tombs and temples of the 
 ancient dynasties. Moslem art, in its flowering day, 
 was never so ambitious or imposing; but it produced 
 delicious mosaics, marvellously carved and fretted 
 woodwork, splendid doors and lamps and caskets of 
 chased bronze, and lovely glass, in white as pure as the 
 summer cloud and in blue as deep as the autumn sea. 
 In among the narrow lanes and huddled houses you 
 will come suddenly upon an old mosque, sometimes 
 dark and dirty, but perhaps with a noble recessed door- 
 way, or a beautiful cupola, resting lightly and grace- 
 fully on its throne, with its tall guardian minarets 
 beside it. Those who think that Mohammedanism 
 means necessarily stagnation and barbarism will alter
 
 176 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 their opinion, when they have studied the mosques 
 of Cairo, and considered what Islam produced in its 
 great periods of culture. The mosque of Sultan Hasan 
 was completed in the year of the Prophet 762, which is 
 A.D. 1360, and it is not unworthy to rank beside some of 
 the noblest of contemporaneous Christian cathedrals. 
 When you look on the sumptuous decoration of its 
 lofty and superb porch, on the splendid poise of its 
 minaret, and the majestic arches which crown the 
 recesses of its inner court, you may think that the 
 architects of the Califate were fit compeers of the 
 master-builders of the Western churches. The Egyp- 
 tians have always regarded this mosque as the finest 
 in the world, and they say that Sultan Hasan ordered 
 the right hand of the designer to be cut off that he 
 might not build another to vie with it. 
 
 The mosque of Hasan lies at the foot of the mass of 
 rock called the Citadel. On the Citadel itself, in front 
 of the walls and battlements of the mediaeval fortress, 
 there is a great modern mosque, the mosque of Mehemet 
 Ali, visible all over the city, with its huge dome and 
 two conspicuous towers no bad memorial of the 
 bold adventurer who would have tumbled the Turk 
 out of Asia Minor, and restored the Eastern Califate, 
 but for the interference of the Western Powers. The 
 Citadel is the last crag of the mountain ridge called 
 the Mokattam Hills, which strides across the desert, 
 and ends abruptly at the river plain whereon Cairo 
 rests. A great city, seen from an adjacent height, is
 
 CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 177 
 
 always impressive ; the view of Cairo from the Citadel 
 at evening is of unique magnificence, if only because 
 of the pageant of strange colour that commonly follows 
 the Egyptian sunset. The sea of flat, grey roofs, 
 broken by domes and cupolas and turrets, lies under 
 a veil of purple, shading away to smoky blackness on 
 one horizon, and glowing in astonishing banks of orange 
 and amber and crimson on the other. Across the 
 gleaming streak of the Nile the plain stretches in a 
 band of green and then of level drab. 
 
 Suddenly the eye as it travels westwards is caught 
 by the two mighty wedges of the Pyramids, looming 
 in dim immensity through the evening haze. Seen 
 at close quarters and by day, the Pyramids look disap- 
 pointingly insignificant. There are no buildings about 
 them to give the scale, and with their rough surfaces 
 of dusty yellow they are only two more big sandhills 
 among the adjacent mounds and dunes of the desert. 
 One thinks that their builders would have done better 
 to plant them in the midst of a city whose edifices 
 would have served to give the measure of the stupen- 
 dous tumuli. We are constantly told that the greatest 
 Pyramid covers exactly the area of Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 I sometimes wish it were in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 thrusting its blunt point into the clouded sky far above 
 the tumultuous roofs and climbing spires of London. 
 As it is, you must be miles away to gain the full effect 
 of the great barrows. You see them best in the stretch 
 of desert on the opposite side of the Nile, between
 
 178 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Heluan and Cairo, or from the ridge of the Mokattam 
 Hills. Then you perceive that the monument of 
 'Cheops' and its fellow are only the culminating peaks 
 of a chain, the Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa of a range 
 of pyramids strung out for miles along the plain. 
 Veritable mountains they seem as they rise boldly from 
 the level ground. It is hard to believe that they are 
 only some three or four hundred feet high, instead of 
 as many thousands ; or that these, among the greatest 
 works of men's hands, are also the oldest that are 
 left to us.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 IN THE DELTA 
 
 To the tourist Egypt is a land of tombs, temples, 
 touts, and hotels, a land of desert and sun-baked sand. 
 But there is another Egypt which the tourist does 
 not know : the Egypt of the alluvial plain between 
 Cairo and the sea, the Egypt of the agricultural villages 
 where they grow the cotton crop, and of the busy pro- 
 vincial towns where they store and sell it. Tantah 
 and Damanhur are certainly not so interesting as 
 Luxor ; but to those whose concern is with the present 
 and future rather than with the remote past they are 
 perhaps as instructive. 
 
 An excursion into the Delta is not easily carried out 
 unless the visitor has relations with Englishmen or in- 
 fluential natives who have official or business interests 
 in that part of the country. There are few hotels or 
 pensions, no guides or donkey-boys, and no facilities 
 for the pleasure traveller; therefore, for board and 
 lodging and the means of locomotion away from the 
 railway, the inquirer must be indebted to the good 
 offices of friends. Properly introduced, he will find 
 no difficulty in this respect; for hospitality is a tradi- 
 tion with the Englishman in the East as it is with the 
 
 179
 
 i8o EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Oriental himself. The British element in the Delta 
 is select rather than numerous ; it consists of a few 
 officials, inspectors, irrigation engineers, and the su- 
 perior staff of the banks and the great land companies 
 which have bought agricultural estates, and are super- 
 vising and developing them. All these are in pretty 
 close contact with the people, and they can tell you 
 more about them, if they choose, than you will learn 
 in the Cairo Government offices. 
 
 It was with one of these gentlemen, the manager of 
 an Anglo-Egyptian land syndicate, an accomplished 
 Arabic scholar, and a man who knows the fellah and 
 the fields through and through, that I stayed in the 
 heart of the Delta, and made some acquaintance with 
 the people of Egypt who are, and always have been, 
 the peasantry. The real Egypt is not the Egypt 
 of the towns : these are largely alien settlements, with 
 the European, Greek, Syrian, Armenian, and other 
 extraneous elements disproportionately represented. 
 The genuine native, the autochthon, born of the Nile 
 silt, is a delver of the soil, as he was before the Moslem 
 or the Romans came. His aspect when you come upon 
 him at work in his dykes and ditches is startlingly 
 reminiscent of the ancient monuments. In appear- 
 ance, colouring, physical conformation, he is like the 
 serfs of Pharaoh ; he has the same high shoulders, he 
 wears the same close-fitting skull-cap, he uses the same 
 tool, the small curved adze, and scratches the soil with 
 the same primitive plough drawn by bullocks. And
 
 IN THE DELTA 181 
 
 no doubt his mud-walled huts and his tastes and habits 
 and ideas have suffered no greater change. 
 
 An hour's journey by the main line that links Cairo 
 with Alexandria, a short run on the excellent light 
 railway system that spreads its useful network over 
 the Delta, and a drive of some five miles, and we had 
 reached the large, square, whitewashed building where 
 I was to stay. As we went along I saw fresh samples 
 of the real Egypt, and wondered more and more to 
 find it so little like the Egypt of tradition and the pic- 
 ture books. It had been raining heavily, and the 
 primitive, unmetalled roads were sodden with mire. 
 Those people who still believe the pleasing old myth 
 of the geography books, that Egypt is a 'rainless' 
 country, should have been with us on that drive to see 
 the horses smoking and straining in the effort to drag 
 the clumsy arabiyah through a muddy compost that 
 clogged the wheels and caked on the axles till at length 
 the machine stuck fast and had to be extricated by a 
 gang of toiling peasants with ropes and planks. They 
 should have accompanied us the next day when we 
 rode into Damanhur, with the ponies splashing to 
 the stirrup-leathers in pools of viscous water. I have 
 never seen a much muddier town than Damanhur 
 was that day, and its conditions made one reflect alike 
 on the Egyptian winter and the benefits of municipal 
 self-government ; for the place enjoys the advantage of 
 a native municipality. But, in justice to the climate, 
 let me add, I was earnestly assured that I had fallen
 
 182 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 upon an exceptionally bad spell of weather, and that 
 the locality is not often visited by showers of such 
 volume. Indeed, on my second day the sun came 
 out, and it was bright and clear and even warm in the 
 afternoon, though at night I shivered under my rugs 
 and overcoats. I was in a flat and fertile land : a 
 great level of bright green everywhere, intersected by 
 raised dykes and straight canals crossing and re-crossing 
 one another, so that wherever you looked there was the 
 gleam of water. All over the fields, just raised above 
 them on small mounds so as to be clear of the flood in 
 the days of basin irrigation, were dotted small villages 
 with low brown houses, and here and there the white or 
 yellow or faint blue cupola and minaret of a mosque. 
 This Egypt ! It might almost have been Holland, 
 with the scattered palm trees for windmills, and the 
 gaunt buffaloes and rusty camels for sleek bullocks 
 and heifers. 
 
 The estate I visited was typical in many ways of 
 the changes that have passed over Egypt. It had 
 belonged that is to say, it had been forcibly seized 
 - by the Khedive, Said Pasha, the father of Ismail, 
 and by him handed over to a Turkish officer about the 
 Court. This landlord built the great white house on 
 the demesne, and removed the villagers from a neigh- 
 bouring hamlet, so as to have them near at hand. Their 
 huts, with the barns and byres of the proprietor, were 
 clustered untidily round the manor house, which was 
 raised, as usual, on its small patch of ground elevated
 
 SLATIN PASHA, G.C.V.O.
 
 IN THE DELTA 183 
 
 above flood-mark. It had once been a place of some 
 pretension, with an avenue of acacia trees leading up 
 to the doorway; but the Osmanli owners, busy in 
 Cairo, neglected the estate which gradually fell into 
 confusion, and was being cut up among numerous 
 struggling tenants, none of them doing too well, owing 
 to the poor condition of the irrigation works. 
 
 Then came the English occupation and the new 
 Public Works Department. The old canals were 
 cleaned and repaired, new ones were made, and the 
 property swiftly revived. The land became valuable, 
 changed hands at higher prices, and attracted the notice 
 of various speculators, who bought parcels of it and 
 sold again at a profit. Greek tradesmen and others 
 from the towns were considerable holders or buyers. 
 We passed a large farm on the road belonging to a 
 merchant in Alexandria which I was assured could not 
 have been worth less, at the current valuation of land, 
 than a hundred thousand pounds. It was a safe and 
 lucrative proceeding to buy land in the Delta a few 
 years ago. The astute operator waited till he was told 
 by his agents that certain Englishmen, in shabby 
 jackets, had been seen in the neighbourhood with meas- 
 uring chains and spirit levels. That meant that the 
 Irrigation Department was going to work on the 
 canals. Then was the time to get credit from the bank 
 and tempt the fellahin to sell at something above the 
 market rate ; and after that it was only necessary to 
 sit on the land till the works were finished, and the
 
 i84 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 value had trebled or quadrupled, and sell if you 
 could. It was a good game ; but not a few people 
 in Egypt are regretting that they ever took a hand in 
 it. They committed the common error of holding 
 on too long, writing up their assets gaily as nominal 
 prices rose, but declining to realise. Then the crash 
 came, and everybody wanted to sell at once, but there 
 were no buyers, and the banks refused to give further 
 credit ; and thus it happens that there are still a good 
 many persons in Cairo and Alexandria who were 
 almost millionaires on paper a little while ago, 
 and are very badly in want of ready cash at the present 
 moment. 
 
 Non raggionam di lor; at least not just now. The 
 peasants, who bought land to farm, not to sell, were 
 not much affected by the collapse, and the irrigation 
 works are all to their advantage. As I went round with 
 my friend the expert he pointed out to me how much 
 had been done in the last few years to restore value to 
 the soil. In the evil days when the basin system had 
 been allowed to fall into disorder, and before the new 
 perennial canals had been developed, a large part of 
 this fertile Delta tract had gone back to desert. For 
 the land is good only on condition that it is looked to 
 with close and constant attention. There are other 
 countries where Nature repairs her own ravages with- 
 out the aid of man. It is not so in Egypt, where the 
 natural forces must always be diligently watched and 
 controlled or they will do more evil than good. The
 
 IN THE DELTA 185 
 
 Delta soil is impregnated with salt, which always tends 
 to come up to the surface if the land is left fallow too 
 long, or if it is insufficiently drained. Drainage is 
 as important as irrigation, and so is the rotation of 
 crops, and the use of artificial manures, especially 
 under the perennial system. When only the flood 
 water of the Nile was poured over the fields the rich 
 mud provided much of the sustenance that was needed. 
 But now that the thin white water is used as well more 
 artificial nutriment is requisite. The cotton culture, 
 which adds so largely to the annual income of Egypt, 
 involves some danger of reducing the capital of the 
 country. Cotton is a very exhausting crop, and may 
 impoverish the soil if it is not planted in due rotation 
 with cereals and pulses, which put back some of the 
 elements that the greedy little bush has withdrawn. 
 This is of course understood by the great land com- 
 panies, which farm scientifically, and pay much atten- 
 tion to rotation and drainage. Even to my amateurish 
 eyes, the difference between the progressive, and the 
 stagnating, holdings was apparent. There would be 
 two blocks, practically identical in site and situation, 
 lying side by side along the course of a canal, one occu- 
 pied by the company and the other by native pro- 
 prietors : the former was worth perhaps 100 an acre, 
 while the latter was unsaleable at half that price. 
 
 The fellah, however, if not very eager to adopt 
 modern methods, is, within his limits, a good farmer. 
 A knowledge of the soil, of the seasons, of the habits
 
 1 86 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 of grains and roots and vegetables, of the efficiency of 
 water applied to land, had been bred into him for 
 generations. Indeed, one of my informants went so 
 far as to say that what he does not know about these 
 things, on the purely empirical side, is not worth know- 
 ing. He is not scientific, but he is a highly practical 
 man, and he has been quick to seize the advantages 
 conferred upon him by the Public Works Department. 
 The irrigation officers are the only English officials 
 with whom he comes in actual contact, and their ac- 
 tivity he understands and appreciates. He knows well 
 enough that they are the persons by whom the choked 
 ditches have been cleansed and straightened and the 
 new waterways dug, that they will see that he gets the 
 supply of water to which he is entitled, and that they 
 perform this service without being incited thereto by 
 means of bribes. They know, too, that when the 
 department requires a draft of labour, men will not be 
 impressed by force, and compelled to work without 
 payment or reward. The duty of keeping the Nile 
 banks and the irrigation dykes in order has been per- 
 formed by forced labour from time immemorial. One 
 of Lord Cromer's great reforms was the abolition of 
 the corvee. Now the State, as an employer, pays its 
 servants for their work. The labour, however, is 
 still not entirely free. When there is danger of a flood 
 or the breach of an embankment a sort of levee en masse 
 of the neighbouring villagers takes place. The men, 
 with their spades and mattocks, hurry to the point of
 
 IN THE DELTA 187 
 
 peril, and work as desperately as if they were throwing 
 up entrenchments round a beleaguered city, while the 
 women and children bring up faggots and earth in 
 baskets. In such a case no compulsion is necessary ; 
 for all the peasants know well enough the results that 
 will follow if the water overcomes the defences, and 
 all are anxious to avert the calamity. 
 
 It is a poor little place to look at, the Egyptian vil- 
 lage a mere cluster of mud-huts thrown together 
 promiscuously. Some of the houses are flat-roofed ; 
 but that kind of construction needs to be supported 
 by timber, which costs money, and a great many of 
 the huts have domed roofs and look like rather large 
 beehives. The villagers own huge flocks of pigeons, 
 and keep them in squat, square towers, with battle- 
 ment tops, which have quite a mediaeval and fortified 
 aspect. In front of the village there may be a small 
 group of date palms ; there will, in any case, be a pond 
 in which the inhabitants wash their clothes, their 
 beasts, and themselves, and from which, unless they 
 are near the Nile, they also draw their supply of 
 drinking water. To induce the people to refrain from 
 emptying their refuse into this receptacle is one of the 
 tasks of the sanitary inspectors. It is not an easy 
 one : the fellah has been living for a few thousand years 
 without paying any particular regard to sanitation, 
 and does not see the necessity of it. Yet there is 
 progress. I have heard that, in some of the villages 
 threatened by plague, the headmen, or onidehs, with-
 
 i88 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 out any official pressure, have themselves insisted on 
 the water being boiled before being used for drinking 
 purposes. 
 
 But the fellah does not take to new ideas easily ; he 
 has all the peasant's ingrained distrust of innovation, 
 and a natural suspicion, due to many centuries of 
 oppression, of administrative activity. Indeed, he is 
 typical of the peasant type slow, obstinate, suspi- 
 cious, extremely shrewd in all matters that come within 
 his comprehension, a bundle of prejudices and fanatical 
 superstitions ; withal, an excellent fellow in many 
 ways, temperate, sober, thrifty, and laborious, kindly in 
 his domestic relations, and easily attached to those who 
 treat him well. He has a sense of humour, and his sun- 
 burnt, anxious countenance, wrinkled by much thought 
 about crops and floods and pennyworths of clover, will 
 easily relax into a hearty grin at a good broad joke. 
 
 Squalid as his hamlet looks, and scanty as is the 
 furniture of his hut, he is well off as things go in East- 
 ern countries ; he has enough to eat and drink and to 
 buy himself the simple clothes he needs and his few 
 luxuries, such as bad coffee and cigarettes. He can 
 get a living, though he works hard for it, and if he can 
 repress the land-hunger which impels him to take more 
 acres than he can work profitably, and so brings him 
 into the clutches of the moneylender or the Greek, 
 who makes usurious advances on the cotton crop, 
 he may do well. Like peasant proprietors everywhere 
 he is too apt to borrow too freely and recklessly and
 
 IN THE DELTA 189 
 
 to mortgage his holding or his crops ; and it is to 
 repress this tendency that Lord Kitchener's new Five 
 Feddans Law has been enacted, whereby the holder 
 of less than five acres is prohibited from pledging his 
 land as security for a loan and cannot be sold up by his 
 creditor. This legislation, imitated from the Punjab, 
 has done well in India, and may be useful in prevent- 
 ing the Egyptian small holder from delivering himself 
 into bondage to the local usurer or land shark. But 
 the Delta farmer is not always a small holder, nor is he 
 always as poor and humble a cultivator as the Indian 
 ryot. He makes no outward show, but he is often a 
 man of substance. Many a fellah who lives in a shanty 
 with no more visible wealth than a couple of bullocks, 
 a donkey, and some pots and pans, could dig up from 
 somewhere a hoard of sovereigns and piastres. On 
 one estate I visited I was present at an interview be- 
 tween the overseer and a man who held a lease of 1000 
 acres at 5 an acre. A farmer who could pay 5,000 
 a year by way of rent would be a person of some pre- 
 tension in most countries. But this man was work- 
 ing like a peasant on his own land, and he was dressed 
 in the same shabby dark blue cotton gown as the fel- 
 lahin. I heard another case of a land company 
 selling an estate to a fellah for 40,000. When the 
 documents were executed, and the time came for pay- 
 ing the money, the purchaser went back to his house 
 and brought the whole amount in bags of gold loaded 
 upon donkeys.
 
 190 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 No one knows how many millions are hoarded and 
 buried under the soil of Egypt. Slowly, very slowly, 
 the fellah is beginning to learn that it is safe to be rich, 
 that a man may save money without having his taxes 
 raised upon him in defiance of the assessment, or with- 
 out being compelled to disgorge to the local officials 
 under the kourbash. He still likes to keep his invest- 
 ments under his own hand, where he can find them 
 when wanted ; but this is perhaps rather from habit 
 than reason ; for he has discovered by this time that 
 the era of arbitrary exaction is over, and that he has 
 his 'rights' which do not depend upon the caprices of 
 the Pasha or the relative venality of the nearest tax- 
 gatherer. 
 
 He leads a dullish life in the village, with few amuse- 
 ments, save the Mohammedan holidays, an occasional 
 wedding or funeral, and the long talks at evening, 
 sitting on the ground with his fellows when the day's 
 work is done. Physically, in spite of those insanitary 
 customs which have been mentioned, he is finely devel- 
 oped, thin-flanked, broad-shouldered, straight-backed, 
 with a wide, flat chest, and sinewy arms ; and the 
 women, too, when you see them coming from the well 
 at evening, with the great pitchers poised on their 
 heads, moving lightfully and gracefully, 
 
 'With foot so firm 
 To crush the serpent and spare the worm,' 
 
 you think they might well be the mothers of strong
 
 IN THE DELTA 191 
 
 men. Forty centuries of exercise in swinging up the 
 water-lever and wielding the pickaxe have given the 
 fellah a notable physique. In due course, the shaduf 
 will be superseded by the steam-pump, and the spade 
 by a mechanical digger, and the peasant will crouch 
 all day long inside a close cabin turning taps and filling 
 oil-cans. The water will be laid on in pipes, and the 
 women, instead of walking like caryatids under their 
 urns, will be bending over a stocking frame in a fac- 
 tory. Industrial civilisation, like other luxuries, is 
 not bought without a price.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 MR. VAPOROPOULOS 
 
 SOMETHING has been said in previous chapters of that 
 speculative fever which possessed Egypt for several 
 years, and the collapse that followed. How these things 
 operated in certain individual cases may be learnt by 
 considering the history of that enterprising Greek, Mr. 
 Aristides Vaporopoulos, whom a classically-minded 
 friend of mine calls Aristides the Moderately Just. 
 
 His father was an innkeeper in Corfu during that 
 queer forgotten episode when the Ionian Islands were 
 a British Protectorate, and, of all people in the world, 
 Mr. Gladstone was the Lord High Commissioner 
 thereof. Vaporopoulos the elder migrated to Malta 
 and set up a tavern in Valetta. Here his son was 
 born ; and that is why he was baptised William Albert, 
 as well as Aristides, and why he always calls himself 
 'Mr.,' and has been known to refer to the British 
 Islands as 'home.' 
 
 In doing odd jobs about the inn the youth early 
 acquired a useful miscellaneous education and consid- 
 erable knowledge of the world. He served thin wine 
 to Italian sailors, coffee and lemonade to his own 
 countrymen and the island aborigines, occasionally 
 
 192
 
 MR. VAPOROPOULOS 193 
 
 bad spirits to adventurous British bluejackets. He 
 picked up English, Italian, French, and gained much 
 experience of mankind in various aspects, mostly shady. 
 This instructive course of studies was continued in 
 divers towns and cities of the Mediterranean. Dis- 
 agreeing with his father about a little matter of 
 accounts, he took service as a waiter in Palermo ; 
 subsequently he migrated to one of the big hotels in 
 Naples, where the wider world was opened to him ; he 
 saw something of fashionable travellers from the North, 
 and added some German to his budget of languages. 
 Thus equipped, after a brief dalliance with Athens and 
 Constantinople and Alexandria, where he learnt Arabic, 
 he settled in Cairo, and his linguistic attainments 
 secured him an appointment as dragoman. 
 
 Then arrived the autumn of 1884, when Lord Wolse- 
 ley's unwieldy Gordon Relief Expedition was toiling 
 up the Nile in whaleboats, with the assistance of the 
 great tourist agents. There was a keen demand for 
 interpreters with this force. Aristides, an intelligent 
 young fellow of two-and-twenty at this time, obtained 
 an appointment, and went to the front, officially at- 
 tached to an Egyptian brigade. He escaped the perils 
 of the campaign unscathed, and drifted down, after 
 it was over, to Assuan, where he invested the savings 
 from his not illiberal pay in purchasing the good-will 
 of a small bazaar stall. He sold sham jewellery to 
 the natives in summer, and sham Sudan relics to tour- 
 ists in the winter, and, being reasonably honest and
 
 194 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 extremely shrewd, he did well, and speedily enlarged 
 his operations. In three years he was able to exchange 
 his booth in the bazaar for a shop on the river front, 
 with a proper European plate-glass window, and a 
 scrubby compatriot of his own as assistant behind the 
 counter; in five years he had a branch establishment 
 in Luxor ; and not long afterwards he was in a position 
 to set up his headquarters in Cairo. 
 
 His great opportunity came with Kitchener's cam- 
 paigns in 1897-8, and he seized it promptly. He went 
 with the army, but not this time in any capacity so 
 humble as that of interpreter. Grown older and 
 bolder, he cherished higher aims. He turned most of 
 his available assets into cash, and started for the 
 Sudan with a large miscellaneous consignment of goods 
 and stores, such as men in need of many things would 
 be likely to require. He knew the natives better than 
 the Intelligence Department; his 'mobile transport' 
 moved faster than Girouard's railway corps. And so 
 when, after a toilsome march under the tropic blaze, 
 the army arrived at its camping ground, it found Mr. 
 Vaporopoulos already installed in a shanty of biscuit 
 tins and sackcloth, his wares neatly set out on the 
 earth ; himself, his Syrian clerk, his Hellenic assist- 
 ants, unclean to look upon, but unwearyingly assidu- 
 ous, prepared to supply perspiring and exhausted war- 
 riors with a variety of very welcome commodities - 
 at a price. 
 
 Such enterprise could not fail to be rewarded. The
 
 MR. VAPOROPOULOS 195 
 
 tins of sardines, bottled peas, mixed pickles, jam, In- 
 dian cigars, went off on the top of the market. What 
 young officer who had lost his last pocket-handkerchief 
 could hesitate to pay Vaporopoulos half-a-crown for 
 a small square of cheap Manchester print ? Five 
 shillings did not seem too much for a bottle of Bass 
 to a man half dead with thirst, who had not seen beer 
 for many a day. But Aristides did not limit himself 
 to retail trade. He could get camels and donkeys 
 somehow while the military authorities were looking 
 for them, and was always prepared to take a contract 
 for such articles as wire rope, army biscuit, forage, and 
 railway stores. The prices paid gave a splendid profit 
 in spite of the cost of transport, and before Omdurman 
 was entered Aristides had become a man of means. 
 When the new Khartum was being constructed he 
 was one of the first to get a block of land, and set up 
 a general store', which prospered rapidly. His business 
 grew by leaps and bounds, he was soon able to open 
 branches all over the Sudan, and presently he was not 
 merely a shopkeeper, but a merchant dealing in ivory, 
 timber, gum, and rubber, with his agents at Kassala, 
 Rumbeck, Gondokoro, and even in the Congo State 
 and British East Africa. Then he came back to Cairo, 
 engaged larger premises and more clerks, and devoted 
 himself to consolidating what had now become a highly 
 important and lucrative trading concern. 
 
 He was a big man by this time. He had relations 
 with all sorts of people in high official stations ; the
 
 196 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 banks knew and honoured him, and his draft would 
 have been cashed at sight over half Africa. He found 
 no difficulty in extending his activities in various 
 profitable directions. He bought building land in 
 Cairo and the suburbs, financed transactions in the 
 agricultural districts, and took a hand in the great 
 cotton and sugar speculations. Vaporopoulos was 
 beginning to be known as an individual to reckon with, 
 and cosmopolitan financiers, Armenian, Belgian, Eng- 
 lish, sought his acquaintance. Then, for the first 
 time in his busy life, he turned to spend money as well 
 as make it, and began to develop social ambitions. 
 Hitherto he had associated mostly with his own com- 
 patriots, shaved once a week, and changed his collar 
 every other day ; when he wanted recreation, which 
 was seldom, he went to an Italian cafe, drank coffee 
 and a little absinthe, played a game of billiards, and 
 sometimes visited a reeking native music-hall, where 
 half-naked dancing women contorted themselves for 
 his edification. His European friends gave him ampler 
 ideas. He dealt with a competent tailor, frequented 
 the bars and restaurants of the fashionable hotels, 
 and discovered that a good many of the patrons of 
 those establishments were eager to make the acquaint- 
 ance of a person with his reputation for riches and 
 business enterprise. 
 
 His friends were not of one sex only. Some ladies, 
 both of the visiting and resident colony, were quite 
 willing to cultivate his society. Aristides was still
 
 MR. VAPOROPOULOS 197 
 
 a bachelor, a dapper little middle-aged gentleman, 
 supposed to be even wealthier than he really was. 
 He had always been too much occupied with money- 
 making to think of love-making, though he had vaguely 
 intended to marry a good-looking girl of his own race 
 when he could find time to attend to the matter. Now, 
 under the genial rays of popularity and success, his 
 ideas took a wider sweep. His big, new motor-car 
 was often to be seen outside the Ghezireh Palace 
 Hotel, or the Mena House, or the Grand at Heluan, 
 with Aristides himself taking tea on the terrace, in 
 intimate converse with goddesses in Paris chiffons, 
 and lively young maidens from England and America, 
 who treated him with a free-and-easy Anglo-Saxon 
 familiarity which he found extremely agreeable. 
 
 It was in this phase that he became acquainted with 
 those distinguished members of the British aristocracy, 
 the Hon. Augustus Cashless, and, his sister Ella, both 
 of whom were rudely described by too candid friends 
 as being in Egypt 'on the make.' The Hon. Augustus, 
 after a variegated career in politics and the City, had 
 scented the Egyptian land boom from afar. To his 
 ingenious brain, and the fertile suggestion of a well- 
 known promoter, a little off colour at the moment, 
 was due the conception of the Great Sesostris Land 
 Company, to which the attention of the British invest- 
 ing public was being earnestly besought. London 
 society, thanks to Mr. Cashless's connections, was a 
 good deal interested, and various influential persons
 
 i 9 8 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 had accepted allotments of shares. The market, how- 
 ever, was a little shy, and wanted to see some solid 
 money, especially Egyptian money, in the venture 
 before it would bite freely. 
 
 Aristides was brought into the concern through the 
 agency of the Hon. Ella, whose acquaintance he had 
 made at a Ghezireh tea party. Miss Cashless was not 
 exactly in her first youth, and the stress of a dozen 
 London seasons had made her look a little anxious. 
 But her figure, aided by the efforts of a too confiding 
 Grafton Street dressmaker, was still agreeable ; and 
 she had red-gold hair, which made the heart of Aris- 
 tides jump each time he looked at it. The lady was 
 extremely gracious to the little Greek, whose thoughts 
 began to take a vague, alluring turn. Could it be - 
 after all, he was rich and not quite a fool ? 'You are 
 so clever, dear Mr. Vaporopoulos,' said Ella to him, 
 as he drove her back to the Semiramis Hotel in his 
 motor-car ; and Aristides pondered over the words 
 through a night of sleepless happiness. Privately, 
 Miss Cashless referred to him in conversation with her 
 intimates as 'a little Greek bounder who is goin' to 
 put Gus and me up to all sorts of good things.' She 
 introduced him to her brother who, to oblige his sister, 
 was quite willing to allow him to participate in the 
 advantages of the Great Sesostris Company. A year 
 before Aristides would have hesitated to touch that 
 promising concern with the end of a bamboo pole. 
 But love blinded his keen black eyes, and ambition
 
 MR. VAPOROPOULOS 199 
 
 clouded his habitual shrewdness. Before he quite 
 knew it, he was deep in the scheme ; a few more drives 
 and tea parties with Ella and most of his available 
 capital, and a little more, was locked up in the Great 
 Sesostris, of whose shares a hundred thousand or so 
 stood in his name. 
 
 His holding, paid for in hard cash, gave the neces- 
 sary fillip to the company. The Hon. Augustus went 
 back to London and worked the affair vigorously, 
 in society, in the financial press, and on the stock 
 Exchange. Paris and Brussels and the advertising 
 outside brokers became interested, and the quotations 
 began to rise. The i shares went up to 50^., and 
 those in the know were commonly supposed to be 
 waiting till they were worth a five pound note. As a 
 fact, they were cautiously unloading, and only deterred 
 from clearing out altogether by the consciousness that 
 the market was more buoyant than stable, and that 
 any serious selling would bring it down. They agreed 
 to hold on a few months longer. 
 
 Those were months for Aristides of pleasant musing. 
 Miss Ella had gone home at the end of the winter sea- 
 son, but she wrote him little notes occasionally, and 
 she had given him her portrait of a few years' 
 earlier date to look at. Aristides left his mercantile 
 business mainly to his subordinates, not to its advan- 
 tage ; and dreamed of becoming a millionaire when the 
 time came for selling his Sesostris shares. He never 
 meant to keep them, of course; he knew too much
 
 200 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 about the property in Egypt for that : but of the pro- 
 ceedings of his kind friends in London he knew very 
 little, and he did not understand how fragile was the 
 foundation on which they had builded their boom. 
 
 It was slighter than they themselves believed. One 
 morning, they awoke to find the slump upon them, 
 and the castle tumbling about their ears. Everything 
 Egyptian went down with a run, and the huge inflated 
 Sesostris speculation was the first to go. In a panic, 
 Mr. Cashless's West-end friends hurried off to their 
 brokers, and threw their shares on the market, only 
 to render the situation hopeless. In three days 
 ' Great Caesars,' as the dealers called them, had fallen 
 to par ; in a fortnight they were at rubbish prices, 
 and nobody would touch them. 'What about Egypt, 
 Gus ?' said the Hon. Ella to her brother. 'Egypt, my 
 dear girl,' said Mr. Augustus, 'is U.P., so far as you and 
 I are concerned, and I don't think you need give your- 
 self the trouble to write any more letters to that little 
 Greek microbe.' 
 
 It was a severe blow to Mr. Vaporopoulos. For some 
 time his position was decidedly shaky. He had plunged 
 rather beyond his resources, and the banks were calling 
 in their loans, and insisting on immediate repayment. 
 There was a moment when the ugly word liquidation 
 loomed rather insistently before him. But he pulled 
 himself together and came through. His mercantile 
 business was still sound, and though he had crippled 
 it a good deal by his financial adventures, and found it
 
 MR. VAPOROPOULOS 201 
 
 necessary to dispose of several of his stores and branches 
 to the astutest of his Syrian assistants, there was 
 enough to live on. He abandoned his dreams, alike of 
 love and ambition, and entered upon a severe course 
 of retrenchment and hard work. The motor-car was 
 sold, the expensive flat given up, and the fashionable 
 hotels saw him no more. He resumed his old habits, 
 took to working thirteen hours a day again, and when 
 I last saw him he was behind the counter of one of 
 his own shops earnestly endeavouring to sell a box of 
 extremely bad Hamburg cigars at the price of the best 
 Havanas. Aristides will be all right. 
 
 The shares of the Great Sesostris Land Company 
 stand at a nominal quotation of $s. 6d. to-day ; and 
 if you would care to have some you need only apply 
 to the Hon. Augustus Cashless, who will be happy to 
 furnish you, at that very moderate figure, with quite 
 as many as you are likely to require.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 
 
 IT may not occur to many visitors that Cairo is a 
 university town. Such, however, it is, and as such it 
 is known and regarded with respect all over the king- 
 doms and principalities of Islam. 
 
 And here I am not alluding to the New University 
 College which has been recently instituted, to give 
 instruction in Western science and literature, under 
 the patronage of the Khedive and the encouragement 
 of the British adviser to the Ministry of Education. 
 Millions of Moslem, who know nothing of the Khedive, 
 and very little of the English, are interested in Cairo, 
 not because it is a great and wealthy city, the capital 
 of Egypt, but because it is the seat of the university of 
 El-Azhar. For that establishment is the chief seminary 
 of the whole Mohammedan world, the gathering- 
 ground for all who would make themselves proficient 
 in the learning of Islam, the training school for the 
 priests and doctors of the Faith. 
 
 In the mere number of its students and its professors 
 it surpasses all academies and colleges, not merely of 
 the East, but of the West also. There are over 10,000 
 boys and men, of all ages from twelve to sixty, at El- 
 
 202
 
 THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 203 
 
 Azhar, and the teachers, the sheikhs, ulemas, and 
 tutors, are counted by hundreds. Its constituency, 
 like those of the European universities in the Middle 
 Ages, is cosmopolitan rather than national : it draws 
 its pupils from every part of the three continents in 
 which orthodox Mussulmans dwell. Even as students 
 used to come from Scandinavia and Sicily to Paris 
 and Gottingen, so they now flock to El-Azhar from all 
 the lands of the Prophet. There are Syrians, Moors, 
 Algerians, Turks, Tunisians, Bosnians from the Adri- 
 atic, and Mongols from near the Pacific, Afghans, 
 Punjabis, Abyssinians and Somalis, blue-eyed Cir- 
 cassians, and ebon-hued negroes. It is a microcosm 
 of Mohammedanism, a museum of those various popu- 
 lations white, brown, yellow, and black who are 
 the children of Islam. There is no place like it any- 
 where, and nothing in Cairo better worth seeing. 
 
 I waited outside in the mud of the squalid lane, 
 while the guardians of the gate inspected the letter of 
 introduction I had brought with me from the Sheikh 
 Ahmed El-Azhary, the head of the Wakfs bureau, a 
 learned doctor in Moslemism and likewise an en- 
 lightened administrator who knows and admires the 
 ways of the English. My credentials being found 
 sufficient, I was invited to put felt slippers over my 
 boots, and thereupon conducted through the maze of 
 vast courts and wide corridors. The place is confusing 
 owing to its size and the mass of humanity which 
 crowds every inch of the enormous floor space. It is
 
 204 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 like knocking off the top of an ant-hill and looking 
 down upon the myriads of black insects that swarm 
 about the galleries. 
 
 Men and boys were in heaps and knots and circles 
 all over the ground. After passing through the outer 
 quadrangles you come upon the Liwan, or great hall 
 of lectures. It is an immense covered shed, with a low 
 roof supported by a forest of columns of every shape 
 and size. There are nearly four hundred of them, all 
 robbed from old churches and temples. The classes 
 and the teachers are scattered over the floor, packed 
 so close together that often it is difficult to make your 
 way between two of the groups. Here and there the 
 professor has a wooden chair and a table ; but as a rule 
 teachers and pupils are alike sitting or squatting on the 
 ground, with their robes gathered under their bare 
 feet and their shoes laid out in front of them. The 
 walls and pillars and planking are fairly clean, but not 
 all the students are ; some are even filthy and ragged, 
 and a reek of promiscuous humanity fills the air. The 
 din, too, is bewildering ; for all the teachers are talk- 
 ing to their classes at the same time, and half the 
 classes are repeating or reciting something, or droning 
 verses from the Koran or the service books, bending 
 their bodies up and down in unison with the monotonous 
 cadence. 
 
 The black-bearded sheikhs put a good deal of energy 
 into their work, shouting, expostulating, and explain- 
 ing vigorously, but their efforts did not always meet
 
 THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 205 
 
 with much response. According to the rules, no pupils 
 are admitted below the age of sixteen ; but this regula- 
 tion is not strictly observed, for many of the students 
 were mere children. These boys were alert and inter- 
 ested, and when there was a class mainly composed of 
 them the drone rose into a shrill chorus, and the bodies 
 were swung up and down like those of a crew in a 
 racing eight. The elder students were of all ages and 
 conditions some, quite grey and old ; some, intelli- 
 gent young Syrians and Egyptians, with clear-cut, 
 good features ; some, wild Arabs from Yemen ; some, 
 mere grinning savages from Somaliland and the Upper 
 Nile. Some, too, were evidently taking in the words 
 of the teacher with attention, while others lolled about 
 half asleep, listless, and stupid, perhaps from hunger, 
 for many of these learners are in the lowest depths of 
 poverty. No fees are paid by the students, the whole 
 expenses of the establishment, including the salaries 
 of the teachers, being met by the Administration des 
 Wakfs, a sort of Egyptian Ecclesiastical Commission, 
 which disposes of the vast revenues belonging to the 
 mosques and religious and charitable foundations. A 
 considerable number of the students are in the position 
 of the sizars and poor scholars in our own mediaeval 
 universities ; they not only obtain their education free 
 of charge, but they also receive a daily allowance of 
 food and a small stipend. 
 
 About a thousand are lodged and boarded at El- 
 Azhar itself; others find quarters in some of the neigh-
 
 206 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 bouring mosques. Many are married, and live with 
 their wives and children somehow and somewhere in 
 the purlieus of the native city. After the student is 
 admitted to El-Azhar he stays practically as long as he 
 pleases. Some do remain half a lifetime, dawdling 
 over the sacred texts, droning over their lessons day 
 after day, hanging about the Liwan long after they 
 have lost any interest they ever had in learning, and 
 any real desire to enter the priesthood, simply because 
 they have cut themselves adrift from the active world, 
 and would not know where to turn for food and shelter 
 and companionship if they were to leave the great 
 swarming caravanserai. 
 
 On the upper floors are the cubicles in which the 
 in-college students live. They are bare little oblong 
 apartments, scantily furnished (but one does not have 
 much furniture in the East), watertight and white- 
 washed, and kept in fair order by the university ser- 
 vants. Some of the inmates are ragged, dirty, and 
 churlish ; others clean and courteous. In one room 
 I found four intelligent and polite Syrians, with whom, 
 by the aid of my guide, an English-speaking young clerk 
 in the Wakfs office, I entered into conversation. One 
 of the four was a middle-aged man, who had been for 
 ten years at El-Azhar. The full course lasts twelve 
 years, and those who aspire, so to speak, to a degree 
 in honours, may stay two or three years longer or more. 
 This Syrian seemed to think that his ambition to be- 
 come a really learned doctor in Islam would hardly
 
 THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 207 
 
 be satisfied until he had spent at least fifteen years at 
 the university. His companions were, by this standard, 
 almost freshmen, youths of two or three-and-twenty in 
 their second or third years, and they regarded their 
 senior with fitting respect. None of these men belonged 
 to the class of poor students. They had good clothes, 
 and comfortable rugs and coverlets to their angariebs, 
 and they showed me, behind the doors of a glass-fronted 
 bookcase, quite a respectable little library of Moham- 
 medan theological literature, the gem of the collection 
 being a volume setting forth in intricate detail the 
 genealogies of the descendants and collaterals of the 
 Prophet for several centuries. One of the four was 
 a young man of means, who owned a silver-handled 
 cane and perambulated Cairo in a tarboosh and an 
 overcoat. He evidently belonged to the smart set 
 of the university, and had, indeed, as he explained, 
 only been sent there by his father in order that he might 
 return to his native village with a reputation for general 
 culture and polish. The others proposed to become 
 ulema and seemed to be sedulous and even enthusiastic 
 students. 
 
 These Syrians were pleasant, intelligent fellows, all 
 of them very different from the unkempt, semi-civilised, 
 creatures I saw in other dormitories ; and one felt sorry 
 that their alert brains were being wasted and fuddled 
 over the antiquated futility that passes for learning at 
 El-Azhar. 
 
 For this seminary has been the workshop and arsenal
 
 208 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 of Moslem obscurantism. Modern science, modern 
 literature, modern history, modern philosophy were, 
 until quite lately, almost unknown. A little algebra 
 was taught, and, I believe, some astronomy, though I 
 fancy that in the latter branch of study the system is 
 that which was accepted before the age of Copernicus. 
 Lord Cromer tells an instructive story in this connec- 
 tion. He once, he says, asked the head of the univer- 
 sity whether his profession taught that the sun went 
 round the earth or the earth round the sun. The 
 learned person replied that he was not sure, that one 
 nation taught one way, and another a different way, 
 that his own general impression was that the sun went 
 round the earth, but that he had never paid much 
 attention to the subject, which in any case was too 
 unimportant to merit serious discussion. 
 
 The anecdote is characteristic of the whole spirit of 
 El-Azhar. It lives in the past ; it is hedged in by a 
 narrow formalism, and its main interest is in the 
 dogmas, the theology, and the traditions of Moham- 
 medanism. Some literary culture its pupils obtain, 
 and some ethical training; they may learn to write 
 that rich and varied language, the classical Arabic, 
 with elegance and precision ; and they are taught 
 respect for the moral virtues which Islam enjoins 
 temperance, justice, mercy, and patient endurance. 
 But the years which the 'Alim' spend in its crowded 
 cloisters are for the most part devoted to theological 
 formulae and religious studies. They learn by heart
 
 THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 209 
 
 long passages, not so much from the Koran itself as 
 from the annotators and expositors of that book in the 
 second and third degree ; they pore over the commen- 
 tators on the commentaries. Or they read the lives 
 of Mohammed, and the lives of his wives, and com- 
 panions, and relatives, elaborate explanations of the 
 ritual of the mosques, intricate genealogical tables of 
 the descendants of the Prophet. 
 
 It is this kind of knowledge, laboriously acquired 
 and committed to memory, which, in the fulness of 
 time, qualifies a man to become an ulema, to leave the 
 courts of El-Azhar, and to go back to be a priest or 
 teacher or doctor of the law among his own people. 
 One class, when I visited the Liwan, was reciting in 
 monotonous recitative from the Koran ; another was 
 hearing a lecture on the different ceremonials to be 
 observed in fasting; another on the benefits, practices, 
 and effects of prayer ; another on the history of the 
 Prophet. I only noticed one which occupied itself 
 with anything approaching scientific studies, and this 
 was where an elderly sheikh was teaching a few youths 
 some elementary arithmetic. 
 
 The Principal of the El-Azhar University receives 
 a salary of about 1200 per annum, and is a highly 
 important personage, dividing with the Grand Mufti 
 and the Grand Kadi at Constantinople a sort of spirit- 
 ual headship of Islam, with the duty of safeguarding 
 the religious law and observances. With him and his 
 university the English in Egypt have little to do; it
 
 210 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 stands outside our sphere of direct influence, nor does 
 the adviser to the Minister of Education, who keeps so 
 vigilant an eye on the other schools of the country, 
 control the curriculum of this huge theological seminary. 
 So long as they do not interfere with civil order and 
 justice, the 'Alim' of El-Azhar are free to prescribe 
 their own canons to their co-religionists in Egypt and 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The graduates of El-Azhar carry a great influence 
 all over the Moslem world, and are the missionaries 
 of the strictest orthodoxy and conservatism. Many 
 enlightened Mohammedans wish El-Azhar to be trans- 
 formed into a genuine modern university, with its 
 vast resources employed for more useful objects. They 
 would like to see the fanatical sheikhs supplemented, 
 if not replaced, by teachers properly trained in learn- 
 ing and science. But El-Azhar is immensely powerful, 
 it has a hold upon the whole body of priests and ulemas, 
 and it has a papal contempt for the temporal authority. 
 The present Khedive, a devout but progressive Mussul- 
 man, fully alive to the value of rational education, has 
 tried hard to reform El-Azhar, and has even threatened 
 to divert a part of the revenue it draws from the 
 Administration des Wakfs to the purpose of founding 
 a modern university. A serious quarrel arose on this 
 ground between his Highness and the Chief Sheikh, 
 and the latter dignitary was refused admittance at the 
 Khedive's levee, an event which caused a prodigious 
 stir in the native circles of Cairo. El-Azhar has
 
 THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 211 
 
 remained too long a strange survival from the 'Ages 
 of Faith,' a picturesque embodiment of much that is 
 most characteristic of old-world Islamism, a bulwark 
 against the advance of that spirit of intellectual unrest 
 and inquiry which is invading Egypt and all the other 
 Eastern lands. But the energy and determination of 
 Abbas II have at length prevailed even in this strong- 
 hold of medievalism. In 1911 a new Law was pro- 
 mulgated by which a professional council of teachers 
 and educational experts was appointed to assist the 
 Principal, and the syllabus was enlarged by the addi- 
 tion of such subjects as geometry, hygiene, drawing, 
 and natural history; and 'the difference,' writes Lord 
 Kitchener in his Report of 1912, 'between the former 
 and the actual state of things in El-Azhar is already 
 very marked.' Twenty years hence, perhaps, the 
 professors of the ancient university of Islam may be 
 more interested in Mendel than in Mohammed, and its 
 students may be discussing the problems of sociology 
 more earnestly than the Lives of the Saints. But the 
 struggle for supremacy between the Progressives and 
 the Priests is not yet ended and it is likely to be severe.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 THE OCCUPATION 
 
 EGYPT, according to Lord Milner, is xthe land of 
 paradox. You appreciate the force of that remark 
 at many points, but, perhaps, most of all when you 
 endeavour to come to close quarters with the political 
 system, which is full of the strangest contradictions, 
 the oddest contrasts between form and fact, the reality 
 and the conventional. 
 
 Here, for instance, is a curious illustration which was 
 brought before one, at the state receptions held by the 
 Khedive at the Mohammedan festival of Bairam and 
 a few other occasions, after Lord Cromer had left the 
 British Agency and before Lord Kitchener had taken 
 it up. These Khedivial levees are rather grand affairs ; 
 for his Highness is wealthy, and his court is carried on 
 with as much display of the ceremonial side of royalty 
 as that of most European sovereigns except one or 
 two of the greatest. The Diplomatic Corps is present 
 in its customary array of decorative man-millinery. 
 One could observe that ornamental company as it 
 filed past the Khedivial throne and made its bow to 
 his Highness. The envoys go in order of seniority of 
 appointment, according to established etiquette ; an 
 elderly Dutch gentleman, the representative of the
 
 THE OCCUPATION 213 
 
 Queen of the Netherlands, first, then the others in 
 due order Spaniard, Austrian, Russian, German, and 
 the rest down to the smaller states of both Conti- 
 nents. Very nearly last of all you will notice a slightly- 
 built young Englishman, looking as unobtrusive as it 
 is possible for anybody to look in a laced coat and gold- 
 braided trousers ; he takes his place far down the line, 
 with Swiss and Belgians in front of him, and only a 
 Swede, of still more junior standing than himself, 
 behind. A stranger who did not know might think 
 him a person of no particular importance. But this 
 happened to be Sir Eldon Gorst, the representative 
 of Great Britain, the virtual ruler of Egypt, the head 
 of the whole administration, with far more authority 
 and much greater power than all the Khedive's minis- 
 ters put together. Technically he is only the British 
 Consul-General, accredited to the Court of the Khedive, 
 just as the others are. He can offer the Khedive 
 friendly advice ; so also can the Belgian or the Portu- 
 guese Consul. Only it is by no means certain that 
 their advice would be followed, whereas it is in the 
 highest degree improbable that the British Agent's 
 recommendation would be rejected. 
 
 This brings us face to face with the strange anomaly 
 of the whole political position in Egypt. There are 
 many people who imagine that the lower Nile Valley 
 is a dependency of Great Britain. It may be so - 
 more or less in fact ; in theory it is nothing of the 
 kind. Egypt in form is neither a dependency of
 
 214 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 England nor is it an independent state. It is still 
 nominally a province of the Ottoman Empire. When 
 an Egyptian regiment is at drill you will hear its 
 English officers give the word of command to the fellah 
 conscripts and the negro soldiers in Turkish ; for this 
 army is theoretically a part of the armed force of the 
 Sultan of Turkey. The officers wear the Turkish 
 badge on their helmets ; the colour party carries a 
 Turkish ensign ; the generals actually receive their 
 commissions countersigned from Constantinople. The 
 theory does not bear much relation to the facts, nor is 
 the administrative or political life of Egypt affected 
 to any substantial degree by this fiction of Turkish 
 suzerainty. In practice, Ottoman control is limited 
 to the appointment of a resident Turkish High Com- 
 missioner in Cairo, a very dignified personage, who is 
 treated with much respect by everybody, and does 
 nothing at all except draw his pay rumour hints 
 that it does not always come quite regularly and 
 engage in a little vague intriguing. If Yildiz Kiosk 
 attempted seriously to interfere in Egyptian internal 
 affairs it would be peremptorily warned off. Still the 
 legal and diplomatic convention which regards the 
 country as a technically dependent province of Tur- 
 key is one of the factors in the international situation ; 
 and those responsible for its destinies have to take it 
 into account. 
 
 Except in so far as he is subject to the shadowy con- 
 trol of his suzerain, the Khedive is the sovereign ruler
 
 THE OCCUPATION 215 
 
 of an autonomous state. Nothing that we have done 
 since 1882 is supposed to derogate from that position. 
 We have never established even a Protectorate over 
 Egypt. When we first blundered into the country, 
 it was not with the smallest intention of conquering 
 or annexing. We bombarded Alexandria merely to 
 save the lives of Europeans threatened by a military 
 rabble ; we sent Lord Wolseley with an army to 
 'restore the authority of the Khedive,' weakened as 
 it had been by the revolt of his mutinous colonels. 
 We have been restoring or maintaining the authority 
 of the Khedive ever since. Our few thousand troops 
 are not a British garrison ; they are merely the remains 
 of the 'Army of Occupation' left behind by Wolseley 
 to complete the work done at Tel-el-Kebir, and enable 
 the Khedive to preserve the public order. Our officers 
 in the Egyptian regiments and at the Egyptian War 
 Office are not in the British service : they are tempo- 
 rarily 'lent' to the Khedive to assist him in the drill 
 and discipline of his own army. Similarly, a number 
 of British civilian officials have been permitted to take 
 service under the Khedive so as to give his Highness 
 their aid in the conduct of his administration and the 
 management of his finances ; they are paid and em- 
 ployed by him, not by England. The Khedive remains 
 nominally the head of the executive and the supreme 
 power in the state. Every administrative decree, 
 edict, or act of legislation is supposed to emanate from 
 him. The actual Egyptian system is unique. We
 
 216 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 have no record of anything quite resembling it in the 
 catalogue of modern constitutions and constitutional 
 experiments. There is one set of persons who carry 
 on the government; and another set of persons 
 who tell them how to do it. That, perhaps, may find 
 its parallels elsewhere. But the peculiarity here is 
 that the informal advisory Government has the mate- 
 rial and moral force behind it, so that if it withdrew 
 its support the other, the nominal Government, would 
 collapse. Thus the advice, when requisite, can always 
 take the substance, if not the form, of a command. 
 
 The anomalous situation would not have arisen if 
 we had chosen to make full use of the right which we 
 had acquired by the mailed fist in the beginning. 
 When Wolseley marched into Cairo, after the battle 
 of September 1882, he represented the only effective 
 force in the country. The Khedive had been virtually 
 deposed by Arabi's fifty thousand rebel troops ; and 
 Arabi's disorderly horde had been beaten and dispersed 
 by the invading army. The country was in our hands, 
 and we could have done what we pleased with it. The 
 obvious course seemed to be to hoist the British flag 
 on the citadel at Cairo, appoint an English Governor, 
 or declare the Khedive the Viceroy of the English 
 Sovereign, and quietly proceed to administer the whole 
 territory, under a hierarchy of British officials, on the 
 Indian model, to the great advantage of its inhabitants. 
 The proceeding would have involved a quarrel with 
 Turkey and probably with France. Still, in 1882,
 
 THE OCCUPATION 217 
 
 with Germany encouraging us and Russia quiescent, 
 we might have faced the risk. 
 
 The other alternative was to rescue and retire. 
 Having smashed up Arabi, we might have stayed just 
 long enough to organise a new army for the Khedive, 
 and then left Egypt to 'stew in its own juice.' But 
 that would have led to further outbreaks, rebellions, 
 revolutions, another European intervention of some 
 kind. Egypt could not stand by herself. 
 
 We fell back on a compromise. We did not annex 
 and we did not retire. The Anglo-Saxon, says Lord 
 Cromer, asserted his native genius 'by working a 
 system which, according to every canon of political 
 thought, was unworkable.' And the line he took was 
 that he would do all that was necessary for Egypt 
 without accepting the responsibility of incorporating 
 it with his own dominions. 'He would not interfere 
 with the liberty of action of the Khedivial Govern- 
 ment, but in practice he would insist on the Khedive 
 and the Egyptian Ministers conforming to his views. 
 He would in theory be one of the many powers exer- 
 cising equal rights, but in practice he would wield a 
 paramount influence. He would occupy a portion of 
 the Ottoman dominions with British troops, and at 
 the same time he would do nothing to infringe the 
 legitimate rights of the Sultan. He would not break 
 his promise to the Frenchmen, but he would wrap it 
 in a napkin to be produced on some more convenient 
 occasion. In a word, he would act with all the practi-
 
 2i8 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 cal common sense, the scorn for theory, and the total 
 absence of any fixed plan based on logical reasoning, 
 which are the distinguishing features of his race.' 
 
 The unworkable system worked mainly because it 
 was put in the hands of a body of exceptionally able 
 men. England had the good luck, or the good sense, 
 to entrust the destinies of Egypt at this critical stage 
 to a group of administrators of high ability and unusual 
 force of character. There were accomplished finan- 
 ciers, such as Sir Edgar Vincent, Sir Auckland Colvin, 
 and afterwards Sir Edwin Palmer and Lord Milner; 
 military organisers of the stamp of Lord Kitchener and 
 Lord Grenfell ; irrigation engineers like Sir Colin Scott- 
 Moncrieff, Sir William Garstin, and Sir William Will- 
 cocks ; above all, Lord Cromer himself, the great pro- 
 Consul, resolute, tactful, far-seeing, and inexhaustibly 
 patient, who never lost his temper or his nerve through 
 all the trials of a most trying time. Fortune helped 
 in another way. The situation, difficult for every- 
 body, was particularly difficult for the titular ruler of 
 Egypt. Perhaps, if he had been very strong, or self- 
 assertive, or impatient, it would have become quite 
 impossible. Luckily the Khedive, Tewfik Pasha, was 
 none of these things. He was in many ways an esti- 
 mable prince, exemplary in his private life, courteous, 
 kindly, intelligent, and humane. But his was an ami- 
 able, rather than a powerful, personality ; and the 
 weakness he had shown at the decisive moment, when 
 Arabi's mutinous regiments assembled before his
 
 THE OCCUPATION 219 
 
 palace, was characteristic. His self-effacing and self- 
 distrustful modesty rendered it easier for him. to accept 
 the position forced upon him by events, and enabled 
 him to work, as a more vigorous sovereign might not 
 have done, for the common benefit of his shaken realm, 
 in concert with his able and rather masterful English 
 'adviser.' 
 
 His successor, the present Khedive, who came to 
 the throne young, capable, high-spirited, and ambitious, 
 naturally found it more difficult to accommodate him- 
 self to tutelage, and for some years there was much 
 friction between himself and his English counsellors. 
 But Abbas II. gradually reconciled himself to the sit- 
 uation, and found an outlet for his energies and his un- 
 doubted ability in schemes for promoting the material 
 and social welfare of his country and the development 
 of his extensive estates. So the system gradually 
 crystallised, and it has long since settled into the 
 established order of things, and operates smoothly 
 enough as a rule. But it still depends upon securing 
 a high level of personal capacity in the Anglo-Egyp- 
 tian hierarchy, and maintaining the tradition of the 
 famous bureaucracy of the 'eighties and 'nineties. 
 
 The compromise involves the keeping in being of a 
 full-blown native ministry. Each public department 
 has an Egyptian minister as its chief; there is the 
 Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, the 
 Minister of War, the Minister of Education, and so 
 on. To this functionary belong not only the emolu-
 
 220 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 ments, but also the outward honours, of the office. 
 If you walk into the ministerial building in Cairo you 
 will find his Excellency treated with extreme respect, 
 seated in a handsome apartment, attended by a staff 
 of secretaries, guards, and ushers. When you leave 
 the Pasha's presence you may be conducted to a much 
 more modest room, where a care-worn Englishman 
 sits at a desk loaded with documents, and gives hurried 
 commands to clerks and messengers. He wears the 
 red fez on his head, but there is no sign of high official 
 rank about his person or his surroundings ; the Minis- 
 ter's portly native under-secretary looks more imposing. 
 This busy Briton is the adviser, nominally the subordi- 
 nate, of the high-placed chief of the department, 
 engaged, at a moderate salary, to assist him in his 
 work, and to supply such good counsel as he may be 
 required to offer. In fact, he is one of the links of 
 that chain of British influence which the Occupation 
 has drawn about the Egyptian Government. It is his 
 duty to see that the business of the office is properly 
 conducted, to suppress laxity and maladministration, 
 to insist on the right thing being done and the wrong 
 thing being avoided. He does not command. He 
 only says: 'I think it advisable that your Excellency 
 should issue such and such an order,' or 'I hear that 
 so-and-so has been grossly negligent, and I hope your 
 Excellency will think proper to reprimand him.' His 
 Excellency does not always comply with this admoni- 
 tion ; but if he refuses too frequently, or on sufficiently
 
 THE OCCUPATION 221 
 
 serious occasions, the 'adviser' reports the matter to 
 his own real chief, the Prime Adviser, the British Agent, 
 who, if necessary, would carry it to the Khedive ; and 
 in that case the Minister might be faced by the alter- 
 native, se soumettre ou se demettre. 
 
 It is obviously a relation in which much depends on 
 the personality of the parties in it. The ideal position, 
 according to the views of some of the earlier Anglo- 
 Egyptian officials, was that the minister should have all 
 the dignity and leisure, and the adviser all the hard 
 work and the power. They would have been well con- 
 tent to allow his Excellency to sit in his room, smoking 
 cigarettes and reading a French novel, only occasionally 
 rousing himself to sign, without examining them, the 
 documents prepared for him by his English mentor. 
 Things do not invariably take that course; nor if 
 Egypt is to have any real training in self-government is 
 it advisable that they should. It may happen that the 
 Egyptian is the stronger member of the partnership. 
 There are departments of state in Cairo where this has 
 been the case. The minister has more initiative and 
 energy than the adviser, and the latter has yielded to his 
 influence. Tact, however, is required as much as 
 strength, if this arrangement is to be rendered tolerable. 
 An under-secretary, who was constantly quarrelling 
 with his nominal chief and putting pressure upon him, 
 would be so troublesome, not only in the office, but to 
 the Consul-General and the Home Government, that 
 some other sphere of usefulness would probably be 
 found for him.
 
 222 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 It speaks well for the adaptability of Englishmen in 
 difficult circumstances that such cases have been rare. 
 The 'unworkable system' has been made a success by 
 good temper, knowledge of the world, and a single- 
 minded desire to promote the interests of the public 
 service. Due credit should also be given to the mem- 
 bers of the successive Egyptian Cabinets who have done 
 their best in a position which must have often imposed a 
 strain upon them. The strain proved too -severe for the 
 greatest native statesman of modern Egypt, the tal- 
 ented and intellectual Nubar, and it must always be a 
 little trying for any ambitious man of capacity and per- 
 sonal force. But of late years the Khedive's ministers 
 have usually found no difficulty in reconciling them- 
 selves to the arrangement ; and the best of them, though 
 they may sometimes chafe a little under the advisory 
 hand, acknowledge and appreciate the character of the 
 foreigners with whom they are compulsorily associated, 
 and on the whole get on very well with them.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 GOVERNING ELEMENTS, OLD AND NEW 
 
 FROM what has been said about the character of the 
 Occupation, it will be seen that to talk about England 
 'governing' Egypt is a misuse of language. We do not 
 govern Egypt ; we only govern the governors of Egypt. 
 From the beginning our idea has been that the actual 
 administration of the country should be left in native 
 hands, with a certain number of Englishmen to see that 
 things are properly done. Impatient critics have some- 
 times complained of this complicated system. Why, 
 they say, do we not obtain simplicity and efficiency at 
 once by abolishing it, and establishing a complete 
 British civil service, like that which accomplishes the 
 far more difficult task of managing the affairs of the 
 peoples of India ? 
 
 The reason is that we pledged ourselves not to annex 
 or incorporate Egypt ourselves, but simply to prepare 
 the Egyptians for self-government. It was a promise 
 given in haste and with an inadequate knowledge of the 
 facts. If we had known in 1882 all that we have learnt 
 since, it would assuredly not have been given at all. 
 But given it was ; and the policy it suggests has been 
 steadily kept in view. Honestly and laboriously we 
 
 223
 
 224 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 have been trying to pave the way for complete internal 
 autonomy under native direction. When this will be 
 established it is impossible to predict. But it could 
 not be established at all if the bureaucracy were British, 
 even in its higher grades, any more than there is any 
 reasonable chance of instituting it in India. Therefore, 
 the provincial government of Egypt is entirely native. 
 The mudirs, or governors, are all Egyptians, and so are 
 their subordinates down to the omdehs, or headmen, of 
 the villages, and from them to the village policemen. 
 The English advise, and they inspect. The mudir 
 takes his orders from the Ministry of the Interior and 
 the Ministry of Finance. Both these departments have 
 a number of British inspectors, who travel round the 
 provinces, find out what the mudirs and police authori- 
 ties and revenue officials are doing, and report to Cairo 
 the result of their observations. Their reports come 
 before the English advisers at the various Ministries, 
 who go into them, and are supposed to see that action 
 is taken where necessary, and peccant provincial ad- 
 ministrators admonished, fined, or dismissed. 
 
 Thus, in the last resort, there is British control and 
 supervision ; but it is not direct British management. 
 Except in the Irrigation service a highly important 
 exception the Englishmen merely superintend and 
 report. The mudirs, the mamurs, or sub-governors, 
 and the hierarchy under them in every province, are 
 natives. Here we have a radical difference between the 
 condition of things in Egypt and the Sudan. In the
 
 GOVERNING ELEMENTS 225 
 
 latter territory there are no native mudirs. At the 
 head of every province there is an Englishman as gover- 
 nor, who is directly responsible to the Governor-General 
 for the entire administration of his district. But then, 
 the Sudan is virtually a British dominion. Egypt is 
 not, and is not intended to be. 
 
 The arrangement, all things considered, is perhaps 
 the best that was possible under the circumstances, and 
 it works rather better than might have been anticipated, 
 though not without a certain amount of friction. One 
 of the great difficulties at the outset was that of person- 
 nel, for in the East everything depends on the man 
 rather than his office. When we came into the country 
 we found it badly in want of a satisfactory native gov- 
 erning class. The mass of the population, the genuine 
 Egyptian aborigines, are peasants, who have always 
 been ruled from above and usually from outside. 
 There was no middle class, except the mercantile and 
 professional community of the towns, largely foreigners 
 of one kind or another Syrians, Greeks, Armenians, 
 Italians. Then there are the Copts, who are sometimes 
 represented to be the genuine descendants of the ancient 
 Egyptians. In reality they are of the same race and 
 origin as the fellahin ; but having resisted the Mussul- 
 man conversion they did not intermarry with the Arab 
 immigrants, they were driven off the land, and, like the 
 Jews of the Middle Ages, they took to trade, and de- 
 veloped more intellectual interests than their agricul- 
 tural neighbours. They make excellent clerks, scrive-
 
 226 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 ners, bookkeepers, surveyors, and minor officials of all 
 kinds. They are intelligent and industrious ; but they 
 are no more capable of assuming serious responsibility 
 or power than the peasantry, and being Christians they 
 are not suitable persons to exercise authority over a 
 Mohammedan community. 
 
 There are a certain number of well-to-do landowners, 
 scattered over Egypt, who constitute something in the 
 nature of a squirearchy. Some of them are the descend- 
 ants of prosperous fellahs, who did well, laid by money, 
 added more and more feddans to their holdings, un- 
 til they became rich men with large estates. Such a 
 landowner would sometimes leave the untidy village 
 street, build himself a good house on his own land, with 
 his barns and stables and servants' quarters about it, 
 and live the life of a country gentleman in a moderate 
 fashion. It is that life to which the Egyptian really 
 aspires when he follows his own instincts ; and even 
 the townsman wants to get land if he can. Merchants, 
 tradesmen, officials, like to invest their savings in real 
 property. I met a young clerk in one of the public 
 offices in Cairo who had been educated at an American 
 mission school and spoke English well. He was three- 
 and-twenty, and, of course, married and a parent. He 
 told me that he had saved enough out of his salary to 
 buy a small estate in the Delta. His wife and children 
 and his mother-in-law and an uncle managed the farm, 
 and he went down there himself during the long summer 
 vacation when most of the Cairo offices go to sleep.
 
 GOVERNING ELEMENTS 227 
 
 Everybody, indeed, in an Egyptian town seems to 
 have an interest in the land. The Berberine servant 
 who acts as chambermaid in your hotel is probably the 
 tenant of a tiny patch of earth, with a date palm and a 
 mud hut; and there he labours during the summer and 
 autumn, leaving his family to look after it when he 
 comes down to Cairo in the cool season to gather the 
 piastres of the stranger. And the trader who has made 
 money will often own an estate worth thousands of 
 p.ounds, left in charge of an azar or bailiff,whose accounts 
 he will check from time to time. Such a man, when he 
 retires from business, may himself set up as a country 
 gentleman, even as prosperous shopkeepers do else- 
 where. This class has increased since the Occupation. 
 Land is a better investment than it ever was, and it is 
 more secure. Trade has been extraordinarily prosper- 
 ous, the banking system has developed, and, above all, 
 it is now safe to be rich. A man can have a good house, 
 and exhibit the outward signs of wealth, without the 
 risk that his superfluity will be squeezed out of him by 
 tax collectors, or extorted from him as bribes by the 
 retainers of the Pasha. It is no longer necessary to 
 conceal all evidence of means, live in ostentatious 
 penury, and bury your money, if you have any, in a hole 
 in the earth. That is one of the reasons why land is 
 more sought after than ever, and why the boom in real 
 estate attained such gigantic proportions. 
 
 Some of the old-fashioned Egyptian squires, who have 
 been settled on their estates for a generation or two, and
 
 228 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 farm their own land, are much looked up to by their 
 poorer neighbours, and exercise a good deal of influence. 
 They seem to have many of the characteristic qualities 
 which belong to their condition. I became acquainted 
 with a patriarch of this kind who was an estimable old 
 gentleman. He lived in a great, whitewashed, untidy 
 old house, with large, bare rooms on the ground floor, 
 and latticed apartments above in which his women-folk 
 abode. He told me, by the way, that his wife had 
 never been downstairs or set foot outside the house, had 
 never, in fact, moved beyond the confines of her second- 
 storey prison, for twenty-five years. This proprietor 
 was a rigorous Mohammedan of the old school, very 
 particular in the performance of his religious observ- 
 ances, and in the habit of getting up at an unearthly 
 hour of the morning to say his prayers. But lie was 
 alive to modern progress in agricultural affairs, and 
 farmed with a certain amount of science, attending 
 carefully to the rotation of crops and paying much 
 attention to drainage. There was nothing of the 
 aristocrat about him ; he spoke to the peasants on terms 
 of absolute equality, and treated even a minor native 
 official of the Public Works Department with ceremoni- 
 ous deference. He was a mine of information about all 
 agricultural matters, and though he could barely read 
 he managed the complicated accounts of his estate by 
 an efficient rule-of-thumb method of his own. He com- 
 plained bitterly of the depredations of his nazar, but I 
 do not think that this functionary could often have got
 
 GOVERNING ELEMENTS 229 
 
 the better of him. He had a shrewd and humorous 
 judgment of things in general, and much enjoyed a joke. 
 Towards the English he was, on the whole, friendly, 
 acknowledging freely the benefits the Irrigation Depart- 
 ment had conferred upon the country, and the improve- 
 ment in the revenue administration. 
 
 But the sturdy old Moslem could not get over the fact 
 that we were Christians ; he had been brought up to 
 regard Christianity as a religion fit only for Coptic clerks 
 and Greek moneylenders and other low persons. I 
 asked him what would happen if we were to abandon 
 Egypt, and he admitted frankly that it would be a great 
 misfortune for people like himself. 'We should have 
 the Turks back again,' he said ; and he did not like the 
 Turks, and gave me a catalogue of their iniquities. 
 'But they were Moslems,' he added. 
 
 It was these Turks, or Turco-Egyptians, who formed 
 the real governing element in Egypt before our inter- 
 vention, and, to some extent, they do so still. They 
 constituted the military caste, the higher official hier- 
 archy, and the greater landowners, having possession 
 of the large estates which the Khedives had granted to 
 their favourites and successful ministers. Egypt, even 
 under the dynasty of Mehemet AH, was a subject 
 province, ruled by Turkish conquerors. Political power 
 and social importance belonged to the Osmanli, includ- 
 ing in that term Circassians and Albanians ; and the 
 Egyptians were regarded as a subjugated, inferior, 
 population.
 
 230 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Nothing could exceed the contempt with which the 
 natives of all ranks were treated by those who were, or 
 supposed themselves to be, of the Ottoman race ; and 
 even now, though they have lost their power, they retain 
 their insolence. Before 1882 most of the pashas and 
 provincial governors were Turks, and the administra- 
 tive oppression was accentuated by the fact that it was 
 carried on by a class who considered themselves the 
 masters of the country. This was the case even with 
 the Turco-Egyptians, whose ancestors had been in the 
 country for a century or more, and who had long lost 
 all touch with Constantinople. But they still looked 
 upon the Calif as their political, as well as their spiritual, 
 head, and still regarded themselves to some extent as a 
 foreign garrison. 
 
 We have cut the claws of this class ; but they are still 
 influential. The blood of the masterful, fighting race 
 tells ; and the Turk, even with a good strain of Arab or 
 Egyptian in him, retains a certain energy and vigour 
 of character which give him the ability to command. 
 Twice in the course of my visits to great estates belong- 
 ing to European land companies I was introduced to 
 native intendants or managers, who seemed to be men of 
 much administrative capacity one of them even had 
 English subordinates, to whom he gave orders ; and in 
 each instance I learned that they were of Turkish origin. 
 It is these Turco-Egyptians who still hold a good many 
 of the places in which initiative and willingness to accept 
 responsibility are required. From this stock sprang
 
 GOVERNING ELEMENTS 231 
 
 Riaz Pasha, probably the ablest statesman of modern 
 Egypt, except Nubar, that subtle and versatile Arme- 
 nian. The mudirs and mamurs of the provinces, and the 
 police commandants, are largely Turco-Egyptians, some 
 of them the sons or grandsons of the men who filled 
 similar offices in a different fashion before the 
 Occupation. They are better so engaged, under British 
 inspection, than in leading the life of pleasure in Cairo 
 and Alexandria, with much more doubtful Western 
 assistance, or sulking on their estates, dreaming venge- 
 fully of the bad old days. 
 
 The Egyptian Turk is not too fond of us. With the 
 individual Englishman he can sometimes get on pretty 
 well, for between the Englishman and the Turk there 
 are points in common, both coming of a vigorous stock, 
 that has Imperial instincts and traditions. But for the 
 English rule the Turk has small liking, even though he 
 may himself be doing well under it. I heard the Occupa- 
 tion bitterly condemned by an Albanian officer in the 
 Egyptian army, who had fought bravely under Kitche- 
 ner and Grenfell, and bore on his breast a whole row of 
 medals as proofs of his exploits. Yet this man, who had 
 served faithfully under the English, and had been re- 
 warded and honoured for doing so, wished us away, and 
 talked of Egypt for the Egyptians : meaning Egypt for 
 himself and his kindred. The feeling of the 'Turk' is 
 intelligible. He knows that he has more ruling capacity 
 than anybody in the country except ourselves. If we 
 left, he believes he would have the upper hand once
 
 232 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 more, get all the good places and the dignified offices, 
 and make himself comfortable in the ancient high- 
 handed fashion. He cannot be expected to cherish any 
 affection for an administrative system which puts him 
 on the same political level as his former serfs and sub- 
 jects, and makes no more of a pasha than if he were an 
 Armenian storekeeper. So he grumbles at the English, 
 and looks vaguely towards Constantinople, ignoring 
 the fact that the little finger of the Sultan and the 
 Young Turks, if once they really got hold of the country, 
 would be thicker than the loins of the 'Ingleezi,' with 
 no particular regard shown for Osmanli blood. He 
 probably would not be allowed to 'boss' the country 
 again ; but he thinks he would and could, and naturally 
 resents his supersession.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 GOVERNMENT BY INSPECTION 
 
 THIS is the correct description of the system which 
 prevails in Egypt under the British occupation. It is 
 government by inspection and authoritative advice. 
 We leave the administration so far as may be in native 
 hands ; but we tell the native administrators what they 
 ought to do, and we provide European supervisors to 
 see that they do it. 
 
 At headquarters in Cairo this control is fairly close 
 and constant, because there we have the European 
 adviser in daily and hourly contact with the chiefs of 
 the departments and their subordinates. But outside 
 the central administration there is no such division or 
 delegation of powers. The mudirs are supposed to be 
 the responsible governors of the provinces, with the 
 entire local civil and police hierarchy under their com- 
 mand. They have no English advisers, but there are a 
 number of English inspectors, who travel about the 
 country, visit the mudiryehs, the revenue offices, the 
 police stations, the prisons, and have the right to 'call 
 for papers,' to inquire into alleged abuses or miscarriages 
 of justice or failures to comply with the requisition of 
 the ministries, and generally to overhaul the proceedings 
 
 233
 
 234 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 of the provincial and municipal administration. It is 
 the inspectorate which prevents the local machinery 
 from slipping back into the old grooves, and enables the 
 British Agent and his staff to keep in touch with it - 
 more or less. 
 
 The more or less depends to a considerable extent on 
 the character and capacity of the inspectors. In the 
 early days of the Occupation they had to be drawn from 
 such sources of supply as were available on the spot. 
 Some were military men ; some officials who had served, 
 in one capacity or another, under Ismail or the Dual 
 Control ; some private individuals who had been long 
 in Egypt and had become acquainted with the country 
 and the natives. The Egyptian civil service, it must be 
 remembered, had been a good deal leavened by Euro- 
 peans French, Italians, English even before the 
 Intervention. Ismail, though he preferred the French, 
 had some liking for Englishmen in positions of respon- 
 sibility. A story was told me of one of those English 
 employes of the Khedive by his son, himself in the ser- 
 vice of the present Egyptian Government. The Eng- 
 lishman, a retired naval officer, had an important ad- 
 ministrative department under his charge, and was 
 liked and trusted by Ismail, who treated him with 
 familiarity. After serving for some years, much to the 
 advantage of the public interest, he thought he was en- 
 titled to an increase of his moderate salary, and made 
 the request to the Khedive by word of mouth. 'How 
 much do you think you ought to have ?' asked Ismail.
 
 GOVERNMENT BY INSPECTION 235 
 
 The Englishman suggested an addition of four hundred 
 a year to his emoluments. 'And what is the entire 
 budget of your department ?' inquired the Khedive. 
 'Over 80,000,' was the reply. 'My dear Captain,' 
 said his Highness, 'you have 80,000 a year passing 
 through your hands, and you cannot get four hundred 
 for yourself without coming to me about it ? What 
 strange people you English are, to be sure.' 
 
 Some of the rather miscellaneous collection of persons 
 who formed the official hierarchy at the outset turned 
 out magnificently and did admirable work. But it was 
 largely a matter of chance, and there were some failures. 
 The Anglo-Egyptian Civil Service is now recruited in 
 the regular fashion I have already described in dealing 
 with the Sudan. Likely candidates are nominated by 
 the authorities of the English universities, their quali- 
 fications are considered by a Board of Selection com- 
 posed of high officials, and the best of them are chosen 
 to fill the annual vacancies. There is a large field to 
 choose from, for the Egyptian service offers sufficient 
 pay, a career, a pension, a fair climate, and abundant 
 holidays, all which things are naturally attractive to the 
 youth at Oxford and Cambridge, balancing perhaps 
 between a clerkship in Whitehall and the teaching of 
 cricket and the Latin grammar to schoolboys. Plenty 
 of candidates present themselves ; and it is the fault of 
 the Board of Selection if they do not get young men of 
 the right stamp, or as near it as our ancient universities 
 can supply.
 
 236 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 I have said something about these young gentlemen 
 as they develop in the Sudan under military tutelage. 
 In Egypt their functions are at once easier and more 
 difficult. They are freed from the strain of dealing, 
 often unsupported and alone, with tribes of savages 
 in a country, conquered but hardly as yet subjugated. 
 On the other hand they have to grapple with the prob- 
 lems of an older and more complex society, and to 
 maintain their authority with civilised Orientals, 
 sometimes of exceeding astuteness. For a young man 
 of five- or six-and-twenty, who a year or two before 
 was a sort of grown-up schoolboy, to tackle a wily 
 old mamur or sheikh, learned in all the learning of the 
 Egyptians, is no easy task. And in Egypt there is 
 scant opportunity of giving the young civilian the 
 prolonged preliminary training which is imparted to 
 the neophyte in India. The service is a small one, and 
 there are practically no subordinate posts to be filled by 
 Europeans. The junior sub-inspector, after a very 
 few months' apprenticeship under a senior man, has 
 to be sent on his rounds, and he at once assumes the 
 responsibility of supervising dignified and high-placed 
 native functionaries double his own age. He has to 
 conduct his correspondence and his verbal intercourse 
 with them in a difficult foreign language, and under 
 conditions with which it takes years of close observa- 
 tion for most Europeans to grow familiar. His duties 
 are delicate as well as responsible, and much tact, 
 temper, judgment, and firmness are needed to perform
 
 GOVERNMENT BY INSPECTION 237 
 
 them properly. For the inspector is not the direct 
 official chief of the governors and district magistrates, 
 who carry on the local administration, and have the 
 police and subordinate officers under their command, 
 and the people under their thumb. 
 
 The system is a makeshift, and I have heard it criti- 
 cised unfavourably by some experienced Europeans 
 in Egypt. One able man, who knows the country 
 thoroughly, condemned it because it hampered the 
 mudirs too much in minor matters, derogated from 
 their dignity, and made it difficult to get the right 
 kind of native gentleman to accept the office. The 
 mudir, as the representative of the Khedive, and the 
 local head of the administration, is a big man in his 
 province, entitled to a great deal of the consideration 
 and outward respect which the Oriental loves. But 
 it is not easy for him to conserve his status when a 
 young English civilian may come in at any moment to 
 'sit upon' his Excellency, overhaul his accounts, inves- 
 tigate his proceedings, and hear complaints against 
 him from his own subordinates. 
 
 My friend told me that one mudir complained to 
 him especially of the interference of the inspectors in 
 trivial matters ; he could not, he said, dock a clerk of 
 two days' pay for unpunctuality without being taken 
 to task for it by the inspector. How, he asked, could 
 he maintain his authority and enforce discipline in 
 these circumstances ? 
 
 Nor is this minute inspection always effective, for
 
 238 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 the local officials can usually baffle the inspector, if 
 they choose, and render his inquiries to a large extent 
 nugatory. What, indeed, can the latter do, especially 
 if he is young, not altogether familiar with the col- 
 loquial Arabic, and unversed in the ways of the people ? 
 Let us say that an alleged case of police corruption, 
 or an unpunished crime, has been brought to the notice 
 of the Ministry of the Interior. An inspector is ordered 
 from Cairo to investigate and report, and he informs 
 the mudir that on such and such a day he will visit 
 that potentate's seat of government and go into the 
 matter. 'O, Hamed Mustapha,' says the mudir to 
 his confidential assistant, 'behold the Ingleez Bey, 
 Jon-ess mister, cometh to make a report. Let us see 
 to it, my brother, that he learneth those things which 
 it is fitting for him to know.' 
 
 In due course Jones, B.A., appears, and is received 
 with all suitable respect. The mudir is delighted to 
 see him ; very glad indeed that the Effendim at Cairo 
 are inquiring into that matter which has been the cause 
 of so much anxious thought to himself and his vigilant 
 staff; most desirous to assist the inspector in his la- 
 bours in fact, has had all the papers prepared to 
 save him trouble. The inspector glances through a 
 formidable bundle of documents, and makes what he 
 can of them with the assistance of his translator. He 
 questions the mudir, who deeply deplores the unfortu- 
 nate incident which has occurred. He himself has 
 spent sedulous days and nights over it, and after much
 
 GOVERNMENT BY INSPECTION 239 
 
 cogitation has framed, with the assistance of Allah, a 
 theory on the subject. Would the inspector deign to 
 hear it ? The inspector listens to the explanation, 
 which may perhaps strike him as rather thin. But 
 when he comes to examine the other witnesses, the 
 mamurs, the secretaries, the magistrates, the police, 
 and the village headmen, he finds that they all support 
 the mudir's version of the case with singular uni- 
 formity. He may have his doubts ; but what can he 
 do ? The officials are in daily contact with the local 
 chief, they are dependent upon him for all sorts of 
 small favours, and they have good cause for not wish- 
 ing to incur his displeasure. The inspector is a 
 stranger ; he is not in touch with them, and they have 
 no reason to offend their magnate for the sake of a 
 person who will presently go away and forget them. 
 Jones must be a man of unusual penetration if he is 
 able to get behind the story which has been prepared 
 for him, or to compile a report which tells more of the 
 truth than it is considered desirable for him to ascer- 
 tain. 
 
 Another Anglo-Egyptian of great experience, with 
 whom I conversed on this subject, was so much im- 
 pressed by the difficulties of government by inspec- 
 tion that he advocated its abolition and the substitu- 
 tion of direct British responsibility. He thought 
 that an English mudir should be appointed in every 
 Egyptian province, as is the case in the Sudan ; or, 
 if that is not done, that at least the native mudir
 
 240 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 should be provided with an English adviser, according 
 to the precedent adopted at the central ministries. 
 His view is that the tradition of corruption and mal- 
 administration has not yet been eradicated, and will 
 not be for generations to come ; and, that being so, 
 it is hopeless to expect good government in Egyptian 
 hands. But then he is one of those Englishmen who 
 have the profoundest distrust of all 'native' honesty 
 and competence ; and he gave me lurid tales of the 
 manner in which bribery is still attempted, even of 
 European officials, and of the rooted disbelief in ad- 
 ministrative integrity. 
 
 For my part, I do not agree with him. I know that 
 jobbery and mismanagement are not confined to the 
 East, and examples of it have been met with as far 
 removed from the Nile as Poplar and St. Louis. If 
 minor officials in the Egyptian irrigation service some- 
 times accept douceurs and connive at evasions of the 
 law, so also do minor officials in English and American 
 municipalities. The old Egyptian bureaucracy was a 
 bad one, not because the men in it were Orientals, 
 but because they were Orientals inadequately con- 
 trolled, irregularly paid, and employed by a venal and 
 capricious despotism. Pay the Oriental properly, 
 keep him under strict supervision, and make it his 
 interest to be honest, and I dare say he will be about as 
 upright as most other imperfectly educated men with 
 no exalted ideal of public duty, which, after all, in most 
 countries is only the possession of the few.
 
 GOVERNMENT BY INSPECTION 241 
 
 At any rate the expedient of enlarging direct British 
 action is not likely to be adopted. The tendency is 
 the other way. Instead of still further reducing the 
 powers and responsibilities of the mudirs and their 
 councils, it is probable that they will be extended. Lord 
 Cromer was on the whole satisfied with the progress 
 made by these officials during the closing years of his 
 tenure of office. Some of them still exhibit too much 
 of the slackness and laxity of the old regime ; but they 
 are assimilating the new methods, and some of the 
 younger governors are far more capable and efficient 
 than their predecessors. The time has not yet come 
 for withdrawing such check as is enforced by the exist- 
 ence of the inspectorate ; but I think that in the 
 future the numbers of the inspectors will be diminished 
 and their activity curtailed, and every effort made to 
 render the mudir really responsible for the adminis- 
 tration of his province and to judge him by the results. 
 If he needs assistance it may be given by providing 
 him with a strong provincial council, formed of the 
 leading men of his district. Lord Cromer's later 
 policy was to place in native hands all the functions 
 which natives could be trusted to perform, and the 
 policy is likely to be carried farther under Lord 
 Kitchener. That indeed is the only means by which 
 Egypt can be prepared for the self-government which 
 it is the ultimate object of the Occupation to confer 
 upon her.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 HALTING JUSTICE 
 
 THE most unsatisfactory feature in the condition of 
 modern Egypt is the administration of criminal justice. 
 The opponents of the British Occupation point exult- 
 ingly to the fact that in a prosperous and improving 
 country, with a population, on the whole, docile, sub- 
 missive, and peaceable, life and property are less 
 secure than they used to be in some provinces of Euro- 
 pean Turkey. This insecurity is most noticeable in 
 the Delta, which ought to be, one would think, a region 
 very easily policed, for it is made up of flat fields and 
 little open villages, with no mountains, swamps, or 
 forests in which evil-doers can take refuge ; and, 
 though there are a certain number of predatory Bed- 
 ouins about, the great majority of the villagers are 
 quiet, hardworking peasants. Yet in the Behera 
 province, and other parts of the Delta, crimes of vio- 
 lence are far too numerous. Arson, robbery, and 
 murder decrease very little, and assaults upon women, 
 homicidal attacks, house-breaking, forgery, cattle- 
 poisoning, and other offences tend to increase ; and 
 some old residents have assured me that in this respect 
 the state of the country is no better than it was under 
 Ismail and Said. 
 
 242
 
 HALTING JUSTICE 243 
 
 Englishmen are not often the victims of personal 
 violence, partly because there are very few of them in 
 the small towns and villages, partly because those who 
 are there know how to protect themselves, and it is 
 not deemed safe to meddle with them. Europeans of 
 some other nationalities do not share this immunity ; 
 Greeks and Italians have been murdered or robbed, 
 even in the suburbs of Alexandria. 
 
 A great proportion of the crimes reported (consider- 
 ably more than half) go unpunished, and everybody 
 knows that many serious offences are committed in 
 the villages which are never reported at all ; and 
 again many notorious criminals when brought to trial 
 before the native courts are acquitted. In the last six 
 months of 1911, out of eighty convictions in cases sent 
 up to the Courts of Assize by the committing magis- 
 trates, for wilful murder with premeditation, only three 
 sentences of death were pronounced. Human life is 
 held strangely cheap, and homicide is often the result 
 of incidents of the most trivial character. 'A man 
 who expostulated with his neighbour for crossing the 
 end of his garden was murdered the same afternoon 
 for no other or better reason.' 1 'Comparatively few 
 murders are committed or attempted for purposes of 
 robbery, and the majority may be ascribed to revenge, 
 feuds, questions of women, or sudden quarrels arising 
 from motives of which it would be difficult to exag- 
 
 1 Lord Kitchener, Reports on Egypt and the Sudan, 1911 and 1912, pp. 31 
 and 35.
 
 244 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 gerate the futility. Thus in Assiut a woman is murdered 
 for refusing to give a glass of water, a man for taking 
 a handful of flour. In Behera a man is killed for 
 allowing his sheep to eat in a neighbour's clover ; in 
 Gharbia another for fishing in a drain ; in Girga a 
 third because his son stole a date, and a girl is mur- 
 dered for purloining a head of maize.' l In the great 
 cities there has been a steady growth of crime, and in 
 Cairo, with its large sprinkling of cosmopolitan rascal- 
 dom, there were 454 murders and other grave offences 
 in 1912 as compared with 344 in 1910. Society in 
 Egypt, in town and country alike, is still somewhat 
 imperfectly protected against evil-doers. 
 
 This is partly due to the inadequate numbers of the 
 police force. There are only 8290 policemen with 434 
 officers for the whole of Egypt; and of the officers 
 only 62 are English. These sixty-two Englishmen 
 have to keep order and suppress crime among twelve 
 millions of people, scattered in thousands of villages 
 about the Delta, and stringed out along the course of 
 the Nile, with the desert handy on either side for fugi- 
 tives and marauders, or packed into the bazaars and 
 swarming alleys of the cities. No wonder they find 
 they have rather too much on their hands. Lord 
 Kitchener is endeavouring to improve matters in the 
 rural districts by organizing the ghaffirs or village 
 watchmen into a sort of local gendarmerie, giving them 
 
 1 Lord Kitchener, Reports on Egypt and the Sudan, 1911 and 1912, pp. 31 
 and 35.
 
 Photo by l>iitncti. ( airo. 
 
 THE KHEDIVE.
 
 HALTING JUSTICE 245 
 
 regular police training, and some military drill and 
 instruction in the use of arms. There are over forty 
 thousand of these ghaffirs, under their own special 
 officers and the general authority of the omdehs, or 
 village headmen, and a good deal is expected from 
 their efforts under the new system. 
 
 To the ordinary Nile tourist nothing of all this is 
 visible. But some hints of it will speedily be brought 
 before any visitor who spends a short time in the 
 Delta towns and villages. I went into the living-room 
 of an English bank manager, and observed that he 
 had a small armoury of firearms, rifles, and Mauser 
 pistols, as well as sporting guns. I said I did not know 
 there was any big game in that part of the country. 
 He smiled, and said that one might possibly need a 
 weapon, in certain eventualities, for other purposes 
 than that of sport. He added that in the town in 
 which his branch was situated there was a good deal 
 of floating ruffianism and loose rowdyism, imperfectly 
 controlled by the police, who were regarded with con- 
 tempt and inspired no terror. One could never tell, 
 he observed, whether some incident might not pro- 
 duce an outbreak of this disorderly element, and in 
 that case it would be as well to be able to defend 
 oneself. 
 
 It is a sure sign of insufficient police protection when 
 private individuals take to carrying arms, as they do 
 in the city of Paris and certain portions of the United 
 States of America. My friend the bank manager told
 
 246 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 me that many officials and other residents in the rural 
 districts thought it advisable to have a weapon handy. 
 He said that he had met the omdeh of the neighbour- 
 ing village and found him going his rounds girt with a 
 belt that supported a business-like looking revolver. 
 Asked why this defensive apparatus was necessary, 
 the headman replied that he often had to carry con- 
 siderable sums of money with him, and was always 
 liable to be attacked by Arab footpads or village 
 ruffians. This was in the heart of one of the richest 
 and most populous agricultural districts in the world. 
 It is not increasing poverty which has led to increasing 
 crime here. 
 
 The causes are of another kind. The police, be- 
 sides being weak in numbers, work under many dis- 
 advantages. They were organised as a quasi-military 
 force, and in the early years of the Occupation they 
 did good service under direct English command. There 
 was much open defiance of authority, the dregs of the 
 Arabist rebellion were still simmering, and there was 
 soldiers' work to do. Everybody in Egypt knows 
 how one iron-handed Briton dealt with disaffection 
 and disorder in a perturbed district. 'Will you under- 
 take this job ?' said his superior. 'Yes, if you will 
 give me a free hand.' 'You can have as many men,' 
 said the Chief, 'and, within reason, as much money 
 as you want; and I shall ask no questions. But you 
 have got to keep this province quiet. If you succeed 
 - well. If you fail, there is an end to your career.'
 
 HALTING JUSTICE 247 
 
 There was no failure ; and in a couple of years that 
 province showed as clean a crime-sheet as Bedfordshire. 
 To-day brigandage and robbery are again rife there. 
 The gendarmerie has been turned to civil police duties 
 under chiefs who are not, as a rule, police experts. 
 The mudir, nominally responsible for the security of 
 the province, has no control over the parquet ; and 
 his authority is liable to be weakened by the inter- 
 ference of the English inspector, who may know noth- 
 ing whatever about police work, and sometimes knows 
 very little about the people and the district. The 
 police, too, are largely independent of the civil adminis- 
 tration. Neither the Ministry of the Interior nor the 
 local authorities have the right to see a proces verbal 
 after it has come into the hands of the parquet. This 
 separation of powers sounds rather well theoretically ; 
 but in practice, where the police are often timid and 
 sometimes corrupt, it works badly and allows many 
 criminals to be at large who ought to be in gaol. 
 
 Another difficulty is that the Egyptian habitual 
 criminal does not mind going to prison, now that he 
 is no longer flogged when he gets there. On the 
 contrary, he is well fed, well lodged, properly clothed, 
 and generally provided, with more creature comforts, 
 with more food, warmth, light, ventilation, than he is 
 accustomed to enjoy when at large. 'It certainly 
 looks,' says the Judicial Adviser to the Khedivial 
 Government in a recent Report, 'as if our very hygienic 
 and up-to-date Egyptian prisons hold few terrors for
 
 248 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 the criminal classes of this country. The problem is 
 even more difficult here than in Europe, where a 
 certain moral stigma attaches to imprisonment which 
 is practically non-existent here. We can only hope 
 that, with the advance of education and other civilis- 
 ing influences, the disgrace in question may, in time, 
 be more keenly felt and imprisonment become more 
 deterrent than it evidently is at present.' It is cer- 
 tainly not easy to make prison strongly 'deterrent' 
 to a person who regards a short sojourn in gaol as an 
 agreeable and inexpensive rest-cure. 
 
 More than all this is the fact that the Egyptian peas- 
 antry do not understand the modern method of ad- 
 ministering criminal justice, and do not co-operate 
 with it. We have introduced the principle of English 
 law which requires that a person, even if known to be 
 guilty, shall not be punished unless his guilt can be 
 proved in open court by the evidence of witnesses. 
 This is alien to the Eastern temperament, and so is 
 that tenderness for abstract justice which would rather 
 see six criminals escape than condemn one innocent 
 man. When a crime is committed in an Egyptian 
 village the circumstances are, as a rule, matter of public 
 notoriety. Everybody knows who the offender was ; 
 there is probably not a human being in the entire pre- 
 cincts who could not denounce the author, account for 
 his motives, and describe his crime off-hand. But be- 
 fore that criminal can be convicted he must be tried 
 in open court, and his guilt proved by the testimony
 
 HALTING JUSTICE 249 
 
 of witnesses. Now the witnesses will not appear if 
 they can help it, and if they are summoned they are 
 not anxious to give evidence against the prisoner; 
 for there is no certainty in their minds that he will be 
 condemned, and if he is acquitted they know very 
 well that he will have a score to settle with those who 
 have endeavoured ineffectually to get him punished. 
 The reluctant witness may be a peaceable farmer, the 
 accused a more or less violent ruffian who will not 
 scruple to take his revenge. The villager does not see 
 why he should incur these risks and inconvenience to 
 oblige the State, which will not trouble to protect him 
 when the trial is over. Besides, it is no affair of his 
 to bring criminals to justice. The Effendim should 
 perform that duty without the assistance of private 
 individuals. Thus it is that witnesses cannot be 
 procured, even in flagrant and notorious cases of 
 murder, and that offenders, caught almost red-handed, 
 escape punishment. 
 
 The Ministry of the Interior makes some attempt to 
 deal with this state of things by imposing an extra 
 police tax, according to the Indian precedent, on a 
 village in which there is much unpunished crime. This, 
 it is assumed, will give the whole population an interest 
 in waging war against malefactors and overcome the 
 reluctance to give evidence. It does not always work 
 that way. In an Arab village, near, a house where I 
 was staying in the Delta, two travelling hawkers had 
 recently been robbed and murdered. The omdeh,
 
 250 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 himself one of the Arab villagers, was called upon to 
 produce the murderers, whose identity was known to 
 every man, woman, and child in the place. He pro- 
 fessed his inability to do so, and thereupon was ordered 
 to enrol half a dozen extra watchmen, and pay them 
 the regulation number of piastres out of the village 
 funds. The omdeh induced six of his own friends and 
 associates to accept these offices, with an understand- 
 ing that on receiving their salaries they should give 
 them back to him to be redistributed among the en- 
 lightened ratepayers. Thus the administrative pres- 
 sure was not felt, and the penalty inflicted on the 
 peasant population was rendered nugatory. 
 
 A rather curious appendix to the story was the 
 attitude of the inhabitants of a small outlying hamlet 
 attached to the village. These people were not Arabs, 
 but Egyptian fellahin. They protested that they had 
 nothing to do with the murder, which had been ar- 
 ranged by the Arabs, possibly with the connivance of 
 their omdeh and the sheikhs, who, at any rate, 
 had made themselves accessories after the fact. The 
 hamlet dwellers did not feel called upon to denounce 
 these wrongdoers to the authorities, but they did not 
 see why they should suffer for their misdeeds, and they 
 stoutly refused to recognize the increased police-tax 
 or contribute to it in any way. 
 
 In these matters Egypt is suffering, like other Orien- 
 tal countries just now, through the transition from the 
 old ways to the new. We have endeavoured to adapt
 
 HALTING JUSTICE 251 
 
 the procedure and the principles of Western law among 
 a people who have not yet assimilated its spirit. Under 
 the ancient dispensation criminal justice was rough 
 and ferocious. Still, it did manage to keep down 
 violent crime by the effectual method of striking terror. 
 The law might not be loved, but it could make itself 
 felt in a forcible fashion when the occasion arose. 
 
 If a murder was reported to the Pasha, and he con- 
 sidered it advisable, or was requested from Cairo, 
 to make an example, he acted without undue formality. 
 He came down to the village, and called upon the omdeh 
 to produce the murderer forthwith. The headman, 
 probably knowing all about the crime, delivered up 
 the criminal if he could, and the Pasha promptly hanged 
 him ; or, if the right man was not available, the omdeh 
 surrendered somebody else to the gallows. If the 
 omdeh could not find anybody within a reasonable 
 time, the Pasha very likely hanged him, caused several 
 of the principal residents to 'eat stick,' ordered his 
 zaptiehs to seize some portable property or cattle as 
 a fine on the community at large, and went away. 
 
 This very arbitrary conduct had at any rate the 
 effect of reminding the villagers, with dramatic em- 
 phasis, that murder was a proceeding which might 
 involve unpleasant consequences for somebody, or 
 perhaps everybody; and that the commission of mur- 
 der was, therefore, an indulgence which, in the general 
 interest, should be kept within due limits. It was 
 not ideal justice, and no trouble was taken to obtain
 
 252 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 conclusive evidence of guilt. The innocent often 
 suffered, but the guilty did not always escape ; and 
 it was not left to the private individual to assist the 
 law as a witness at his own personal inconvenience and 
 risk. 
 
 The old system cannot be commended ; but it was 
 probably not a whit more distasteful to the people 
 than the one we have put in its place. We cannot, of 
 course, go back to the traditional Oriental method. 
 We can only hope that the blessings of the Western 
 procedure will gradually gain comprehension and 
 sympathy. And in the meanwhile we must take pains 
 to render the administration of criminal justice as 
 effective as it can be made under the conditions, and 
 a great deal more effective than it is at present.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 SOME RECENT REFORMS 
 
 IN the preceding chapters I have said something of 
 the defects which mar our administrative record, some- 
 thing of the difficulties which still remain to be sur- 
 mounted. Yet, taken as a whole, the record is one to 
 which we are entitled to turn with satisfaction. In the 
 recent history of our race there is no chapter more 
 creditable than this of our relations with the peoples of 
 the Nile basin during the past thirty years. That 
 space of time, brief enough in the life of nations, al- 
 most covers our occupation of Egypt and our control 
 of its affairs. And within it a small number of British 
 statesmen, soldiers, civil officials, engineers, and edu- 
 cationalists have performed a work of organization 
 and reconstruction which cannot easily be overpraised. 
 Nothing that England has done in Asia, and Germany 
 or France in Africa, has been so swift, so certain, so 
 unquestionably beneficial to the world at large and to 
 the populations immediately concerned. 
 
 At' the opening of the eighties of the last century 
 Egypt lay, as it were, waterlogged and half-derelict, 
 rolling heavily across the track of international politics. 
 In the later years of Ismail it had become a bad example 
 
 253
 
 254 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 of Oriental misgovernment, rendered worse by a veneer 
 of Western extravagance and vulgarity. Ismail's 
 palaces and railways and boulevards and theatres 
 and steam-yachts, his caravanserai of wives and concu- 
 bines, and the brigades and batteries he quartered on 
 the Sudan, or threw away in Abyssinia all these had 
 to be paid for by millions of ill-fed, overworked, and 
 ruthlessly plundered peasants. It was the fellah, 
 grubbing in the Nile mud, and dabbling in the wasted 
 and unbridled Nile flood, who in the last resort bore 
 the burden alike of Turkish pashadom and cosmopoli- 
 tan usury. These kept their fangs buried fast in the 
 luckless country, even when Ismail was cleared out, 
 not because he had spoiled the Egyptians, but because 
 the bondholders were afraid he might begin to spoil 
 them. The rich lands of the Delta and the river banks, 
 which once fed the populace of Rome with corn, and 
 are now feeding the mills of Lancashire with cotton, 
 could barely find a living for their own inhabitants. 
 The concessionnaire, and the foreign middleman, 
 waxed fat, under the shelter of the international con- 
 ventions and jurisdictions which the Powers had ex- 
 torted from the weakness of the Sultanate and the 
 insolvency of the Khediviate. Military insubordina- 
 tion had followed social disruption, and three very ordi- 
 nary colonels might have overthrown the government, 
 and restored the regime of the Mamelukes, if England, 
 as usual in 'a fit of absence of mind,' had not muddled 
 into armed intervention at the critical moment.
 
 SOME RECENT REFORMS 255 
 
 It was one of our lucky blunders. It saved Egypt 
 from France, from the Turks, to some extent even 
 from the bourses ; it placed us securely astride the 
 short route to India ; it eventually created for us a new 
 empire in the Sudan, and rescued that great area from 
 anarchy and barbarism ; it initiated the regeneration 
 of the Nile valley, financial, economic, political, so 
 that now, while those who were young when the process 
 began are not yet old, the country is more prosperous, 
 more stable, more progressive, more honestly governed 
 than it has been for many centuries. In the last few 
 years, lit by the fires that have flared from continent to 
 continent, throbbing to the march of armies and the 
 movement of world-diplomacy, we have left our men 
 to do their work on the Nile almost unnoticed. But 
 the work has gone on, quietly and steadily, though with 
 many checks and set-backs ; and if we take stock of it 
 to-day we see that the process of reform is maintained, 
 and that with every year that passes we are doing 
 something to redeem the promise with which we 
 entered upon military occupation of the Khedivial 
 dominions. We are preparing the Egyptian people 
 for self-government and self-realisation ; though not 
 in our time, or for, long afterwards, will the goal be 
 reached. 
 
 Not long ago, among the papers 'presented to both 
 Houses of Parliament by command of His Majesty,' 
 was one headed 'Egypt, No. 3 (1913),' which I have no 
 doubt was consigned, for the most part unread, to
 
 256 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 numerous legislative and editorial waste-paper baskets. 
 Such is the fate of the greater part of that invaluable 
 material for the writing of history which His Majesty's 
 Stationery Office discharges with wasteful profusion 
 upon an unregarding world. But 'Egypt, No. 3 
 (1913),' was worth a glance if only for its authorship. 
 It was a 'Despatch from His Majesty's Agent and 
 Consul-General at Cairo' --that is to say, from the 
 leader and administrator who has written his name so 
 deeply, not only upon the sands of North-East Africa, 
 but also upon the soil of Europe and Asia. Fourteen 
 years ago Lord Kitchener was called away from the 
 Nile to play his part on the greater stage of affairs, 
 to break down the Boer resistance in South Africa, and 
 then to command the armies of India. But now, 
 after a long absence, he is back in Egypt, not as the 
 strategist and war-lord, but as the supervisor of eco- 
 nomic and political reforms ; and in the two concise 
 Annual Reports, in which he gives an account of his 
 stewardship, we can discover how far Egypt has gone 
 on the road to stable nationhood since Major Kitchener, 
 R.E., was commanding the Egyptian cavalry when 
 Wolseley dragged his slow column up the Nile nine- 
 and-twenty years ago. 
 
 Egypt, when Lord Kitchener took over the British 
 Agency at Cairo in July 1911, was under a political 
 cloud. The three previous years had been marked by a 
 good deal of economic depression, the natural and in- 
 evitable result of the excessive inflation of the preceding
 
 SOME RECENT REFORMS 257 
 
 period which culminated in the collapse of the great 
 speculative boom of 1907. The public revenue was 
 increasing and the general resources of the country 
 were untouched ; but the banking and business com- 
 munity was in disorder, and there were numerous 
 failures. This disturbance of the financial atmosphere 
 may have helped to render Egypt more easily respon- 
 sive to that wave of unrest which passed over the 
 Mohammedan world after 1908. The operations of 
 the Young Turk Committee affected all Islamic coun- 
 tries more or less, and in Cairo the Committee had its 
 agents in close touch with the groups of semi-educated 
 young native agitators who were equally opposed to the 
 Khediviate, as the representative of Turkish autocracy, 
 and the British control, as the embodiment of alien 
 and Christian domination. Sir Eldon Gorst's liberal 
 and conciliatory attitude, and his well-meant efforts 
 to extend the sphere of local self-government, had been 
 misinterpreted, as he himself mournfully acknowledged, 
 into 'an attempt to pacify the Nationalist agitation 
 by ill-timed concessions and an intentional diminu- 
 tion of British authority.' In February 1910, Boutros 
 Pasha, the Coptic Prime Minister, was murdered by 
 Wardani, a young Nationalist, and the trial of the 
 murderer gave occasion for many demonstrations of 
 Mussulman fanaticism and anti-English feeling. It 
 was discovered that a seditious society, in intimate 
 relations with the Young Turk Committee, was in 
 existence in Cairo. The connection of these agitators
 
 258 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 with the abortive plot to murder the Khedive, the 
 Premier, and Lord Kitchener himself, in July 1912, 
 was not open to much doubt. 
 
 The appointment of Lord Kitchener at this juncture 
 was an exceedingly wise step. Sir Eldon Gorst was an 
 accomplished and high-minded administrator and an 
 able financier. But his amiable temperament, his 
 unobtrusive manner, his rooted objection to all methods 
 that bore even the appearance of harshness, his dislike 
 for the assertion, or even the show, of autocratic au- 
 thority, had created a somewhat unfortunate im- 
 pression. He had seemed a little wanting in that 
 energy of character which Orientals expect in their 
 rulers. The imputation would clearly not lie against 
 the resolute soldier who had overthrown the Khalifa 
 and humbled the Boers. Everybody in Egypt knew 
 that Kitchener was a strong man, the sort of man who 
 would 'stand no nonsense' if it came to the point; and 
 nothing could have been more salutary for the Farid 
 Beys, the Shawishes, and the fluent young persons of 
 the Cairo and Constantinople press and the Swiss 
 congresses, than to find themselves confronted by one 
 who had been the master of many legions, and had 
 wielded the sword as well as the pen. Lord Kitchener's 
 presence at the Cairo Agency was the most practical 
 commentary on Sir Edward Grey's statement in the 
 House of Commons that no attempts to weaken the 
 British control would be of the slightest effect. It 
 showed the agitators that England still meant business,
 
 SOME RECENT REFORMS 259 
 
 and that 'Committee' methods would not work in 
 Egypt. 
 
 Lord Kitchener, however, took a sedate view of the 
 matter. He knew that the activity of the cosmo- 
 politan, and more or less denationalised, agitators did 
 not really express the sentiments of the great mass of 
 the population. Egypt was not 'seething with dis- 
 affection,' though there was more yeasty fermentation 
 among the articulate minority of the large towns than 
 is good for an Eastern people. On this subject he spoke 
 a few plain words in his first Report. The excitement, 
 he wrote, caused by the 'totally unexpected action of 
 Italy, in declaring war against the Turkish Empire 
 and proceeding to invade Tripoli and Cyrenaica,' was 
 widespread and deep; but 'notwithstanding the 
 mischievous efforts of some of the more irresponsible 
 native newspapers, the people of Egypt have displayed 
 the most praiseworthy self-restraint .... Egypt was 
 declared neutral, and that neutrality has been strictly 
 maintained by Egyptians, who have thus shown an 
 admirable devotion to duty, law, and order, in spite of 
 the intensely sympathetic and religious feelings raised 
 by the long struggle which has been going on so close 
 to their own frontier.' 
 
 The same conditions prevailed the following year 
 under circumstances of still greater provocation. The 
 past year had been one of considerable anxiety owing to 
 the war in the Near East. On the war itself Lord 
 Kitchener does not offer any comment beyond one
 
 260 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 significant sentence : 'Defective military arrangements 
 appear to be responsible for the breakdown of one of the 
 finest fighting armies that existed in the world.' But as 
 to the internal agitation in Egypt we read : 
 
 I am glad to be able to report that political feeling in other 
 respects has lately been much calmer, and that the considera- 
 tion of practical reforms for the good of the country has 
 apparently become more interesting to the majority of the 
 people than discussions on abstruse political questions 
 which are unlikely to lead to any useful result. On returning 
 to Egypt after a long absence I have been forcibly struck by 
 the fact that the formerly homogeneous body of intelligent 
 Mohammedan inhabitants, who constituted a collective 
 community based on fixed social laws, is now split up and 
 divided into parties and factions of a political character. 
 Whatever the value of a party system may be in Western 
 political life it is evident that its application to an intensely 
 democratic community, the essential basis of whose social 
 system is the brotherhood of man, combined with respect for 
 learning and the experience of age, is an unnatural proceeding, 
 fraught with inevitable division and weakness. The develop- 
 ment and elevation of the character of a people depends 
 mainly on the growth of self-control and the power to domi- 
 nate natural impulses, as well as on the practice of unobtru- 
 sive self-reliance and perseverance, combined with reasoned 
 determination. None of these elements of advance are as- 
 sisted in any way by party strife. Calm and well-considered 
 interest in political affairs is good for both the governed 
 and those who rule; but factitious interest, generally based 
 on misrepresentation and maintained by party funds and 
 party tactics, does nothing to elevate or develop the intelli- 
 gent character of an Oriental race. 1 
 
 1 Egypt, No. I (1912), p. 2.
 
 SOME RECENT REFORMS 261 
 
 It is not through politics that salvation will come. 
 'The future development of the vast mass of the in- 
 habitants of Egypt depends upon improved condi- 
 tions of agriculture, which, with educational progress, 
 are the most essential steps towards the material and 
 moral advance of the people.' Lord Kitchener, having 
 restored confidence in the existing system and the 
 authority of the law by making it plain that all attempts 
 at disorder would be met by stern repression, has 
 devoted himself to agrarian and educational reforms. 
 He has been the friend of the fellah, of that ignorant, 
 enduring, invincibly laborious cultivator, who has 
 wrung a subsistence from the dry soil and wet brown 
 mud of the Nile land through all the changes of the 
 ages. 'The fellah,' says Lord Kitchener, 'remains 
 the same as he has always been, one of the best and 
 most hard-working types of humanity, somewhat 
 conservative, like most cultivators, and hardly real- 
 ising the changes that have taken place around him.' 
 
 He has been slow to understand that it is possible 
 for him to get not merely too little water, which has 
 always been his standing anxiety, but too much. 
 We have so improved the irrigation machinery that 
 the farmer has become careless and extravagant in his 
 use of the fertilising flood. Much of the land has 
 become waterlogged, especially the newly-reclaimed 
 Delta areas where there is no natural drainage, and 
 the crops have been injured. Cotton pests have arisen, 
 and the cattle decreased through want of sufficient
 
 262 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 nutriment; so that in 1911, though more land was 
 under cultivation, the harvest was a poor one. Lord 
 Kitchener set to work to remedy these defects. The 
 peasants were taught to husband the water supply, 
 drainage operations were extended in the Delta, and 
 measures taken to extirpate the cotton parasites and 
 destructive insects. More careful selection of the 
 plant was found to be requisite ; and as the poorer 
 cultivators often found it difficult to obtain good seed 
 from the merchants, who sold them inferior varieties 
 at high prices, the Government now supplies the fellah 
 with the article he requires at a reasonable price. 
 
 Another great reform is the establishment of halakas, 
 or official markets, in which the cultivators can sell 
 their cotton. During the past year halakas have been 
 established throughout the cotton-growing areas of 
 Egypt, with a view to protecting the small cultivator 
 from fraudulent practices, and in order to bring into 
 closer contact buyers and local sellers, who are thus 
 enabled to carry out their transactions at fixed centres, 
 under circumstances tending to a more regular and 
 orderly conduct of business. These halakas are paid 
 for by, and are under the direct control of, the various 
 local Councils, provincial or municipal, inspection of 
 their general working being carried out by the Ministry 
 of the Interior through the medium of a British inspec- 
 tor. The official weighing machines placed in them 
 are periodically inspected and tested by inspectors 
 attached to the Department of Weights and Measures.
 
 SOME RECENT REFORMS 263 
 
 The general working of the halakas is thus described : 
 An enclosed space about an acre in extent is taken in a 
 suitable position, in the centre of which the official 
 weighing machine is erected, and, in a prominent posi- 
 tion, a notice-board is placed, on which is daily marked 
 up in large figures the opening price of ginned cotton, 
 received by telegram from an agent in the Bourse in 
 Alexandria ; should there be a rise or fall of more thin 
 five piastres during the morning a further telegram is 
 received and posted up notifying the change. In 
 addition to this a circular is dispatched every afternoon 
 by the National Bank of Egypt at Alexandria giving 
 the latest prices of all the various kinds of cotton and 
 of seed. This notice is displayed at the markets in a 
 conspicuous position. The small farmer throughout 
 the country is thus informed of all the latest prices of 
 cotton in Alexandria, and is no longer obliged to rely 
 on information gathered from interested parties. A 
 fee of five milliemes a kantar is charged on cotton en- 
 tering the halaka, and this amount goes to meet the 
 expenses incurred by the Councils ; the owner can 
 then have all his cotton weighed free on the official 
 weighing machine, or he can, if he wishes, have a few 
 bags weighed, for verification purposes only, before 
 or after they are weighed by the purchaser. Next 
 to the manager's office is placed a branch of the Savings 
 Bank, in which the seller can deposit any money he 
 receives, should he wish to do so, and there are also 
 store-rooms to be rented.
 
 264 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 The scheme, as might be expected, has met with 
 considerable opposition from the small merchants. 
 In some places they have combined in refusing either 
 to enter the halakas or to purchase cotton that has 
 passed through them. But the enterprise is welcomed 
 by the honest buyers as giving them a fairer chance of 
 competing in the market with their less scrupulous 
 rivals, and several of the representatives of the largest 
 cotton-dealing firms in the country have given practical 
 and substantial support to the halakas. 
 
 A more important reform is that which is called the 
 Five Feddan Law. It is intended to protect the small 
 cultivator, the man who farms five Egyptian acres or 
 less, from having his land, house, or farming utensils 
 seized for debt. The principle is that of the Homestead 
 Law in the United States, and of that which makes 
 the 'bien de famille insaisissable' in France; it is also 
 that of the Punjab Land Alienation Act in India. The 
 protection of the poorer peasants in this manner was 
 rendered necessary by the action of the small foreign 
 usurers who, scattered throughout the country in the 
 villages, and financed by various banks, were able, 
 with the support of the Capitulations, to lend money 
 on mortgage to the fellaheen at exorbitant rates of 
 interest. Not even a country as agriculturally pros- 
 perous as Egypt can stand such a burden indefinitely, 
 and the inducements held out to the fellah to take the 
 first step into debt were temptations few could resist, 
 with the inevitable consequence that, once in the
 
 SOME RECENT REFORMS 265 
 
 clutches of the moneylender, there was no escape for 
 the victim until the whole of his property became so 
 involved as to bring about his expropriation. It is 
 the standing evil which attends on peasant proprietor- 
 ship everywhere, in Ireland, in Hungary, in Roumania, 
 in Bengal, and all wise governments do their best to 
 guard against it by making it difficult or impossible 
 for the peasant to expropriate the holding without 
 which he cannot exist. But with five acres free of 
 debt it is considered that the fellah can live in comfort 
 and bring up his children properly; and gradually 
 he may learn to do without the local usurer, put his 
 money into the savings banks, and raise funds when 
 he needs them by getting advances on his crops from 
 the Agricultural Bank of Egypt, which lends under 
 government restrictions, and is not allowed to exact 
 extravagant interest. 
 
 These social reforms are probably of more value to 
 the people at large, at the moment, than the remodelling 
 of the legislature and electorate which is provided by 
 the new Organic Law promulgated in July 1913. The 
 importance of this belongs to the future rather than 
 the present ; it is an extension of the principle, always 
 kept before us since the beginning of the Occupation, 
 that the Egyptians ought to be allowed as large a 
 share in the general and local administration of the 
 country as they seem able to exercise with advantage. 
 Lord Dufferin's famous Report, which initiated the 
 new system, recommended that certain representative
 
 266 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 'Institutions' should be established, though for the 
 purpose of criticism, discussion, and suggestion rather 
 than to legislate, or to control the executive. The 
 Legislative Council, constituted under the Organic 
 Law of 1883, was a consultative body of thirty members, 
 of whom fourteen were nominated by the Government. 
 It examined the budget and new laws, and communi- 
 cated its opinion on these matters to the Government, 
 which, however, is not bound to accept its advice. 
 The General Assembly included the members of the 
 Legislative Council, the six Ministers, and forty-six 
 elective members. It had nothing to do with legis- 
 lation, but no new direct personal or land tax could 
 be imposed without its consent, and no public loan 
 contracted. The General Assembly has never shown 
 itself a very practical or judicious body, and one of its 
 recent exhibitions of bad temper and bad policy was 
 the rejection of the very necessary and beneficial pro- 
 posal to extend the concession of the Suez Canal Com- 
 pany after the existing concession expires. 
 
 Under the new Organic Law the General Assembly 
 disappears, or, rather, it is merged in the Legislative 
 Council, which is reconstituted with enlarged powers 
 and membership as the Legislative Assembly. This 
 body will have eighty-nine members, of whom sixty-six 
 are elected. The country is divided into a number of 
 approximately equal circumscriptions, each sending 
 one representative to the Assembly, chosen by second- 
 ary election, through 'electors delegate,' one for every
 
 SOME RECENT REFORMS 267 
 
 fifty inhabitants. The six Cabinet Ministers are 
 ex-officio members of the Assembly; and in addition 
 the Government nominates seventeen members, under 
 a proviso which obliges it to make its selection in such 
 a manner as to secure that certain classes and races 
 have a minimum representation in the Assembly. 
 Thus the Copts will always have four representatives, 
 the Bedouins three, the merchants two, the doctors 
 two, and the engineers one. This is a judicious pro- 
 vision which might be introduced into some other 
 constitutions. Why should whole orders and pro- 
 fessions be virtually deprived of political power, as 
 they must be under purely local representation ? 
 Moreover, the members of the Legislative Assembly 
 must be elected by an absolute majority of votes, so 
 that a second ballot is taken if no candidate obtains 
 the requisite number at the first poll. 'This system,' 
 says Lord Kitchener, 'is clearly preferable to that of 
 the relative majority under which, by reason of the 
 scattering of votes among a number of candidates, the 
 election often results in a very imperfect representation 
 of the electorate.' To which we may say to Lord 
 Kitchener's countrymen, De te fabula. As a con- 
 stitutional reformer there might be scope for the energies 
 of the British Agent in Westminster as well as Cairo. 
 
 The new Legislative Assembly, like its predecessors, 
 has restricted powers. It is still held that legislation 
 and administration are the functions of the Executive 
 Government ; the Ministers are responsible to the
 
 -268 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 Khedive, not to the Assembly ; the laws will still be 
 enacted by Khedivial decrees, drafted and issued with 
 the concurrence of the British Agent. But the As- 
 sembly has now enlarged opportunities for influencing 
 legislation. It may initiate a project of law, l sauf en 
 ce qui concerne les lois constitutionnelles,' and may send 
 it up to the Council of Ministers. If the Council 
 approves, it returns the draft Bill, with or without 
 amendment, to the Assembly for public discussion ; 
 it can reject the proposal if it thinks fit, but it must 
 notify the Assembly of the reasons for its decision. 
 In the ordinary way laws will be laid before the 
 Assembly by Ministers ; if the Assembly disapproves 
 the proposal, a conference must be held ; and if no 
 agreement can be reached at this meeting the question 
 is adjourned for fifteen days, at the expiration of which 
 period the draft, in its original form or amended, must 
 again be submitted to the Legislature. If there is 
 still a difference of opinion, the Government, on the 
 initiative of the Cabinet, may dissolve the Assembly 
 and call for another general election ; or it can, if it 
 pleases, promulgate the proposed law without further 
 discussion, though not without explaining to the 
 Assembly the reasons for overriding its opinion. The 
 ultimate word in legislation, it will be seen, remains 
 with the Khedivial authority. But the new procedure 
 will ensure at least three public discussions by the 
 Legislative Assembly and one private conference with 
 Ministers, whenever there is a disagreement between 
 the Government and the Assembly concerning a project
 
 SOME RECENT REFORMS 269 
 
 of law. 'It may be anticipated with some confidence 
 that a project which has been the subject of such 
 prolonged discussion will not be promulgated by the 
 Government against the wishes of the Legislative 
 Assembly unless there are weighty reasons for such a 
 course ; while the lengthy debates to which such a 
 project has given rise, and its promulgation, if it is 
 considered to have successfully stood the test of so 
 much discussion, may be taken as a safe guarantee 
 that the law is really sound.' 
 
 In this way the more educated and influential mem- 
 bers of the Egyptian community are acquiring a gradual 
 association with the business of public affairs. The 
 Government is still nominally absolute; it keeps high 
 politics and the final control of legislation and adminis- 
 tration in its own hands. But if it does not recognise 
 the existence of a 'Sovereign People,' it consults its 
 subjects, it hears their views, it is open to receive 
 remonstrances and suggestions from those who are in 
 contact with the life of the towns and villages. And 
 that is the Oriental version of 'democratic ideas'; it 
 is all that Eastern tradition, so far as it has been kept 
 clear of Occidental influences, expects from a just and 
 enlightened ruler; it is probably as much in the way 
 of representative institutions as Egypt can at present 
 safely stand. But it is a step in advance, a further 
 stage in the political training of the Egyptian nation. 
 If the Legislative Assembly uses its present oppor- 
 tunities judiciously, it may eventually be entrusted 
 with larger powers and fuller responsibilities.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 
 
 THE regeneration of Egypt is still hampered by the 
 fetters clamped upon the country in the past. The 
 Khedivial Government and its English advisers have 
 to carry on their administrative and reforming duties 
 under the vexatious international restrictions from 
 which they have not yet succeeded in disembarrassing 
 themselves. Even if the Legislative Assembly were 
 clothed with the fullest parliamentary prerogatives, 
 as we understand them in Western communities, it 
 could not be a 'sovereign' legislature; it could not 
 pass laws which would be enforced throughout Egypt 
 and bind all its inhabitants ; nor can the Khedive 
 and his Council of Ministers ; nor could the British 
 Government if it so far departed from all its practices 
 and professions as to make the attempt. For Egypt 
 is still held in the clutch of the Mixed Tribunals and 
 the Capitulations ; and though she has now, under 
 the Anglo-French Convention of 1904, almost resumed 
 her financial and economic freedom, she remains in 
 humiliating tutelage as regards the administration of 
 justice and the exercise both of legislative and execu- 
 tive authority. The horde of foreigners and foreign 
 
 270
 
 THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 271 
 
 subjects are exempt from the jurisdiction of the Egyp- 
 tian courts and largely freed from the restraints and 
 obligations of the ordinary Egyptian laws. The 
 Mixed Tribunals, established by Nubar Pasha in 1876, 
 at the time when the hand of the European creditor 
 lay heaviest upon Egypt, decide all civil suits in which 
 European subjects or Americans are parties. And 
 these courts are independent of the Government, 
 which can neither appoint nor dismiss the judges, who 
 are nominated by eleven European Powers, great and 
 small, and by the United States. They also try cer- 
 tain penal cases, and offences against the bankruptcy 
 laws in which foreigners are concerned. If a foreign 
 subject is accused of a crime he is not amenable to the 
 Egyptian Parquet, but is brought before the court of 
 his own Consulate, which may or may not have a 
 competent judicial officer to deal with him. 
 
 It follows from this arrangement that the Mixed 
 Tribunals really exercise a dispensing authority over 
 Egyptian legislation, civil and criminal ; for the judges 
 not only interpret the law but they decide whether 
 they will accept and administer it. If they choose 
 to hold that any Khedivial decree is ultra vires or con- 
 trary to the Capitulations, or otherwise unsatisfactory, 
 they can and do ignore it. Almost every act of the 
 Government is done on sufferance, since there is no 
 means of compelling the Mixed Tribunals to recognise 
 and obey it. In fact the judges of the Tribunals can 
 make such modifications of the law as they please
 
 272 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 by agreement amongst themselves, while the Govern- 
 ment is powerless to interfere with them. These 
 judges have now been constituted a regular legislative 
 committee with authority to legislate for foreigners; 
 but any Power, however trivial its interests in Egypt, 
 may object to an amendment of the existing mixed 
 codes, and cause indefinite delays. 
 
 This new scheme of legislation for European residents 
 is regarded by Lord Kitchener as 'a notable advance 
 on the previous state of affairs one, indeed, which 
 has cost the Egyptian Government, and more partic- 
 ularly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a very consider- 
 able effort.' But it still leaves the judges with power 
 to make the law which they themselves are supposed 
 to interpret, and it still places the Egyptian Executive 
 at the mercy of irresponsible nominees, appointed by 
 a dozen external authorities ; so that it cannot be 
 considered as 'more than a temporary makeshift, and 
 a more or less satisfactory palliative of the legislative 
 impotence under which the country has suffered so 
 long.' Thus the important Five Feddan law, of which 
 mention has been made, could not have come into 
 operation if the Mixed Legislative Council had refused 
 its assent ; for many of the moneylenders affected by it 
 are Greeks, Italians, and other foreigners. 
 
 The Consular criminal jurisdiction is also a nuisance 
 and sometimes a scandal. Here, for instance, is a 
 suggestive passage from the Report :
 
 THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 273 
 
 WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC 
 
 Under the limits imposed on their activity by the Capitula- 
 tions, the Egyptian police have done their best during the 
 year to cope with this deplorable evil. Over noo girls of 
 minor age have been met on disembarking and handed over 
 to various authorities who accept responsibility for their 
 welfare, while others have been rescued from vice and con- 
 signed to the charge of institutions fitted to take care of them. 
 In certain cases coming within the jurisdiction of the native 
 tribunals, heavy sentences have been passed for instigating 
 or facilitating the debauchery of minors. It is to be hoped 
 that the recent visit of Mr. Alexander Coote, the Secretary of 
 the International Bureau for the Repression of the White 
 Slave Traffic, to this country may help to organise and 
 strengthen the societies which already exist here for this pur- 
 pose. In present circumstances, however, as the trade is 
 carried on, not by Egyptians, but by foreigners, who are only 
 subject to their own special jurisdictions, it is impossible for 
 the Egyptian Government to deal effectively with the 
 situation. 1 
 
 It must also be remembered that it is not only for- 
 eigners who are amenable to this extra-territorial jus- 
 tice. The Mixed Courts try all civil suits in which 
 one party is European and the other native. There 
 are Egyptian judges in all these courts, sitting with 
 the European lawyers who are appointed on the nomi- 
 nation of their respective Governments. So a native 
 proprietor who may have a dispute with a European 
 land company or its agents knows that, if the quarrel 
 comes to be fought out by litigation, he will have to 
 
 1 Egypt, No. i (1913), p. 36.
 
 274 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 go to the Mixed Courts, that is to say to what is practi- 
 cally a foreign tribunal administering a foreign system 
 of law. He will require the assistance of French-speak- 
 ing counsel, acquainted with European codes and 
 procedure ; and he may be carried into legal depths 
 which he would never have to sound if he could take 
 his case to the local mudir's court with the assistance 
 of an advocate familiar with colloquial Arabic. The 
 whole process is so complicated and expensive that 
 poor natives cannot resort to it, and they probably 
 suffer some amount of injustice from the less reputable 
 class of Europeans in consequence. 
 
 Lord Kitchener does not, however, suggest the com- 
 plete abolition of the mixed jurisdiction. He thinks 
 that it is still necessary for the due protection of the 
 very large financial interests held by foreigners in 
 Egypt. But the Tribunals need thorough-going reform. 
 For one thing they are no longer so well conducted as 
 they used to be in the early days of the Occupation ; 
 they do not command the services of judges of the 
 high stamp of Sir John Scott and his French colleagues, 
 nor have they quite the same reputation for indepen- 
 dence or for effectiveness. Moreover they are dominated 
 by principles, which we do not recognise in the British 
 Empire, and are entirely opposed to the English and 
 American judicial and administrative spirit. 
 
 The Mixed Courts bear witness to the influence of 
 the French ideas which prevailed in Egypt all through 
 the middle portion of the nineteenth century. They
 
 THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 275 
 
 imported the French institution of the Parquet, and 
 the French conception of the entire magisterial and 
 judicial body as a department of state. The judges, 
 the magistrates, the crown lawyers, and public prose- 
 cutors, the collective Parquet, are a legal hierarchy, a 
 portion of the executive machine. The judge often 
 takes upon himself the main burden of bringing a 
 criminal to justice, and extracting, by his own inter- 
 rogatories, that 'confession' to which the Parquet 
 attaches so much importance. This is not the English 
 view of the proper functions of the bench, and it does 
 not fit in with the political ideas we are endeavouring 
 to implant in the minds of educated Egyptians. The 
 present Judicial Adviser has suggested that various 
 changes in the organisation and procedure of the courts 
 should be introduced. But here the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment is met by the old trouble. Nothing can be done 
 except by negotiation with a bevy of Foreign OfBces 
 which cling obstinately to their lever for interfering 
 with the affairs of Egypt. 'I regard it as very unfor- 
 tunate,' says Lord Kitchener, 'that political opposition 
 should prevent the adoption of reforms in these courts 
 which the responsible Government of the country 
 considers essential.' 
 
 Unfortunate it is ; but it is one of the misfortunes 
 from which Egypt can never be completely liberated 
 so long as she continues to be burdened by the Ca- 
 pitulations. 
 
 Every reader of the books and official publications
 
 276 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 on Egypt must be very familiar with this name. The 
 thing confronts one at every turn in the literature of 
 the subject, and it has hampered and obstructed us 
 constantly since the beginning of the Occupation. 
 British officials have found it the worst possible ob- 
 stacle in their path, and the most serious drag on their 
 efforts. 
 
 Most people know roughly what the Capitulations 
 are ; but it is only the resident in Egypt who is fully 
 aware of the manner in which their mostly baneful - 
 influence is exercised. The Capitulations are the 
 treaties and conventions which give Europeans in the 
 East the right of exemption from the local tribunals. 
 In Turkey and Egypt they date back several centuries. 
 They are a testimony, not to the weakness, but to the 
 power, of the Ottoman Empire in the past. Moham- 
 medanism, in its haughty disdain for the Christian 
 dogs, had no legal system which could apply to them; 
 the law of Islam was too sacred to extend its protection 
 to infidels. The European Powers were, therefore, 
 allowed to arrange that if their nationals committed 
 crimes their own Consular representatives should try 
 the offenders. It was a valuable privilege in times 
 when the Christian in the Moslem territories was 
 scarcely treated as a human being ; and it has been 
 jealously maintained and extended as the numbers of 
 European traders and settlers in the East increased. 
 When we took the affairs of Egypt in hand we found 
 that pretty nearly every civilised Power, small and
 
 THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 277 
 
 great, had a Capitulation in full working order for its 
 own subjects. Thus there was, and is, an imperium 
 in imperio, or rather some twenty-three of them. 
 Every Consul is the privileged protector and guardian 
 of a number of persons who owe no allegiance to the 
 nominal head of the state, and stand outside the ad- 
 ministration of justice by his officers. If a foreigner 
 commits a crime he cannot be arrested by the Egyptian 
 police, nor may he be brought up before an Egyptian 
 judge, and tried by Egyptian law. The police or the 
 aggrieved party can only bring him before his own 
 consular court. And before he can be punished it 
 must be proved that he has committed an offence, 
 not only against the law of Egypt, but against the law 
 of his own state, or at any rate against such local law 
 as the consular authorities agree to recognise. 
 
 In the old days this privilege was jealously asserted 
 by the Powers whose subjects were settled as residents 
 and traders in Egypt, as in other parts of the Turkish 
 Empire. There was a legitimate distrust of local 
 justice and its administration. No European cared 
 to be at the mercy of magistrates and police, who might 
 be corrupt, and were certain to be ignorant of Western 
 legal principles ; and who were bound to obey any 
 ordinance issued by a despotic Oriental government. 
 Without the protection afforded by the Capitulations, 
 foreign traders could hardly have found it possible to 
 carry on business in Egypt at all; and the existence 
 of the European mercantile community was, on the
 
 278 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 whole, advantageous to the country, and could not 
 be easily dispensed with. Thus the Capitulations had 
 their uses so long as Egypt remained under purely 
 native rule. But since the influence of a Western 
 Power has prevailed at the centre of authority, and 
 permeated the entire political organism, they are 
 scarcely necessary, and, on the other hand, they lend 
 themselves easily to abuse and disorder. The Egyptian 
 police may not always deal successfully with native 
 offenders ; but with foreigners their difficulties are 
 more serious. They cannot even punish trifling in- 
 fractions of their own regulations without so much 
 trouble that they often decline to make the attempt, 
 and prefer to let the peccant alien escape the penalty 
 of his misdeeds. 
 
 In England and elsewhere a driver of a vehicle who 
 disobeys the police orders as to the speed limit in cities 
 or the rule of the road is summarily disposed of. In 
 Cairo, a lively young Frenchman, anxious to test the 
 paces of his new motor-car, dashes through the crowded 
 outlet of the great Nile bridge, sends donkeys and 
 loaded camels scurrying in alarm out of their course, 
 endangers the lives of pedestrians as he cuts round a 
 corner on his wrong side, and finally impinges upon a 
 loaded trolley, and pulls up, having done some damage 
 to woodwork and human limbs. If he were a native 
 Effendi the police would arrest him, hale him before a 
 magistrate, and have him duly fined or imprisoned. 
 As a European, they can only take his name and
 
 THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 279 
 
 threaten him with proceedings before his consular 
 court. In a case like this they would probably succeed 
 in getting the offender punished that is, always sup- 
 posing his conduct constitutes a breach of the French 
 code as well as a violation of the Egyptian police rules. 
 But suppose there is some doubt in the matter, and 
 the foreigner feels himself the victim of a grievance ? 
 Naturally the first person he goes to for redress is his 
 Consul, who is more interested in assisting his fellow- 
 countryman to get out of a difficulty than in further- 
 ing the ends of Egyptian justice. 
 
 In the consular courts of the greater Western Powers 
 there is, of course, no sort of disposition to use the 
 international privilege in order to shield vulgar crimi- 
 nals ; indeed, I have heard Englishmen aver that this 
 judicial impartiality is carried so far that an accused 
 British subject might sometimes have a better chance 
 of acquittal if he were tried before the native judges. 
 But certain of the other consulates are less particular. 
 Their main object is to protect and serve their own 
 nationals, even if these happen to deserve small in- 
 dulgence from society and the law. It is common 
 knowledge that illicit pursuits and immoral practices 
 have been carried on more or less openly under the 
 shelter of the Capitulations. A horde of Greeks, 
 Levantines, Italians, Algerians, Maltese, and non- 
 descripts of all kinds descended upon Egypt in Ismail's 
 time, and many of them or their descendants are there 
 still, all prepared to claim the protection of a foreign
 
 28o EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 flag. The smuggler of hashish, the keeper of a gambling 
 hell, the seller of poisoned intoxicants, the owner of a 
 night-house, may belong to this body of persons. In 
 the interests of public security and order the authori- 
 ties ought to be able to suppress or coerce them 
 promptly and effectually. But the cumbrous Capi- 
 tulation system ties their hands. They cannot act 
 without the concurrence of the Consuls, and they are 
 not allowed to exercise the ordinary powers with which 
 the police are armed against the criminal and disorderly 
 classes. The European scoundrel defies them, and 
 he is supported by his diplomatic agency, which will 
 not allow international rights to be pared away, even 
 at the risk of encouraging international ruffianism. 
 And in our efforts to reform Egyptian justice and 
 diminish crime we are constantly brought up against 
 this solid barrier of alien privilege. 
 
 The true remedy is the abolition, or rather the modi- 
 fication, of the Capitulations, on which it is under- 
 stood that the Government has again quite recently 
 approached the European Powers. 1 If the Capitula- 
 
 1 'A short time ago a Russian subject was, at the request of the Consular 
 authorities, arrested by the Egyptian police and handed over to them for 
 deportation to Russia. I am not familiar with the details of the case, neither, 
 for the purposes of my present argument, is any knowledge of those details 
 required. The nature of the offence of which this man, Adamovitch by 
 name, was accused, as also the question of whether he was guilty or innocent 
 of that offence, are altogether beside the point. The legal obligation of the 
 Egyptian Government to comply with the request that the man should be 
 handed over to the Russian Consular authorities would have been precisely 
 the same if he had been accused of no offence at all. The result, however, 
 has been to touch one of the most tender points in the English political
 
 THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 281 
 
 tions were abandoned, the Mixed Tribunals could 
 be swept away and replaced by native courts, in which, 
 for some time at least, European judges or assessors 
 would be employed as well as Egyptians ; and the 
 whole vexatious system of international interference 
 in domestic legislation would disappear. The Capitu- 
 lations, valuable enough so long as Egypt was involved 
 in Turkish misrule or local chaos, are obsolete now 
 that she has a stable government and an enlightened 
 system of law and administration. But whether our 
 diplomacy can succeed in the requisite process of bar- 
 gaining remains to be seen. France would not object, 
 for her acquiescence seems to be implied by the Treaty 
 of 1904. l But it is different with some others of the 
 
 conscience. It has become clear that a country which is not, indeed, British 
 territory, but which is held by a British garrison, and in which British in- 
 fluence is predominant, affords no safe asylum for a political refugee. With- 
 out in any way wishing to underrate the importance of this consideration, I 
 think it necessary to point out that this is only one out of the many anomalies 
 which might be indicated in the working of that most perplexing political 
 creation entitled the Egyptian Government and administration. Many 
 instances might, in fact, be cited which, albeit they are less calculated to 
 attract public attention in this country, afford even stronger ground for 
 holding that the time has come for reforming the system hitherto known as 
 that of the Capitulations.' Lord Cromer on 'The Capitulations in Egypt' 
 in the Nineteenth Century and After, July 1913. 
 
 1 The clause of the Anglo-French Agreement, which was at first kept 
 secret, but has now been published, runs as follows : 
 
 'In the event of their [His Britannic Majesty's Government] considering 
 it desirable to introduce in Egypt reforms tending to assimilate the Egyptian 
 legislative system to that in force in other civilised countries, the Government 
 of the French Republic will not refuse to entertain any such proposals, on 
 the understanding that His Britannic Majesty's Government will agree to 
 entertain the suggestions that the Government of the French Republic may 
 have to make to them with a view of introducing similar reforms in Morocco.
 
 282 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 large and little Powers, who will not give up their last 
 political foothold in the Nile Valley, and their oppor- 
 tunity for bringing pressure to bear on the de facto 
 rulers of Egypt, without some consideration. More- 
 over, they can always urge with plausibility that they 
 have no guarantee for the permanence of the existing 
 situation. For to them Egypt is still a semi-inde- 
 pendent State, tributary to the Ottoman sultanate. 
 We are not formally responsible for its destinies ; we 
 are, it may be repeated, only temporarily providing 
 the Khedive with some British troops to assist him in 
 keeping order, and with a British Consul-General 
 and a few other officials who are kind enough to give 
 their 'advice' to his Ministers. You are, the Foreign 
 Offices may say, pledged to terminate your Occupa- 
 tion some time ; it may suit you, for what we know, to 
 redeem your pledge ten years, or two years, hence, 
 and then our subjects will need the safeguard of the 
 Capitulations as much as ever. 
 
 The unanswerable reply to all such contentions would 
 be to dismiss the fiction of a temporary Occupation 
 and declare boldly that Egypt is a British Protectorate, 
 and that the British Empire is, and will remain, re- 
 sponsible for its external safety and its internal order. 
 It is on the whole creditable to the self-restraint of 
 English diplomacy that it has forborne to take this 
 step during the past few years. With Austria convert- 
 ing its occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina into 
 formal incorporation, and Italy seizing the Tripolitaine,
 
 THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 283 
 
 it would have seemed natural enough that an English 
 Protectorate should have been proclaimed, particularly 
 as that step would have been extremely beneficial to 
 Egypt, besides making it clear to all the world that 
 we intended to maintain our position in the Eastern 
 Mediterranean. But we acted wisely in declining to 
 lend ourselves, even in appearance, to the enterprise of 
 despoiling Turkey in the hour of her distresses, and 
 inflicting a further shock upon Mussulman sentiment. 
 Moreover, the conversion of our anomalous super- 
 vision into a definite political control would be deeply 
 unpopular in Egypt, however advantageous to all 
 classes of the population. 
 
 Yet it would undoubtedly simplify the difficult 
 business we have undertaken in the Lower Nile lands. 
 The reports of Lord Cromer, Sir Eldon Gorst, and 
 Lord Kitchener bear constant testimony to the in- 
 convenience of reforming an Oriental country through 
 the medium of its own government. In Egypt we 
 are at once responsible and irresponsible. We rule 
 through the Khedive and his Ministers ; and we have 
 to get the right things done by a mixture of admonition 
 and veiled pressure, which must throw a heavy strain 
 upon the tact, temper, and firmness of all parties con- 
 cerned. The Khedive himself would probably have 
 as little cause for regret as anybody if the Occupation 
 were converted into a Protectorate, and if His Majesty's 
 Consul-General at Cairo became the British Resident. 
 But we owe it to ourselves, and to the pledges we have
 
 284 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 made to the world, to maintain the present system 
 unless it is rendered clearly intolerable by causes which 
 affect the British Empire and its relations to other 
 Powers more than Egypt itself. 
 
 We have done much on the Lower Nile with our 
 hands tied. How much we can do where we are free 
 to act with a single eye to the good of the subject race, 
 we have shown in the Sudan. Something has been 
 said in previous chapters of the progress made by that 
 great tropical dependency of Britain, as it virtually 
 is, under the beneficent despotism of Sir Reginald 
 Wingate and his staff of military and civil officials. 
 Lord Kitchener's testimony to the value of the work 
 is given in a few eloquent sentences of his latest Report : 
 
 When we conquered the Sudan there was hardly a single 
 inhabitant who possessed any money, and, with the exception 
 of the fighting men, the whole population was practically 
 starving. Nothing, I think, strikes one more in revisiting 
 the Sudan to-day than the great increase which has taken 
 place in the individual prosperity of its inhabitants. This 
 increased prosperity, which is the result of careful adminis- 
 tration, has been so equally divided throughout the entire 
 population that it is not too much to say that there is now 
 hardly a poor man in the Sudan. Unlike the Egyptian 
 fellahin, the Sudan cultivators are not bound down by debts, 
 and have not, therefore, to struggle to meet the exorbitant 
 interest of the usurers who prey upon this class in Egypt. 
 In the Sudan the benefits of peace have been fully reaped by 
 the cultivators, and the increased facilities of communication 
 have brought markets hitherto undreamt of to their doors. 
 The development of the rich products of the country has been
 
 THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 285 
 
 carefully fostered, and a golden harvest has thus been brought 
 in which has remained in the country. It is, therefore, not 
 surprising that the people are contented, happy, and loyal. 
 When expressions of this happiness and contentment are 
 heard, it is satisfactory to feel that they are not merely word 
 painting for the benefit of the rulers of the country, but are 
 based, as the people themselves maintain, on solid facts. 
 
 This is what a few Englishmen have contrived to 
 effect in the Sudan in a decade and a half; and their 
 success has been partly due to the fact that here there 
 were no Capitulations to hamper them, nor the encum- 
 brance of an alien legal system. In Egypt, where the 
 task is more complex and the difficulties heavier, the 
 change has been less striking; but solid and substantial 
 benefits have been conferred upon the country, which 
 is beyond all question more prosperous, more peace- 
 ful, and more stable, than it was when the Occupation 
 began.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 WE are not popular in Egypt. Feared we may be 
 by some ; respected, I doubt not, by many others ; 
 but really liked, I am sure, by very few. That the 
 benefits produced by the Occupation are recognised 
 by a considerable section of the Egyptian population 
 is unquestionable. The merchants, the traders, the 
 shopkeepers of the towns, the people who have bought 
 land and made money by it, would shudder at the 
 thought of changing the regime under which they have 
 so long lived in security and grown prosperous. Indeed, 
 it is probable that almost everybody in Egypt, who 
 owns property or carries on a settled business, would 
 be alarmed if there were any serious chance of bringing 
 the Occupation to an end. 
 
 But they have no love for us personally. The 
 Englishman has the capacity to win the esteem, and 
 even the affection, of primitive or semi-barbarous 
 peoples. You see that, for instance, in the Sudan, 
 where sometimes a retiring official will be escorted for 
 miles on his homeward journey by a crowd of sheikhs 
 and tribesmen who will bid him farewell with tears. 
 But when we have to rule civilised or partly civilised 
 
 286
 
 CONCLUSIONS 287 
 
 communities we are less successful in conciliating our 
 subjects. We have the defects of our qualities, the 
 defects which have made difficulties for us in Ireland, 
 in South Africa, in Bengal, and in French Canada. 
 In Egypt, as elsewhere, we retain our characteristic 
 Anglo-Saxonism. The British official community lives 
 in a little world apart, thinking of * home,' and surround- 
 ing itself, as far as possible, with home-like associa- 
 tions. Of native society it sees little ; and though it 
 may meet educated natives in the public offices, in 
 the orderly-room, and in business, it does not really 
 get into touch with them. And the educated, Euro- 
 peanised, Egyptian for his part finds it hard to be at 
 ease with us. He prefers the continental type of 
 European, and when he looks westward it is to Paris, 
 not London, that he directs his gaze, and it is, as I have 
 previously explained, the peculiar products of Parisian 
 culture that he specially appreciates. 
 
 Throughout the entire period of our connection with 
 the country we have had to cope with persistent and 
 determined agitation which has for its avowed object 
 that of reclaiming ' Egypt for the Egyptians,' and re- 
 moving foreign (which means British) control and 
 supervision. We have been doing our work, subject 
 to constant opposition and interruption from those 
 who think we ought not to be doing it at all. The 
 Nationalist movement, which in the form of a military 
 insurrection was the immediate cause of our inter- 
 vention, has never died down. It has given birth to
 
 288 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 various schools of 'Reformers,' some of whom merely 
 affect to ask that the official administration should 
 be left in native hands, while others demand a full 
 parliamentary constitution with a cabinet responsible 
 to an elected legislature. It finds an outlet in more 
 dangerous ways, in plans and combinations to over- 
 throw the Khedivial government and its supporters, 
 in the angry rhetoric of the writers and talkers of the 
 Geneva congresses, and in the subterranean work of 
 the fiercer conspirators, who weave assassination plots 
 and sometimes succeed in carrying them out. The 
 constitutional reformers have disclaimed all complicity 
 with such desperadoes as the fanatic Wardani, who 
 murdered the late amiable and high-minded Premier, 
 Boutros Pasha, and with those who concocted an 
 abortive attempt on the life of the Khedive and Lord 
 Kitchener. Many of them no doubt are sincere. 
 But in all such cases the border line between those who 
 only 'talk daggers,' and those who would be quite 
 willing to use them, is apt to be undefined. Certainly 
 a considerable number of the Egyptian Nationalists 
 are respectable, and, according to their lights, patriotic 
 persons, not unworthy of the ostentatious patronage 
 extended to them by travelling English M.P.'s and 
 other vindicators of the rights of peoples. 
 
 But some of these latter gentlemen would be a good 
 deal astonished if they discovered how close is the 
 connection between certain of their clients, who talk 
 with so much cultured ease of enlightenment and
 
 CONCLUSIONS 289 
 
 reform, and show so laudable a familiarity with modern 
 progressive literature, and certain other persons who 
 are seeking to kindle a Moslem fury against the Fer- 
 inghi and all their works and ways. Even from the 
 latter one cannot withhold some measure of sympathy. 
 It is hard for any class of men, especially for men who 
 are young, ambitious, high-spirited, to be governed - 
 though it be for their own good by those who are 
 alien from them in religion, race, and sentiment. There 
 is plenty of sheer social envy, of personal greed, of 
 yeasty idealism, of impatient vanity, in the Egyptian 
 Nationalist movement. So there is in all such agita- 
 tions. But it has its better elements ; we can only 
 hope, without too confidently expecting, that we shall 
 gradually succeed in reconciling these to an anomalous, 
 but for the present an advantageous and indeed inevit- 
 able, political expedient. 
 
 The Nationalists might be more effective for mis- 
 chief if they were less divided by internal dissensions 
 and more skilfully directed. They lost the ablest of 
 their leaders some years ago by the death of Mustapha 
 Kamel Pasha, the chief organiser of the extremist 
 party. Kamel was a man of some talent and much 
 power of fluent expression both in speech and writing. 
 His newspaper, the Egyptian Standard, was virulent 
 in its abuse of England and the English. But it was 
 written with literary skill and argumentative resource- 
 fulness, and some of its articles, if bad politics, were 
 excellent journalism, forcible, expressive, and ingeni-
 
 290 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 ously calculated to rouse native passion against British 
 influence in every shape. Mustapha Kamel's national- 
 ism was of the most aggressive and assertive type. 
 His aim was to persuade his countrymen that British 
 control in Egypt was not merely tyrannical, but also 
 glaringly inefficient. He attacked the officials of 
 every department with unmeasured invective, not even 
 sparing those who had been responsible for scientific 
 and administrative achievements which have evoked 
 the admiration of the world. In many articles he 
 endeavoured to prove or at any rate to produce the 
 impression on the minds of his readers that the 
 splendid irrigation work of Sir Colin Scott-MoncriefF 
 and his successors was only a dismal failure. The 
 English canals and barrages were simply draining the 
 country of its life-blood, and would in due course send 
 it back to desert. Our agriculture was a mistake; our 
 education an imposture; our financial and judicial 
 services utterly inadequate. Kamel tried to persuade 
 his followers that Egypt was thoroughly mismanaged 
 under English supervision, and would remain mis- 
 managed until the administration was entirely trans- 
 ferred to native hands. His influence, not only with 
 the educated discontented class, but with the masses 
 of the large towns, was very great. Seldom has such 
 a mighty crowd been seen, even in an Oriental city, as 
 that which filled the streets of Cairo on the day that 
 Mustapha Kamel's body was carried to the tomb. 
 External events during the past few years have been
 
 CONCLUSIONS 291 
 
 favourable to the propaganda of the Nationalists, and 
 have done something to counteract the weakness they 
 have inflicted on their own cause by their squabbles 
 and jealousies. Egypt has felt the impact of the wave 
 which has rolled through all the eastern world since 
 the early years of our century. With Turkey, Persia, 
 India, China, stirred by new ideas and strange emotions, 
 Egypt can hardly remain entirely irresponsive. She 
 also was shaken by that astounding collapse of Russia 
 before Japan which came like the blast of a thunder- 
 bolt like a new revelation from the Unseen upon 
 Africa as well as Asia. 'Throughout the whole of the 
 Dark Continent,' wrote the late Edward Dicey, who 
 knew Egypt well, seven years ago, 'from Cairo to 
 the Cape, there had, in the course of the last century, 
 grown up a profound conviction that in any conflict 
 between Europeans and natives the latter were bound 
 to come to grief in the end. This belief received a vio- 
 lent shock throughout the East as it gradually oozed 
 out that Russia, the greatest military Power in Europe, 
 had been signally and ignominiously defeated by a 
 native Oriental race. I do not suppose that one Egyp- 
 tian native in a thousand or a hundred thousand had 
 any conception where Japan was, who the Japanese 
 were, or to what race or religion they belonged. But 
 all over Africa north, south, west, and cast the 
 tidings of Russia's defeat at the hands of a coloured 
 race who, whatever else they might be, were certainly 
 not Christians or whites, spread with the strange
 
 292 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 rapidity with which news in the East passes from hand 
 to hand. There is not a village in Egypt in which 
 there is not some Mullah or Mahdi or holy man, 
 learned in the Koran, who was only too glad to announce 
 to his adherents that the downfall of the infidel was 
 at hand, and that the day was coming when Islam 
 would once more become supreme. The Egyptians 
 are not fanatical Mohammedans, but they are fervent 
 followers of the Prophet, and they are convinced that 
 the decline of the Cross is certain to lead to the rise of 
 the Crescent.' 
 
 While this disturbing thought was still fermenting 
 in the native mind, there came the Turkish Revolution, 
 the rise of the Young Turks, the establishment of 
 parliamentary institutions under the very shadow of 
 the Calif's throne. All things considered, it is not 
 surprising that the Egyptian agitators have been ac- 
 tive during the past decade, nor is there any immedi- 
 ate likelihood that this activity will cease. Fortu- 
 nately, though it is always troublesome, it is not often 
 dangerous, and its least perilous phase is that which 
 shows itself among the articulate sections of the popu- 
 lation the middle classes and professional men of 
 the towns. 
 
 Nor are we too popular with another large and 
 influential class. The old governing element, the mem- 
 bers of the Turco-Egyptian families, the sons and 
 grandsons of the men who were beys and pashas under 
 Ismail and Said, are hostile to the Occupation, though
 
 CONCLUSIONS 293 
 
 they may not deem it advisable to give overt expres- 
 sion to their hostility. These persons think that they 
 would have much to gain by our departure. They 
 would once more become a ruling aristocracy, they 
 would 'boss' the country, get the good places into 
 their own hands, and enjoy that outward consideration 
 which goes with the exercise of power in Oriental lands. 
 They are still a little sulky over their supersession, 
 though even if we cleared out, bag and baggage, they 
 would hardly be able to regain their old predom- 
 inance. 
 
 But what of the peasantry, the real people of Egypt ? 
 They ought to be grateful to us, for undoubtedly we 
 have improved their lot and done many things for 
 them. Thanks to the English, the fellah can now live 
 at peace on his farm, undisturbed by the fear of a 
 sudden raid from tax-gatherers or marauding pashas. 
 The land tax is paid according to a regular assessment, 
 and the farmer of the Delta is as well aware of the 
 precise nature of his public obligations as a London 
 ratepayer, or probably better. I spent some days 
 with the manager of a branch of the Agricultural Bank, 
 who was making loans to the peasants on mortgage, 
 and gathering in arrears of interest due from them; 
 and I was interested to observe how accurately in- 
 formed these people were as to their financial relations 
 with the State. Every man brought with him his 
 tax-sheet and assessment-paper, and knew to a piastre 
 how much his land was worth, and how much he would
 
 294 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 have to pay on it. It was in the course of the same 
 journey that I had visible proof of the agrarian prog- 
 ress and activity which prevail under the shelter of 
 the Occupation. The Egyptian peasant is still for 
 the most part a poor, hard-working drudge ; but he 
 is no longer a serf, and he is safe from administrative 
 oppression and territorial violence. For the first 
 time in his history he knows what it is to live without 
 the kurbash and the corvee : neither money nor labour 
 can be extorted from him by the stick. Above all, 
 he has his water supply secure. The English engineers 
 have poured the life-giving fluid through the canals, 
 and the English inspectors of the Public Works Depart- 
 ment see that the tenant obtains his fair share without 
 having to bribe officials or crave favours from the 
 hangers-on of the local magnate. 
 
 But it is more than doubtful whether the English re- 
 ceive credit for these reforms. The peasantry have 
 little consciousness of the part we play in the adminis- 
 tration of the country. They know that certain officials 
 come among them from time to time who treat them 
 with more humanity and justice than their old tyrants, 
 and they are probably glad that the Government has 
 chosen to employ these agents ; but their recognition 
 hardly goes beyond this point. They accept good 
 fortune and ill with the same Oriental fatalism. It is 
 the will of Allah. He has been pleased that their 
 crops shall increase and their burdens be lightened, 
 and has put it into the hearts of the Effendim that
 
 CONCLUSIONS 295 
 
 they shall no longer be beaten and plundered. Praise 
 to the Most Merciful. His will be done. 
 
 To tell the truth I believe the peasant thinks less of 
 the reforms than of the grievances under which he still 
 suffers, or believes himself to suffer. He is not, perhaps, 
 so much impressed by the abolition of the kurbash as 
 he ought to be. He has been flogged for so many 
 centuries that he has got used to the process ; that was 
 the will of Allah too. In a country where a gang of 
 labourers, working under contract, voluntarily pay a 
 foreman to stand over them with a stick and use it 
 freely on shirkers, immunity from personal chastise- 
 ment is not highly appreciated. Besides, the present 
 system has endured long enough to have dimmed the 
 memory of past evils. The confiscations, the oppres- 
 sion, the forced contributions of the old days, are for- 
 gotten by the younger generation ; which, on the other 
 hand, has its own tale of official incompetence, police 
 corruption, and ineffective administration of justice. 
 I have dwelt already on the great blot on our adminis- 
 tration, our failure to suppress disorder in the country 
 districts, to keep violent crime within limits, and to 
 secure the conviction of offenders. The fellah grum- 
 bles at these troubles, oblivious of the grosser wrongs 
 from which his fathers suffered. 
 
 For these and other reasons we have little gratitude 
 to expect in Egypt. The peasantry do not know us ; 
 the superior classes do not want us. Of the latter, 
 many who admit our services profess that they were
 
 296 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 quite able to accomplish them without our aid, and 
 that a native Government, purged of the abuses of the 
 old Khediviate intensified as these were by the 
 money poured into Ismail's lap by foreign money- 
 mongers could have done all that was requisite ; 
 and could have done it, so they think, without intro- 
 ducing those Western usages and innovations which 
 are distasteful to Mussulman sentiment. Egypt, it 
 cannot be too often repeated, is a Mohammedan 
 country; and no devout Moslem likes to be ruled by 
 infidels. 
 
 Even the slow-thinking fellah has that feeling ; and 
 there are those who make it their business to stimulate 
 it. Mustapha Kamel worked hard to excite Mussul- 
 man sentiment in the villages against the Christians. 
 His emissaries did what they could to push the Nation- 
 alist agitation among the peasantry, and his successors 
 have made some efforts in the same direction. The 
 fellah is not a newspaper reader ; but in most of the 
 villages there are a few persons headmen, land sur- 
 veyors, Coptic clerks, schoolmasters who can read, 
 and when a copy of the provocative Cairo journal 
 comes into the place its inflammatory contents soon 
 become known. Its political arguments must often 
 be above the heads of the villagers. But its appeals 
 to Moslem passion are not. The fellah is a devout 
 Mohammedan ; to him his religion is all in all ; and 
 though at present he seems to have taken the National- 
 ist agitation calmly, it is not without its effect upon
 
 CONCLUSIONS 297 
 
 him. The perfervid oratory and violent journalism 
 of dissatisfied townsmen may be comparatively harm- 
 less. But in India and in Russia this urban rhetoric 
 does at length begin to sting through the thick hide 
 of the peasant, and the same thing may happen in 
 Egypt. I do not know how far my informants were 
 correct in their estimate of the situation ; but I was 
 assured by some who are closely in touch with native 
 opinion that during our dispute with the Porte over 
 the Sinai frontier question some years ago popular 
 feeling in the villages was absolutely on the side of 
 the Turks. If it had come to war as it very nearly 
 did these observers were convinced that there would 
 have been furious anti-European riots in the towns and 
 outbreaks among the fellahin. There is a deep-lying 
 reservoir of Mohammedan bigotry, contemptuously 
 acquiescent in the presence of other religions, which 
 yet, under conceivable circumstances, might boil up 
 into steaming and scorching fanaticism. 
 
 Islam lies at the base of Egyptian society, and it is 
 on the future of Islam that the future of Egypt depends. 
 For let us make no mistake on one vital point : we are 
 not Christianising the East. The Mohammedan world 
 is farther from conversion to the faith of the West 
 for my part I believe the Buddhist and Brahman world 
 also than it was three centuries, or even ten cen- 
 turies, ago. Indeed one may say that in the continents 
 of the brown and yellow races Christianity has been 
 steadily receding for over a thousand years. At the
 
 298 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 beginning of the Middle Ages it did indeed seem as if 
 all the world were likely to find shelter under the Cross 
 of Christ. There were populous Christian communities 
 throughout Asia Minor, Persia, Turkestan, Thibet, 
 China, great and powerful Christian churches spread 
 over North Africa and Central Africa from the Medi- 
 terranean to the Red Sea and the equatorial regions. 
 Except for a few anaemic remnants in Abyssinia, Syria, 
 Armenia, all these have disappeared, absorbed by Bud- 
 dhism and Brahmanism, or swept out by the conquering 
 tide of Islam. The two processes are in operation 
 still. Japan, which almost promised to become a 
 Christian country before the Protestant Reformation, 
 has gone back to the old gods or the old negations. 
 If Mohammedanism is ebbing out of Europe, it is on 
 the crest of the advancing wave in Africa, where its 
 mullahs are making converts daily, under the eyes of 
 our officials and our ineffectual missionaries, in the 
 British territories of the Atlantic sea-board. 
 
 Some optimists persuade themselves that Orientals 
 are adopting the morality, if not the creed, of Christen- 
 dom. That seems to me more than doubtful. They 
 are assimilating some of our ideas and ideals, but these 
 are for the most part not those which are distinctively 
 Christian. It is the common experience of everybody, 
 who has conversed with the educated native from 
 Tangier to Tokio, that this person, when he abandons 
 the orthodoxy of his fathers, does not accept the ortho- 
 doxy of his teachers. He is more likely to turn Atheist
 
 CONCLUSIONS 299 
 
 or Rationalist than Christian : to seek refuge in a 
 tangle of modern Antinomianism rather than to recline 
 upon the New Testament and the Church Catechism. 
 And let us remember that the Eastern reformer is not 
 always the shallow creature, with a simian aptitude 
 for copying the tricks and habits of the people he both 
 hates and envies, who has become too familiar to us 
 in the facile pages of hasty travellers and ingenious 
 writers of fiction. The East, like the West, has its 
 seekers after light, its thinkers and real students, who 
 are feeling the thrill of our transitional era, and search- 
 ing for some solid foothold amid the floods that surge 
 across the old landmarks. These men are not quite 
 content to accept ready-made the ethical conventions, 
 a little time-worn and travel-stained among ourselves, 
 which we rather contemptuously fling down to them. 
 It is not always easy to meet the arguments of en- 
 lightened, but conservative, Moslems who insist that 
 it is the immorality, rather than the virtue, of the West 
 which is transmitted to the East. 
 
 'Our ethical system,' an intelligent and cultivated 
 Mohammedan might say, 'is not perfect; I am the 
 first to admit it. Yet we taught our young men the 
 Moslem virtues of devotion, gratitude, filial obedience, 
 temperance, hospitality, and courage. What do you 
 give them in exchange ? A faith they cannot believe 
 in, for they know you daily ignore its tenets ; a code of 
 morals which has not prevented your own societies 
 from being the battle-ground of the animal instincts
 
 300 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 and the predatory passions. If our cities are being 
 sapped by drink and vice it is because they are too 
 closely imitating your own. You have inflicted upon 
 us the horrible curse of alcoholism, from which the East 
 was free ; you have induced our youths to learn your 
 languages, and they employ their knowledge to read 
 the pornographic romances of the boulevards. You 
 have put polygamy out of fashion with the wealthier 
 classes (it never was the fashion with the poor), and you 
 suppose that morality is the gainer when the Egyptian 
 husband supplements his single Moslem wife with a 
 relay of female companions, drawn from the pavements 
 of your capitals and the coulisses of your music-halls. 
 Islam may have its demerits ; but it is a working sys- 
 tem of religion and morals, and we shall do wisely to 
 cling to it.' 
 
 Cling to it, wisely or not, I believe they will, and the 
 reformers of the East must make their account with 
 the fact. Can Mohammedanism reconcile itself with 
 modern progress ? There are those who persistently 
 maintain that it cannot. 'Islam,' wrote Sir William 
 Muir, 'never changes;' and many Anglo-Indians and 
 Anglo-Egyptians agree with him. There are said to 
 be two main obstacles the Koran and the seclusion 
 of women. We are told that it is impossible for a 
 society to be progressive, when it is controlled by rules 
 and formularies, laid down for a primitive community 
 twelve centuries ago, and fortified by all the sanctions 
 of religion. The argument is an odd one in the mouths
 
 SlK \\II.I.1AM \VlI.l.roCKS, K.C.M.Ci.
 
 CONCLUSIONS 301 
 
 of persons who profess to regulate their own lives by a 
 Scripture much older than the writings of Mohammed, 
 and promulgated among a people no more civilised than 
 the Arabians of the Prophet. If the Bible is no impedi- 
 ment to electric tramcars, steam turbines, representative 
 government, joint stock companies, and university 
 extension lectures, perhaps the Koran need not bar the 
 way to these improvements either. If the Moslem 
 reformers are in earnest, they will, no doubt, prevail 
 on the ulema to interpret the sacred texts in a favour- 
 able sense. A priesthood, which could not stretch 
 the articles of its religion so as to cover the require- 
 ments of contemporaneous society, would be singularly 
 deficient in the ecclesiastical instinct. 
 
 On the other question the woman question one 
 must not dogmatise. None of us know much about 
 it in its Eastern application. Some of those who know 
 least are the foremost in denouncing the harem as the 
 blight of Oriental society, the fatal influence that nega- 
 tives all genuine progress. But it is an institution 
 which has existed for many centuries, which fits with- 
 out friction into the conditions of Eastern life, which 
 has been approved by both sexes in the countries where 
 it is practised ; and, at least it relieves them from 
 some of the miseries and failures rampant elsewhere. 
 
 I can conceive that my educated, conservative Mus- 
 sulman might have a few further remarks to make on 
 this subject. 'You are good enough to inform us,' 
 he might observe, 'that our family life, based as it is
 
 302 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 on the seclusion and segregation of women, and recog- 
 nising, under very strict legal and social regulation, 
 polygamous marriage, is unsatisfactory. Possibly. 
 Neither polygamy nor the harem is enjoined by our 
 religion, and for them we do not seek our warrant in 
 the Koran. They have established themselves through 
 the practice and custom of the ages in most Oriental 
 countries ; but I do not deny that we may find them, 
 like many other ancient Eastern usages, unsuited to 
 modern conditions. How they can best be modified 
 is a matter many of us are gravely considering. But 
 will you excuse me, if I venture to suggest that we are 
 by no means disposed to accept you, without further 
 question, as authoritative mentors in this branch of 
 study ? For, so far as we can gather, you have made 
 rather a squalid muddle, not unmixed with sordid 
 tragedy, of the sexual relations in your own enlightened 
 and progressive communities. Are your marriages 
 universally, or even in a great majority of instances, 
 tranquil and happy ? Are your husbands always 
 faithful ? Are your wives invariably contented ? 
 Have you, any more than ourselves, been completely 
 successful in "subduing to the useful and the good" 
 those individual passions, and overpowering emotions, 
 which Nature has sown in the human soul and body ? 
 
 ' On these points we have our doubts. We read 
 your newspapers, your fiction, your dramatists, and we 
 learn that your society is racked by sexual unrest, and 
 perturbed by the most horrible sexual immorality,
 
 CONCLUSIONS 303 
 
 which you vainly strive to keep in check by ferocious, 
 but apparently ineffectual, penal laws. You suppress 
 black slavery in the East and are struggling with what 
 you call white slavery in the West, a degradation which 
 your agents have even introduced among ourselves. 1 
 Your matrimonial arrangements work so badly that 
 your men, it seems, take refuge in licentiousness, and 
 your women are in revolt. And with it all we discover 
 that you are threatened by "race suicide," and that 
 your system does not even provide (as ours does) 
 that practically every woman shall have a secure place 
 found for her in the world, and shall not miss the 
 opportunity to fulfil her primary vocation of mother- 
 hood. Have we, then, much to gain in all these matters 
 by adopting your codes and your creeds, or by hastily 
 assimilating the methods in which so many among 
 yourselves have lost confidence ? If we must change 
 our own social and domestic system, it is not clear to 
 some of us that we are compelled to replace it by yours, 
 or that we should be wise in doing so.' 
 
 As a matter of fact you have only to walk through a 
 street in Cairo to see that there are plenty of ladies in 
 Egypt who are evidently allowed, or who allow them- 
 selves, a personal freedom not often extended to their 
 well-to-do sisters in other Mohammedan countries. 
 The Egyptian veil seems in a metaphorical, as well as 
 a literal, sense a much more transparent vestment than 
 
 1 See the passage from Lord Kitchener's Report quoted above (chapter 
 xxvii, p. 248).
 
 304 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 the Indian purdah. But on the other hand one some- 
 times hears that the movement for the emancipation of 
 married women has little vitality, except among the 
 reformers and the small Europeanising 'smart set' 
 of the capital. Some of the ladies reject the veil and 
 the separate female apartments, receive masculine 
 visitors in their family circle, wear European dresses, 
 and accompany their husbands to Paris or Mentone. 
 But I believe the whole number of these vindicators 
 of women's rights is still very limited, and the example, 
 in spite of the impulse given by the princesses of the 
 Khedivial family, is not being followed to any consid- 
 erable extent. One hears of cases of well-born and 
 highly cultured Moslem ladies who, after some experi- 
 ence of emancipation and intercourse in the Western 
 fashion, have voluntarily and deliberately returned to 
 the seclusion of the zenana. One lady who has done 
 so I know, and I have spoken with, though I have 
 never seen, her. She is the wife of an accomplished 
 scholar, and might herself claim that title, having 
 studied not only English and French literature but also 
 Egyptian antiquities and archaeology. For some years 
 she mingled freely in the most cultivated foreign so- 
 ciety of the capital. Now she has thought it right to 
 resume the habits of her people. She passes her days 
 in her own apartments, and only leaves them to drive 
 out, closely veiled, in her carriage. But occasionally 
 she will converse on the subjects which interest her 
 with an English professor or learned official or some
 
 CONCLUSIONS 305 
 
 other foreign gentleman through the telephone ! 
 Thus do science and Moslem convention work com- 
 fortably together. 
 
 If the status of the Egyptian woman of the middle 
 and well-to-do classes is to be changed, the most 
 efficient factor will be the spread of female education. 
 There is a growing interest in this subject in the coun- 
 try. 'There is probably nothing more remarkable 
 in the social history of Egypt during the last dozen 
 years than the growth of opinion among all classes of 
 Egyptians in favour of the education of their daughters. 
 The girls' schools belonging to the Ministry of Educa- 
 tion are crowded, and to meet the growing demand sites 
 have been acquired and fresh schools are to be con- 
 structed, one in Alexandria and two in Cairo. Very 
 many applications for admission have, however, to be 
 refused. The Provincial Councils have during the 
 past year done something to remedy this deficiency. 
 Girls' schools have been opened by the Councils in 
 five mudirias, and in other cases private girls' schools 
 have been taken over. The increase in the schools 
 directed by the Education Department, and the 
 activity of the local educational authorities in the same 
 direction, have revealed the fact that the supply of 
 trained female teachers is entirely inadequate. The 
 Sania Training College was founded in 1900 to meet 
 this need, and twenty-eight girl students are at present 
 in attendance there. Several also have been sent to 
 England for professional training. At present, how-
 
 306 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 ever, it is clear that neither the Training College nor 
 the Educational Mission is able to provide the number 
 of teachers required, and it can only be hoped that the 
 increase of the facilities for primary instruction for 
 girls will enlarge the field of recruitment for this 
 purpose. In the case of elementary vernacular educa- 
 tion, again, the desire to secure this instruction for 
 girls has completely outrun the possibility of provid- 
 ing adequate accommodation.' l 
 
 A growing desire is manifest among Moslem parents 
 to have their daughters educated ; they are clamouring 
 for more primary schools, and they even send their 
 girls to be taught by Coptic priests and American 
 missionaries rather than that they should not be taught 
 at all. There is a famous private school in Cairo, 
 under an English headmistress, where hundreds of 
 Mohammedan young ladies are brought up precisely 
 as high-school girls are in England, no whit less alert, 
 as intelligent, and as eagerly interested in their studies. 
 The great want is that of qualified native teachers ; 
 
 1 Egypt, No. i (1912), p. 25. In the Report for the following year, 
 Egypt, No. i (1913), we read: 
 
 'The demand for girls' schools in Egypt shows no tendency to decrease. 
 Reference was made in last year's report to the want of suitable accommodation 
 and properly qualified teachers, which makes it difficult to keep pace with 
 this growing movement. Some progress has been made in the past year. 
 The Sania and Abbas Primary Schools for girls contain 461 pupils. Both are 
 full, and unable to meet a constantly increasing demand for admission. 
 The attendance at the Sania Training College increased in 1912, and several 
 Egyptian girl students, as in previous years, have been sent to England to 
 complete their professional training, but further provision for the training of 
 Egyptian women teachers appears to be very necessary.'
 
 CONCLUSIONS 307 
 
 and here the Ministry of Education, under its late ca- 
 pable chief, Zaghlul Pasha, set the good precedent of 
 picking out promising female pupils from the second- 
 ary schools and sending them to be trained in England. 
 The difficulty, as his Excellency rather mournfully 
 explained to me, is that marriage is still the only recog- 
 nised profession for women in the East ; and there 
 will be little hope of keeping the young preceptresses 
 at their work beyond the age of twenty-two or twenty- 
 three. One of these prize pupils, I was told, on passing 
 her examination and obtaining a Government nomina- 
 tion, immediately received no fewer than seventeen 
 offers of marriage, which shows at least that the 
 Egyptian bridegroom does not despise feminine cult- 
 ure. But one wonders how an educated young woman 
 will contrive to settle down to matrimonial immure- 
 ment after her year or two spent at a training college 
 or a university in England. 
 
 Feminine education, as well as technical and agri- 
 cultural education, the British Agent and the advisers 
 of the Ministers are doing their best to encourage. 
 Literary culture on Western lines is regarded rather 
 coldly ; it is felt that Egypt is likely to get quite as 
 many educated young gentlemen, with the latest im- 
 ported ideas, as it will require, without much official 
 assistance. Of journalists, lawyers, candidates for 
 government employment, it needs only a moderate 
 supply. What it does want are trained native doctors, 
 architects, engineers, estate managers, surveyors, men
 
 308 EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 of business generally, and students properly prepared 
 for industrial and commercial pursuits. And these 
 the technical schools and colleges are gradually fur- 
 nishing. In this way we may produce some effect 
 on the intellectual movement, and the attitude of those 
 who will give it shape in the future, as well as upon the 
 economic progress of the country. 
 
 But with the possible awakening of Islam, with the 
 social and ethical consequences of the dynamic change 
 that is passing through the Eastern mind, we have little 
 direct concern. Egypt, like other Oriental lands, will 
 in due course try to work out its own salvation, per- 
 haps in unison with the West, quite possibly by shap- 
 ing a different synthesis for itself. We may have to 
 abandon our conception of the huge, somnolent, amor- 
 phous Orient, waiting passively for the West to stamp 
 the impress of its vitalising energy upon the lethargic 
 bulk. It is a favourite literary tradition : 
 
 The East bowed low before the blast, 
 
 In patient, deep disdain, 
 She heard the legions thunder past, 
 
 And plunged in dreams again. 
 
 Did she ? At any rate the East seems more inclined 
 for action than dreaming just now. She is clearing 
 the mists of sleep from her eyes, and is showing a 
 tendency to be self-assertive, practical, and indepen- 
 dently constructive. The East may take over from 
 us various external forms and material appendages, 
 such as parliaments, military tactics, super-Dread-
 
 CONCLUSIONS 309 
 
 noughts, and bowler hats, without necessarily assimi- 
 lating our spirit, our morals, or our view of life. It was 
 our teacher before, and it may have much to teach us 
 again, even in the purely scientific sphere, when it 
 has learnt from us the grammar and the alphabet 
 of modern knowledge. 
 
 Meanwhile, and without prejudice to the ultimate 
 results, we have a task to perform in Egypt which will 
 not be completely fulfilled for many years to come. 
 Quietly and steadily, and with as little interference as 
 possible from outside, we must go on doing our duty as 
 we have done it throughout the Occupation period, 
 making the best of the country and the people, eco- 
 nomically and otherwise, according to our lights. 
 Our lights may not be those of our clients, they may 
 even sometimes be a little dim and flickering for our- 
 selves ; but, such as they are, we must steer by them, 
 not expecting any particular gratitude, understanding 
 that we are not popular, but steadfastly discharging 
 an obligation we cannot as yet abandon. 
 
 That we shall be relieved of it some time has been 
 the conviction of Lord Cromcr and the other men who 
 have been engaged with him in the reconstruction of 
 Egypt. But they are equally convinced that the 
 period of our release is far distant. The habits and 
 traditions of centuries are not changed in a few years ; 
 and it must be long before Egypt is adapted for that 
 self-government, combined with freedom from foreign 
 dictation, for which we have been preparing her.
 
 3 io EGYPT IN TRANSITION 
 
 The preparation may take a slightly different form 
 in the near future. We have made mistakes, and have 
 learnt lessons from experience ; and we may antici- 
 pate that the system will undergo some important 
 modifications, tending generally, I imagine, in the 
 direction of associating competent natives more closely 
 with the responsible business of administration in all 
 departments. But, in the main, the system will be 
 retained, and it will be animated, one may hope, with 
 the same spirit of integrity, self-sacrifice, and zeal for 
 the public benefit, which has rendered the British 
 Occupation of Egypt the most honourable episode in 
 the recent history of our race. It has been a difficult 
 experiment, which seemed foredoomed to failure ; it 
 is creditable to many Englishmen and some Egyptians 
 that it has been, on the whole, a success.
 
 INDEX 
 
 ABBAS HILMI PASHA, Khedive of 
 Egypt, his attempt to reform 
 system of education in University 
 of El-Azhar, 210; State recep- 
 tions held by, 212; he remains 
 nominally the supreme power in 
 Egypt, 215, seq.; character of, 
 219; abortive assassination plot 
 against, 258 
 
 Abu Hamed, 7, 8, 10; station of, 
 40, 71 
 
 'Advisers' British, Report on prisons, 
 247 ; suggested reform of mixed 
 Courts, by, 219, 275, seq.; duties 
 of, 220 
 
 Agitators, Lord Kitchener, on, 258 
 
 Agricultural Bank, working of, 293 
 
 Ahmed, Mohammed. See Mahdi. 
 
 Amenophis II., tomb of, 166 
 
 'Anglo- Egyptian Sudan,' its polit- 
 ical position, 5, 149; and see 
 Sudan. 
 
 Army, Egyptian; Sudanese regi- 
 ments of, 51 ; conscription in, 
 54 ; loth Sudanese inspected, 
 86; theoretically part of Turkish 
 forces, 214 
 
 'Army of Occupation,' British, 
 53; Kasr-en-Nil barracks of, 173 
 
 Arabi Pasha, 216, 217 
 
 Assiut, barrage at, 143 
 
 Assuan dam, 135; cost of, 144; 
 original designs for, modified 
 to save temples at Philx, 144; 
 begun in 1898, completed, 1902, 
 147 ; its length and storage capacity, 
 147; additions to, 1007-1912, 149' 
 
 Atbara, bridge over the, 8, 71, 95; 
 cotton land, 121 
 
 BAKER, SIR BENJAMIN, his schemes 
 for Nile irrigation, 140; his ap- 
 pointment on Sir Colin Scott- 
 MoncrieS's Commission, 1890, 
 143 ; modification of his design 
 for Assuan dam, 144 
 
 Berber, 8, 59, 95, 121 
 
 Bernard, Col. E. E., Financial 
 Secretary to Sudan Government, 55 
 
 Blue Nile. See Nile. 
 
 Blue Nile Province, 69 
 
 Boutros Pasha, murder of, 257, 288 
 
 CABINET MINISTERS, position of, 
 267, 268 
 
 Cairo, Egyptian War Office in, 53 ; 
 climate of, 158, 169; shops in, 
 160; museum in, 168; first im- 
 pressions of, 169; French in- 
 fluence on, 169-171; citadel 
 of, 176; mosques of, 176; its 
 position as the seat of the Uni- 
 versity of El-Azhar, 202 ; school 
 for girls in, 306 
 
 Capitulations, the; not in force 
 in the Sudan, 52; hampering 
 effect of, in Egypt, 276 ; advan- 
 tages of, before the Occupation, 
 277, 278; necessity for their modi- 
 fication to suit modern require- 
 ments, 280 
 
 Cassel, Sir Ernest, 144 
 
 Christianity, efforts at conversion 
 of Mohammedans forbidden in 
 most parts of the Sudan, 64, 65 ; 
 its waning power in the East, 66, 297 
 
 Condominium, Anglo-Egyptian, 5, 25, 
 52 
 
 Consular Courts, 276-279
 
 312 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cook, Thomas, pioneer of Egyptian 
 tourist-travel, 155 
 
 Copts, their employment in Sudan 
 Government Offices, 25 ; their 
 clerical employment in Cairo, 
 169, 174; their character and 
 origin, 225; their representation 
 in the Legislative Assembly, 267 
 
 Corvee, 141, 186 
 
 Cotton, its cultivation in the Sudan, 
 1 20, 121; crop on Zeidab Estate, 
 127; Egypt's contribution to the 
 world's supply of, 140; official 
 markets for sale of, 262 
 
 Crime, frequency of, 242 ; increase 
 of, 244; Eastern attitude towards, 
 248; old and new methods for 
 punishment of, 251 
 
 Cromer, Earl of, his release of Zubeir, 
 60; he opens Nile-Red-Sea Rail- 
 way, 1906, 93 ; his abolition of the 
 corvee, 186; his opinion of British 
 policy in Egypt, 217; his great 
 achievements in the early days of 
 the Occupation, 218; his later policy, 
 241 ; his opinion on the Capitu- 
 lations in Egypt, 280 n. ; and on 
 the possible abandonment of the 
 Occupation, 309 
 
 DELTA, the, 72; British element 
 in, 1 80; climate of, 181; neces- 
 sity of drainage, 185 ; the Delta 
 fanner, 189; inadequate punish- 
 ment of crime in, 242, seq. 
 
 Dual Control, 234 
 
 Dufferin, Marquess of, his Report, 266 
 
 EDUCATION; Lord Kitchener's first 
 educational efforts in the Sudan, 
 25; Gordon College and its aims, 
 26, 28; University of El-Azhar, 
 202, seq. institution of New Uni- 
 versity College, Cairo, 202 ; anti- 
 quated system of, at El-Azhar, 
 208, 209 ; Minister of, 210 ; New 
 law promulgated in ign, to en- 
 large syllabus at El-Azhar, 211 
 
 El-Azhar, university of, 202 ; cos- 
 mopolitan constituency of, 203; 
 
 expenses of the establishment 
 met by the Administration des 
 Wakfs, 205 ; its antiquated sys- 
 tem of education, 207 ; syllabus 
 enlarged, 1911, 1912, 211 
 
 FELLAHIN, 54; their attempts to 
 evade conscription, 80; physique 
 of, 8 1 ; description of, in the Delta, 
 1 80, 185; their aversion from in- 
 novations, 1 88; their tendency to 
 hoard money, 189, 190; Lord Kitch- 
 ener's interest in, 261 ; their 
 indebtedness to English rule not 
 acknowledged, 293, seq, ; influence 
 of Nationalist agitators among, 296, 
 297 ; religious feeling of, 296 ; their 
 sympathy with Turks, 297 
 
 Five Feddans Law, enactment of, 
 189; its operation dependent on 
 Mixed Legislative Council, 272 
 
 Flogging, daily practice of, under 
 Abdullah, 36; indifference of the 
 fellahin towards, 295 ; abolition of, 
 in prisons, 247 ; abolition of the 
 kurbash, 190, 294 
 
 GARSTIN, SIR WILLIAM, his opinion 
 on wheat and cotton crops, 120, 121 ; 
 his irrigation schemes, 134, 140; 
 modification of his original de- 
 signs for Assuan dam, to save 
 temples of Phila;, 144; his further 
 irrigation schemes, 151; his pro- 
 ject for diverting the course of 
 the Nile from the Sudd regions, 151 
 
 General Assembly, the scope and 
 policy of, 266; its reappearance 
 as the Legislative Assembly under 
 the New Organic Law, 1913, 266; 
 its restrictions, 270, 272, seq. 
 
 Ghedit, Sir Reginald Wingate's 
 victory over the Khalifa at, 47 
 
 Ghezireh, 173 
 
 Gordon, Charles George, attempt to 
 rescue him, u; memorial to, 16; 
 death of, 17, 59, 60; his crusade 
 against slavery, 68 
 
 Gordon College, Khartum, 26; 
 aims and methods of, 28, 54, 64
 
 INDEX 
 
 313 
 
 Gorst, Sir Eldon, his report on Nile- 
 Red-Sea Railway, 93; his suc- 
 cession to Lord Cromer, as British 
 Agent, 93 ; his real and nominal 
 position, 213; misinterpretation of 
 his attitude by Nationalists, 257 
 
 HALAKAS, or official cotton-markets, 
 institution of, 262 ; description of, 
 263 
 
 Haifa. See Wady Haifa. 
 
 Herodotus, the first special corre- 
 spondent on the Nile, 155 
 
 Hills of the Dead, sterility and 
 solitude of, 165 ; Tombs of the 
 Kings, 1 66, 167 
 
 INSPECTORS, British, attached to 
 Ministry of Interior and Ministry 
 of Finance, 224; functions of, 233; 
 nomination of, 235 ; some diffi- 
 culties experienced by, 236, seq, 
 
 Irrigation, allotment of perennial 
 water, 123; pumping apparatus 
 at Zeidab, 126; antiquity of basin 
 irrigation, 133; use of Nilometers, 
 137 ; basin irrigation superseded 
 by perennial irrigation, 139; canals, 
 chains and barrages, 142 ; Assuan 
 dam, 144 ; completion of Assuan 
 dam in 1902, 147; antiquity of 
 bucket and lever, water-wheel and 
 hand-pump, 148; advantages of 
 perennial irrigation, 185; its abuse 
 by the fellahin, 261 
 
 Ismail Pasha, Khedive, oppressive 
 rule of, 59 ; his preference for 
 French officials, 234 ; his extrav- 
 agance and extortion, 254 
 
 KAJIF.L, Mustapha, death of, 289; 
 attacks on English officials, 289, 
 
 attacks on Knglisn otnciais, 269, 
 ; his agitations in the villages, 
 
 290 
 
 296 
 
 Karnak, 162, seq. 
 
 Kerreri, Battle of. See Omdurman. 
 Khalifa, the (Abdullah), to, 31, 
 
 32 ; his house and enclosure in 
 
 Omdurman, 33, 35 ; his death, 48, 66 
 Khedive, position of, 52 
 
 Khedives. See Abbas, Ismail, Said, 
 Tewfik. 
 
 Khartum, romance of, 9, 1 1 ; its 
 foundation, destruction, growth, 
 trade, 18, seq. ; its climate, 40 
 
 Kitchener of Khartum, Viscount, 
 his expedition to the Sudan in 1898, 
 7; his entry into Khartum, 19; 
 his educational projects in the 
 Sudan, 25 ; his destruction of the 
 Mahdi's tomb, 34; his treatment 
 of the religious question, 64; his 
 new Five Feddans Law, 189; his 
 campaigns in 1897, 194; his re- 
 port on El-Azhar, in 1912, 211; 
 his endeavours to supplement police 
 force in the Delta, 244; his report, 
 'Egypt, No. N 3 (1913),' 255, seq. ; 
 his appointment to British Agency, 
 1911, 256, 258; plot to murder 
 him, 258; his report on Nationalist 
 agitations, 1912, 260; his interest 
 in the fellahin, 261 ; his reform of 
 the Legislative Assembly, 267 ; his 
 account of progress in the Sudan, 
 284 
 
 Kom Ombo, 126 
 
 Kordofan, province of, 70 
 
 Kurbash, 190, 294 
 
 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY, election 
 to, 266, 267 ; restricted powers 
 of, 267. (See General Assembly.) 
 
 Legislative Council, constitution 
 of, 266. (See General Assembly.) 
 
 Luxor, climate of, 158, 162; ruins 
 and monuments at, 162, 163; situa- 
 tion of, 164 
 
 MAHDI, the (Mohammed Ahmed), 
 12, 15; his order to spare Gordon 
 disobeyed, : 7 ; his destruction of 
 Khartum, 19; his capture of Father 
 Ohrwalder, 33 ; his tomb in Om- 
 durman, 34; his Puritanism, Si 
 
 Merit-met Ali, 12; his foundation 
 of Khartum, 19; conquests of, 
 58 ; founder of modern Egypt, 
 138; initiator of system of peren- 
 nial irrigation, 142 ; mosque of, 176
 
 INDEX 
 
 Meroe and Merowi, pyramids and 
 temples at, 71 
 
 Metcmmeh, massacre at, 128 
 
 Mixed Tribunals, established 1876, 
 270; authority over Egyptian legis- 
 lation of, 271; unsatisfactory con- 
 ditions of, 274; their abolition 
 suggested, 280 
 
 Mudir, position of, 52; military 
 status of, in the Sudan, 88; na- 
 tionality of, in the provinces, 224; 
 responsibilities of, in the provinces, 
 238, 247 ; local importance of, 
 238 
 
 Murders, frequency of, 242 ; large 
 proportion unpunished, 243 ; in- 
 adequate causes for, 243 ; increase 
 of, in Cairo, 244 ; difficulty of ob- 
 taining convictions for, 249 
 
 Mohammedanism, its prevalence in 
 the Sudan, and the deference paid 
 to its observances by British officials, 
 62, seq. ; its former attitude towards 
 Christians, 276; its influence over 
 the peasantry, 296, 297 ; its in- 
 creasing power in the East, 298; 
 its ethical system, 299 ; its effect 
 on progress, 300; its matrimonial 
 system, 301 
 
 NATIONALIST agitations, attitude of 
 Sir Eldon Gorst and Lord Kitch- 
 ener towards, 257, seq. ; plots 
 and murders connected with, 287, 
 288; death of ablest leader of, 
 Mustapha Kamel Pasha, 289, 290; 
 influence on the peasantry, 296 
 
 Nile, prior claim of Egypt over the 
 Sudan, to its waters, 123; canals, 
 125, 126; its supreme importance 
 to Egypt, 132, seq. ; its source, 
 134; basin irrigation now obsolete, 
 142 ; barrages and dams, 142, 144, 
 146; navigation of, 147; clearance 
 of sudd and a use found for the 
 refuse, 150; its whole length laid 
 open, 150 
 
 Nile, Blue, its junction with the White 
 Nile at Khartum, 21, 135; tides of, 
 135, 136 
 
 Nile, White, its junction with the 
 
 Blue Nile at Khartum, 21 ; source 
 
 of, 134- 
 
 Nilometers, 137 
 Nubar Pasha, political ability of, 
 
 222,231; his institution of the 
 
 Mixed Tribunals, 270 
 
 OHRWALDER, Father, 33 
 
 Omdurman, town of, transmutation 
 of, 31 ; area and population, 31 ; 
 its market and cotton mills, 36, 37 
 
 Omdurman, battle of, 13 
 
 Organic Law of 1913, new consti- 
 tutional system promulgated by the, 
 265 
 
 PHIUE, temples of, i ; agitation 
 against their submersion by the 
 erection of the Assuan dam, 144 
 
 Police force, inadequacy of, 244, 246; 
 necessity of extra police-tax, 249; 
 restrictions on, imposed by Capitu- 
 lations, 278 
 
 Port Sudan, opening of Nile-Red- 
 Sea Railway at, 93 ; rapid growth 
 of, 94 ; harbour of, 96 ; construc- 
 tion of, 97 ; imports and exports 
 of, 99 ; climate of, 101 ; buildings 
 of, 109 
 
 Provincial Councils, 305 
 
 Pyramids, the great, 177, 178 
 
 Pyramids at Merowi, 71 
 
 Public Works Department, adminis- 
 trators of, 134; engineers of, 139; 
 English inspection of, 294; advan- 
 tages of, to the fellah, 186 
 
 RAILWAYS, 69, seq. ; opening of Nile- 
 Red-Sea Railway, 93 ; Suakin-Ber- 
 ber Railway project, 95, 98; their 
 public ownership in Sudan, 105 
 
 Riaz Pasha, race and ability of, 231 
 
 SAID PASHA, Khedive, father of 
 Ismail, 182 
 
 Scott-Moncrieff, Sir Colin, his ser- 
 vices in the Egyptian Public Works 
 Department to further Nile irriga- 
 tion, 134; his adaptation of Mougel's
 
 INDEX 
 
 barrage, 142; his commission in 
 1800, 143; his services, 218; his 
 irrigation schemes attacked, 200 
 
 Slatin Pasha, Sir Rudolf von, 33 
 
 Slaves, import and export of, pro- 
 hibited in the Sudan, 52 ; manu- 
 mission of, 66; special department 
 to control trade in, 66 
 
 Strabo, in Egypt, 155 
 
 Sudan, conquest of, 2 ; under two 
 flags, xiv, 4 ; its area, fertility, 
 population, 6 ; its possibilities 
 of development, 6; character- 
 istics of natives, 23, seq. ; gov- 
 ernment of, 50; its division into 
 fourteen provinces, 52; its revenue, 
 55 ; religious observances in, 62, seq. ; 
 slave trade in, 66 ; its three chief 
 requirements, 68; irrigation of, 72; 
 need of labourers in, 72; physique 
 of natives compared with Egyptians, 
 81 ; musical taste of natives, 82 ; 
 wives of native soldiers, 84, seq. ; 
 first Government of, 87, seq. ; Civil 
 Service, 88, seq. ; Civil Service, 
 genesis of, xv ; train-service of, 
 98 ; state socialism in, 103, seq. ; 
 its control of the irrigation of Egypt, 
 132 ; its virtual position as a British 
 dominion, 225; Lord Kitchener on 
 increased prosperity of, 284 
 
 Sudd, 135; use discovered for, 150 
 
 TEWFIK PASHA, Khedive, character 
 of, 218, seq. 
 
 Thebes, Colossi of, 156; the City 
 of the Dead, 164 
 
 Tombs of the Kings, 164 
 
 Tourists in Egypt, their antiquity, 
 155; Greek and Roman, 150; 
 modern, 157 
 
 Turkey, its participation in govern- 
 ment of the Sudan, 51,52; theoretical 
 control of Egyptian politics, 213, srq. 
 
 'Turks' (Turco-Egyptians), the real 
 governing element in Egypt be- 
 fore 1882, and their attitude towards 
 English rule, 231, 232; relations 
 with Nationalist agitators, 257; 
 rise of Young Turks, 292 
 
 Turkish, the official language of the 
 Egyptian army, 51 ; High Com- 
 missioner in Cairo, 214; Revolution, 
 293, 
 
 WADY HALFA, site of, i ; railway 
 junction, 3 
 
 Wellcome Institute, 29 
 
 White Nile. See Nile. 
 
 White Slave Traffic, 273 
 
 Willcocks (Sir William), 134; his 
 scheme for perennial irrigation, 
 140; his presidency of Sir Colin 
 Scott MoncriefTs Commission, 1890, 
 143; modification of his designs 
 for Assuan dam, 144; his proposal 
 to utilize the great lakes as storage 
 reservoirs, 151, 218 
 
 Wingate, Sir Reginald, Sirdar of the 
 Egyptian army and Governor- 
 General of the Sudan, xiv ; Lord 
 Cromer's testimony to value of 
 his long tenure of office, xx ; 
 in the Palace at Khartum, 16; 
 rescue of Father Ohrwalder, 33 ; 
 a 'shrewd and kindly autocrat," 
 43 ; his linguistic and antiquarian 
 attainments, 47 ; his military ca- 
 pacity in the campaign of Ghedit, 
 47 ; his brilliant and final victory 
 over the Khalifa at that place, 
 48 ; student and soldier, 49 ; at 
 review of Khartum garrison, 81 ; 
 extraordinary progress in prosperity 
 and good order of Sudan under his 
 direction, 284 
 
 Wolseley, Viscount, his expedition 
 in 1884, 7, 103; his attitude to 
 Suakin-Berbcr Railway, 95 ; his 
 entry into Cairo, in i.SS^. 216 
 
 Women, more numerous than men 
 in the Northern Sudan, :.>, ; educa- 
 tion of, in Khartum. (>j; their 
 (X)sition and treatment in lines 
 of Sudanese regiments. 85, 87 ; 
 question of their future in Egypt, 
 301 ; seclusion of, recognized by 
 established Eastern usage. 30.2 ; 
 steps towards emancipation of, 304 ; 
 education of. 305
 
 316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 YOUNG, Captain, formerly Mudir of 
 
 Omdunnan, 35 
 Young Turk movement, its effect in 
 
 Egypt, 257, 292 
 
 ZAGHLTJL PASHA, his scheme for 
 sending native girl-students to be 
 trained in England, 307 
 
 Zeidab Estate, visited and described, 
 1 20, seq. 
 
 Zubeir Pasha, his origin and career, 
 59, 60; meeting with him at Khar- 
 tum, 60; his farms and estates, 
 124
 
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 narrative of recent and contemporary " The book is so noteworthy be- 
 
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 a tribute to the author's high ability which have gone to its making are so 
 
 as a scholar and writer.' 1 exceptional. Lord Cromer is not only 
 
 rolitical Science Quarterly. a great administrator ; he stands be- 
 fore us as a great thinker." 
 
 "... one of the most noteworthy The Nation. 
 
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 Publishers 64 66 Fifth Avenue New York
 
 The Hon. DEAN C. WORCESTER'S New Book 
 
 The Philippines 
 
 BY DEAN C. WORCESTER 
 
 Secretary of the Interior, Philippine Insular Government, 1901-1913 
 Author of" The Philippine Islands and Their People," etc. 
 
 2 volumes, Decorated Cloth, Illustrated, 8vo, $6.00 net 
 
 There is no greater authority on these insular possessions than Mr. Worcester who, as 
 early as 1887, and again in 1890 was a prominent member of scientific expeditions to the 
 Islands; from 1899 to 1901 was a member of the U.S. Philippine Commission; since 1901 
 has been Secretary of the Interior to the Insular Government, and who in 1899 published 
 " The Philippine Islands and Their People," a record of personal observation and experi- 
 ence, with a short summary of the more important facts in the history of the archipelago, 
 which has ever since been the acknowledged standard work of information concerning the 
 Islands. 
 
 In Mr. Worcester's valuable new work, past and present conditions are minutely re- 
 viewed with regard for strict accuracy of statement. The author's position giving him free 
 access to all the government records, much of the information thus made available has 
 never been before made public. With practically unlimited material on which to draw in 
 the way of illustrations, very fine and rare photographs intimately related with the text 
 emphasize the lessons which they are respectively intended to teach. 
 
 The result is a work of the greatest importance as well as of the greatest interest to all 
 concerned as to the future possibilities of the Philippines and as to the course the United 
 States Government should pursue in the interest of the several peoples of the Islands. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I. View Point and Subject Matter. Chapter II. Was Independence Promised ? Chap- 
 ter III. Insurgent "Cooperation." Chapter IV. The Premeditated Insurgent Attack. Chapter 
 V. Insurgent Rule and the Wilcox-Sargeant Report. Chapter VI. Insurgent Rule in the Caga- 
 yan Valley. Chapter VII. Insurgent Rule in the Visayas and Elsewhere. Chapter VIII. Did 
 We Destroy a Republic? Chapter IX. The First Philippine Commission. Chapter X. The 
 Conduct of the War. Chapter XI. The Second Philippine Commission. Chapter XII. The 
 Establishment of Civil Government. Chapter XIII. The Philippine Constabulary and Public 
 Order. Chapter XIV. American Governors. Chapter XV. Health Conditions. Chapter XVI. 
 
 Baguio and the Benguet Road. Chapter XVII. Coordination of Scientific Work. Chapter 
 XVIII. Improved Means of Communication. Chapter XIX. Education. Chapter XX. The 
 Administration of Justice. Chapter XXI. Financial Reform. Chapter XXII. The Philippine 
 Forests. Chapter XXIII. Philippine Lands. Chapter XXIV. Peace and Prosperity. Chapter 
 XXV. Commercial Possibilities of the Philippines. Chapter XXVI. The Picturesque Philip- 
 pines. Chapter XXVII. Fish and Game. Chapter XXVIII. The Exploration of Non-Christian 
 Territory. Chapter XXIX. The Government of Non-Christian Tribes. Chapter XXX. The 
 Government of Non-Christian Tribes (continued). Chapter XXXI. Corrigenda. Chapter XXXII. 
 
 Non-Christian Tribe Problems. Chapter XXXIII. Slavery in the Philippine Islands. Chapter 
 XXXIV. The Philippine Assembly. Chapter XXXV. Is Independence Possible? Chapter 
 XXXVI. The Future of the Philippines. 
 
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 Notes on Politics and History: 
 A University Address 
 
 BY VISCOUNT MORLEY, O.M. 
 
 Chancellor of the University of Manchester 
 
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 As a student of history, Lord Morlcy needs little introduction to the seri- 
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 most remarkable biographies ever written that of Gladstone as the scholar 
 who has written with more than the usual amount of success of Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, Cromwell and Burke. In the field of public affairs he is also promi- 
 nent. This book, therefore, in which he discusses the relation of politics and 
 history, comes as one having a special interest. Originally delivered as an 
 address before the University of Manchester, the material has been consider- 
 ably amplified and entirely recast. Though brief, it reflects those characteris- 
 tics which have always distinguished its author's work penetration, forceful 
 expression, balance. 
 
 The Cambridge History of India 
 
 EDITED BY PROFESSOR E. J. RAPSON, M.A., LIEUT. -CoL. 
 
 T. W. HAIG, C.M.G., AND SIR THEODORE 
 
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 To be complete in six volumes. Each cloth, 8ro. 
 With maps and illustrations. tS- net ^ carriage extra. 
 
 Volume I. Ancient India from the earliest historical times to 
 about the beginning of the Christian era 
 
 This work when complete will cover a period of more than three thousand 
 years and will deal concisely with the political and social history of the numer- 
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 historical times. The first volume treats of the earliest history of India as 
 known from its literatures and monuments. It includes an account of the 
 Persian and Greek dominions in northwestern India, of the Maurya empire 
 and of the various kingdoms which arose on its decline. 
 
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 IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS 
 
 History of England 
 
 BY ARTHUR LYON CROSS 
 
 Professor of European History in the University of Michigan 
 
 For inclusion in this volume there have been selected such facts as are necessary 
 to give a coherent view of the larger factors influencing national development from 
 the earliest times to the great British Empire of to-day. The prominence among 
 such factors of social, economic and intellectual forces is fully recognized by Pro- 
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 with the narrative. Legal and constitutional growth is also emphasized by tracing 
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 ture and importance of the great statutes. The natural interest of the student in the 
 modern period and the value of a thorough knowledge of this period, both to the 
 prospective historian and to the good citizen interested in modern problems, is rec- 
 ognized by the author's devoting particular attention to such subjects as the Indus- 
 trial Revolution, the Extension of the Franchise, Remedial Legislation and Colonial 
 and Imperial Development. The volume will, of course, contain the necessary maps, 
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 which the pronunciation of proper names will be indicated. The author's style is 
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 been told in such a manner as to make a continuous, well-proportioned and smoothly 
 running account. In fact, the book will be found not only an excellent history for 
 the use of college students but also a work which will measure up to high literary 
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 Democracy and Race Friction: 
 A Study in Social Ethics 
 
 BY JOHN MOFFATT MECKLIN, Ph.D. 
 
 Professor of Philosophy in the University of Pittsburg 
 
 Cloth, i2tno. 
 
 Professor Mecklin's purpose in this volume is not to present a solution of the race 
 problem, which he believes to be insoluble, but rather to indicate as clearly as pos- 
 sible what the problem really involves. With this end in view he has brought to 
 bear upon the subject the results of the work recently done in social psychology by 
 such men as Tarde, Baldwin, McDougall, Ross and others. An analysis of the social 
 principles by which the individual lives himself into the lives of the group and at the 
 same time attains mental and moral maturity is followed by an examination of race 
 traits with special reference to the Negro to determine how far they influence the 
 process of becoming social and solid with one's fellows. The results thus gained are 
 utili/.ed to explain the imperfect way in which the Negro has assimilated the civiliza- 
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 are brought together in large numbers. The book closes with an attempt at a 
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 The United States as a World Power 
 
 BY ARCHIBALD GARY COOLIDGE 
 
 Harvard University 
 
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 Macmillan Standard Library hdition $.jo net 
 
 In describing the growth of the United States to the position which this country 
 now occupies, Professor Coolidge begins with the people themselves as the control- 
 ling force in any political policy, tracing the formation of their ideals, and the condi- 
 tions under which these ideals have been changed. It has become a matter of 
 common observation that the Spanish War marked a distinct division in the life of 
 the American people, that our horizon has broadened until this country now pos- 
 sesses all the advantages and all the responsibilities that this expanded attitude in- 
 volves. It is to a consideration of these advantages and responsibilities, and, more 
 particularly, the state of preparedness for them, that Professor Coolidge applies 
 himself in this work. 
 
 The material of which the book is constructed was originally gathered for use in 
 the lectures delivered by the author at the Sorbonne as Harvard lectures on the 
 Hyde foundation. 
 
 Owing to their international breadth of treatment, they created such comment in 
 England, France, Germany and the United States that Professor Coolidge was urged 
 to publish them in book form at once. The spirit displayed is one of unusual 
 impartiality and detachment. 
 
 We know of no volume which sums up so well and in so brief a space the wide 
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 incidentally, are certain, in view of our development, to loom still larger on the 
 national horizon. Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 The author discusses the various problems with a sanity and a judicial fairness 
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 The Government of England 
 
 BY A. LAWRENCE LOWELL 
 
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 Bryce's 'American Commonwealth,' and perhaps also the greatest work of this 
 character produced by an American scholar." Philadelphia Public Ledger. 
 
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 as the greatest work in this field that has ever been produced by an American 
 scholar." Pittsbiirg Post. 
 
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 The First Loubat Prize, which is conferred by Columbia 
 University every five years, for the best work published in 
 the interval on the history, geography, archaeology, eth- 
 nology, philosophy or numismatics of North America, was 
 awarded to George Louis Beer for the following volumes. 
 
 British Colonial Policy 
 1754-1765 
 
 BY GEORGE LOUIS BEER 
 
 Cloth. Svo. xi i -f 322 pages. $2.00 net. 
 
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 and an absence of bias greater than those of any previous historian. 1 " 
 
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 1578-1660 
 
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 No student of this or any other period, whatever his predispositions, can 
 fail to welcome a work which is so effective and so satisfying in its conclu- 
 sions as this. 1 ' Political Science Quarterly. 
 
 The Old Colonial System 
 1660-1754 
 
 BY GEORGE LOUIS BEER 
 Part I. The Establishment of the System, 1660-1688 
 
 (In Two Volumes) 
 
 Cloth. Sro. Vol. i, x~'i 4- j.?/ /</, rv/. i/, riii + 382 pages. $4.00 tttt. 
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 models of historical scholarship and workmanship. 11 
 
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