Full text of "Egypt in transition"

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SIDN EVSliOM

EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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Flwto by G. C. Beresl<jTd.

THE RT, HON, THE EAKL OF CROMER, G.C.E., 0.]M., ETC.

EGYPT IN TRANSITION

SIDNEY LOW

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY

THE EAEL OF CKOMEE, G.C.B., etc.

WITH PORTRAITS

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATEELOO PLACE

1914

• •• ^'*-'* ,•-**•• *

••• •>

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> • ►

• • • •

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 Enghsh gentleman paid a visit to a high ofl&cial
of the Sudanese Government resident at Khartum, and,
as a prehminary to a searching interrogatory on a number
of points of great pubhc 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
inhabitants, 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 accomphshment 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 reahty less than many might, as a first impression,

viii INTRODUCTION

be inclined to think. In truth, the rapidity with which
casual visitors to the East occasionally 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 * Padgett, 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 conclusion
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 certainly desirable, if for no other reason
than to serve as an antidote to current fables, that the
British pubHc should have accurate information furnished
to them as regards the proceedings of their agents abroad.
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 intelhgent and independent

INTRODUCTION ix

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 suggestions of real practical utihty. The value
of the information thus afforded to the pubhc necessarily
depends 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 acuteness of his powers
of observation. His pleasing literary 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.

The abundant hterature which exists on modem Egypt,
coupled with the fact that a steady stream of winter visitors
now passes annually through Cairo, have contributed to
render the public tolerably famihar with the present con-
dition of Egyptian affairs. On these, therefore, I need not

dwell at any length. I wish, however, to repeat an opinion

X INTRODUCTION

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
abohtion, or at all events the modification, of the Capitula-
tions. 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 suggestions
for solving the legislative dilemma which at present exists.
I do not attach any exaggerated importance to the par-
ticular scheme which I have recommended, 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 Europeans resident in Egypt of their
present privileges without providing adequate guarantees
against the recurrence of those abuses to guard against
which the privileges were originally created. The best
guarantee would probably be the creation of machinery
which would in some form or another enable European
residents 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

INTRODUCTION xi

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 statesman-
ship 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 miobjection-
able solution to this question ; of the fact that the subject,
which is 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 conclusion would be unsatis-
factory 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.

a 2

xii INTRODUCTION

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 situation
as are under human control, the first place must be given
t/ 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, wafch the exception
of a few experts who might be numbered on the fingers of
one hand, there are not a dozen people in England who
could give even an approximately accurate account of
what that form of government 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
I spared all the grave inconveniences 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

INTRODUCTION xiii

that politicians were impaled on the horns of an insoluble
dilemma. Lord Salisbmy, 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
momitains it is generally possible by dihgent 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 Mcllwraith
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 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 preference 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 Eeginald 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, fortunately, as yet occurred
to awaken marked parliamentary 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

xiv INTRODUCTIOX

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 the}^ have fully justified the confidence
which has been shown in them. They have been mainly,
though by no means exclusively, soldiers. The civihan
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 con-
tinued practically unchanged until the commencement of the
w^ar 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 adminis-
trative work done by both soldiers and civilians, I may say
that I find it quite impossible to generalise on the subject
of their respective merits — I mean, of course, in respect
to ordinary administrative w^ork, and not as regards posts
where special legal, educational or other technical qualifi-
cations 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

INTRODUCTION xv

had received their early training at Sandhui'st, 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 officers
themselves naturally wish to join their regiments 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, naturally 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 exposed to the risk of having his administration
seriously dislocated at a critical moment.

Frequent changes in any administration are at all times
to be deprecated. One of the reasons of whatever 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
m their place may not seem a matter of vital importance.
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

xvi INTRODUCTION

respect to civil or military appointments, to fill at once
the vacuum caused by the abrupt departure of even a very
few trained men. As a matter of fact the withdrawal of
a certain number of officers from the Sudan to go to South
Africa led to consequences 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 Service
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 individuals. 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 indiscretion 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 dangers, and, con-
sidering the very great difficulties 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

INTRODUCTION xvii

errors is to discard absolutely the practice of selecting for
employment abroad any who for whatsoever reason have
been whole or partial failm'es 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 derived from parlia-
mentary 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 Imperial policy.

Their services cannot be secured unless they are
adequately paid. Of all the mistakes that can be com-
mitted 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 the long period, during the early days of
our Egyptian troubles, I had to deal with a semi-bankrupt
Exchequer. 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

xviii INTRODUCTION

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 obUgation to place
its employes in such positions as to prevent personal
feelings of honour and probity being the sole guarantee
for integrit}^

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 chmate 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 sub-
ordinate staff. The same holds good even to a 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 immense advantage
if the same individual or individuals who are responsible
for initiating the reform can also for a certain period watch

INTRODUCTION xix

over its execution and operation. 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 manner 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 continuous. It is that the pace
should not be forced.

CROMER.

30 WiMPOLE vStreet,
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 in-
sight into the political, social, and administrative conditions
of those countries. They are intended 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 recon-
struction 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 knowledge
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.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Desert Train 1

II. A City of Romance ...... 9

III. The Growing of Khartum . . . . .18

IV. OMDURaiAN ........ 29

V. Anglo-Sudanese Society ..... 37

VI. Concerning Politics and Persons ... 47

VII. Some Sudanese Problems . . . . .57

VIII. SiaiPKiNSON Bey ....... 68

IX. Concerning Women, Soldiers, and Civilians . 77

X. The New Gate of Africa ..... 86

XI. State Socialism in the Sudan .... 95

XII. A Nocturne 102

XIII. A Sudan Plantation . . . . . .110

XIV. Land and Water 121

XV. The Bridle of the Flood .... 129

XVI. The Clients of Cook ..... 140

XVII. The Hills of the Dead 148

XVIII. Cairo Impressions . . . . . .155

/ XIX. In the Delta 164

XX. Mr. Vaporopoulos . . . . . .175

XXI. The Schools of the Prophet . . . . 184

XXIV

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XXII. The Occupation

XXIII. Governing Elements, Old and New

XXIV. Government by Inspection
XXV. Halting Justice

XXVI. Some Recent Reforms

I^XVII. The Drag on the Wheel .

XXVIII. Conclusions

INDEX

PAGE

193
203
212
220
230
246
261

285

PORTEAITS

The Right Hon. the Earl of Cromer, G.C.B.,
O.M., &c. ......

Field -Marshal Viscount Kitchener of Khartum.
G.C.B., O.M., &c

Lieut. -General Sir Francis Reginald Wingate,
G.C.V.O., &c

Slatin Pacha, G.C.V.O., &c. ....

H.H. The Khedive ......

Sir William Willcocks, K.C.M.G.

Frontispiece

facing p. 18

44
120

196
238

) > .,'

^1 '

EGYPT IN TRANSITION

CHAPTEK I

THE DESEET 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 Philse ; 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 Kamses, under the Ptolemies, the
Eomans, 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
I and a temptation ; a land perhaps to prey upon, perhaps
to fear, but one that seemed to have Httle kinship or com-
munity with the kindly, habitable earth men knew. There,

9 ' EGYPT IN TRANSITION

at Wady Haifa, Avhere 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 civilisation. The level sun flamed across the waste of
sand upon the spearheads of Pharaoh's mercenaries and the
helmets of Eoman 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 travellers' tales told
of dim kingdoms, rising and falling, and restless tribes of
imtamable 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 inhospitable.
For those who were not officials or emissaries of the Govern-
ment, the journey into it was difficult, and even danger-
ous ; for all it was long and slow. Now the neat and well-
appointed express boats of the Sudan Government service
float you smoothly up to Haifa in the extreme of comfort.

THE DESERT TRAIN 3

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
Junction. 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 fi'om Charing Cross if you please,
and the worst adventure that need befall you on the
way will be a bad Channel crossing or an inadequate
luncheon at a railway buffet. Measured by time of transit,
which is the only practical method of calculating distances,
Omdurman 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 w^ent along — and fight a battle every few
months while we were doing that.'

Yet, despite the tourist agents and the steamship com-
panies and the railways, there is still some vagueness,
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

■^ B 2

4 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 him to come out and have tea with
vou 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 length of the Nile, from Uganda to the Mediterranean,
England is in partnership with the Khedivial Government.
In Egypt it is a relation somewhat veiled and not formally
admitted, though real enough ; in the Sudan, though
Britain is, beyond 'question, the predominant partner,
the joint rights of Egypt— [-itself nominally still a Turkish
province-i— are carefully asserted. It is a curious situation
of which more anon. Meanwhile, let us not forget that we

THE DESERT TRAIN 5

are dealing with a condominium of a very remarkable and
novel kind. The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is a pohtical 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
hves — 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, France, Germany, and Austria together.
One province 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
om* 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 w^e are now beginning
to apply, might be made so. The population of the whole
territory is estimated at little more than three millions.
But this is due to temporary causes which we have now

6 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

eliminated. That is to say, to the ruin and havoc wrought
by Mahdism. The Sudan has in former times supported
a large number of inhabitants, it was even the seat of popu-
lous 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 de-
veloping 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 Egyptians 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.

You get some glimmering of it as you travel in the desert
train, which bridges the stretch of utter barrenness 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 south-
ward course at Abu Hamed. Wolseley, in 1884, took the
long and tedious way round the bend and over the two
cataracts it passes. Kitchener, in 1898, determined to take
the short cut across the 230 miles of desert. And such
desert ! Africa, the world, has scarcely its equal. Tree-
less, 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 the tropical

THE DESERT TRAIN 7

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 December the young Cana-
dian 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 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 Bed Sea coast which Girouard's successors have

8 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

built ; along the river, past Sliendy and Metemmeh 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 Enghshmen cannot hear, even
when it is prosaically called at a railway station, without
a certain thrill. To some, indeed, of my feUow-travellers
who arrived with me by the desert train that dark, warm
evening in December it may have meant httle. ' Also
sind wir zuletzt am Ende ! ' says the stout German, who
has been grumbling and persphing for many hours. For
Irim, coming into the Sudan with strictly commercial
aims, Khartum is only a town hke 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
battahon 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 ahens
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 unavaiHng
march which ended in futihty and retreat ; they were

lU EGYPT IN TRANSITION

only schoolboys during the progress of the later victorious
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 swarm-
ing walls of Omdurman : many things since Wauchope's
Highlanders and Hector Macdonald's Sudanese mowed
down the Khahfa'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 Khahfa, it must be
a romance merely to breathe the an 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 Metemmeh, the Atbara, and Abu Hamed were
burned into our memory ! I saw Safiyeh herself in that
brisk little dockyard — a Portsmouth in miniatm'e — 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 hulk was
the famous Thames penny steamer which went through
such vicissitudes in her heroic day. A mere shell of shabby

A CITY OF ROMANCE ' 11

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 httle steamer to rescue Sir Charles Wilson's party
from a very perilous position she fell into the Khalifa's
hands again ; thirteen years later Lord Kitchener's gun-
boats recaptured her, in the course of that hurried expedition
up the White Nile to settle matters with Captain Marchand
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 pashadom buttoned its frock coat v/
round its pockets at Khartum, and shared its gains grudg-
ingly with officiaHsm at Cairo ; Egyptian conscripts kept
guard sulkily 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

12 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

which Mehemet Ah founded seemed no more evanescent
than many others in the East : it was abominable barbarism
at bottom, but it had the externals of civilisation. 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 over-
turn 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
population 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 Omdurman. The towns are
full of memorials of that brief crusading fury of Moslem
Puritanism, of the long carnival of blood and rapine that
followed, of the heroic struggles to stem the tide, of the
final, disciplined, deliberate 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
capita] it is not easy to forget : the associations of that

A CITY OF ROMANCE 13

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 drago-
mans, 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 jihhaJis 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 Omdurman
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
renmants 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

14 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 regularly, which was an
advantage he did not enjoy when he was drilling and ham-
mering 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 Khahfa 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, produced by an erring stylographic
pen, removed from my trousers. In the temporary absence
of her husband the Signora confided to me portions of
her biography. 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

A CITY OF ROMANCE 15

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. Unhappily 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 reheved of a Sudanese wdfe 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-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 Eeginald
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 cork-
screw 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.'

16 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 Gordon's
disheartened, decimated, famished garrison cowering behind
its ineffective walls. With one rush the 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
fanatics, brandishing their great spears.

The Mahdi, it is said, had given orders to spare him ;
ahve 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 them-
selves 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

A CITY OF ROMANCE 17

we stand. Somebody tells the story again in quiet tones ;
before us lie the lawns and rustling sycamores of the gardens,
sleeping 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.
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 tacoma
and the crimson 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 EngHshmen
and a few Enghshwomen, 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 sentiment
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 Ali 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,

FIELD-MARSH.iL VISCOUXT KITCHENER OF KHARTUM, G.C.B., O.M., ETC.
Reproduced from a painting ly the Eon. John Collier by arrangement with The Fine Art Society.

THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 19

it was lifeless and vacant. An entirely new city had to
be created.

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 inherit-
ance 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 convinced
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 considered the situation of IGaartum,
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 hfe-long residents, but only
temporary sojourners under ahen stars. But there is

nothing of that transient feeling about Khartum ; it has

c 2

20 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

no rawness, despite its youth, and, though still unfinished,
it has a settled air, as if it were the work of men who reahsed
that they were planning for the future.

It lies in the midst of a brown and yellow wilderness,
which w^e 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 iSood 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, willowy date palms bow
their stately heads Hke tall young princesses, as if in ac-
knowledgment of the nosegays of red and yellow blossoms,
which the parkinsonia, the poinsettia, the mustard tree,
the sisiban, the flowering thorn of the Sudan, and other
lesser shrubs toss to their knees. The streets have been
planned, as I have said, with a generous amphtude, and,
though there are many vacant spaces in them still, they
give promise of becoming handsome boulevards with time.
Enterprising Greeks and venturous Itahans have established
thriving shops, which give to the main thoroughfares
a busy and mercantile appearance.

Behind these streets is the quarter of the natives, and

THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 21

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 account-
able to the mudinjeli, 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, stridiag,
desert camels from far up the country ; 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 Khahfa in killing off the adult male population. These
may be the reliquice Banaum, but they show no trace of

22 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

gloom. The}^ are a cheerful, good-terapered, chattering
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, directing, 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-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

THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 28

sahibs in that land, and in Egypt, too, I believe, in the
pre-Cookian days. In the Sudan even now they are begin-
ning 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. Mean-
while, the majority of the Sudan natives are still in the
unsophisticated 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 learning
their lesson with gratifying rapidity. The condominium
of England and Egypt has been exhibited in an admini-
strative partnership. The official hierarchy is mixed ;
in every department there are English chiefs, with native
subordinates, from somewhere down the Nile. So far,
work requiring some intelligence, 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

24 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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, black-
smiths, carpenters, and artisans of all kinds, without
assistance from outside ; and presently also in architects,
surveyors, engineers, doctors, schoolmasters, officials,
and clerks. The muscle and physique of the negro, com-
bined with the alert intelligence of the Arab, should con-
tribute all that is needed. Already there is abundant work,
at wages which would not sound wholly contemptible in
the East End of London, for both kinds. The Government
railways, shops, and dockyards 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.

THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 25

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 mthin the enceinte of barracks
and defensive works — for Khartum, remember, 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 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

26 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 warlike instinct turned to good account.
Before long the Sudanese contingent will be able to find
its subalterns 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 Bergson, nor is he induced
to browse vaguely over English literature and modern
politics. That peculiar intellectual 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 w^ould 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

THE GROWING OF KHARTUM 27

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 learn something from the
educational experiment which is being conducted in the
heart of Africa.

Khartum, however, is doing more for science and learn-
ing, and education in the highest sense, than this. The
most notable building in the place — in some respects 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 manufacturing druggists, there are well-
equipped laboratories and consulting-rooms in which a stafT
of bacteriologists and medical experts is engaged in examin-
ing the problems of tropical vegetation, germ-life, and
disease. Eesults 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 comparable
in importance to that of the great Portuguese travellers and
explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Prince
Henry the Navigator, Vaso da Gama, and Bartolomeo Diaz
laid open the coasts of Africa to the exploitation and com-
merce 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

28 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

may once more restore it to civilisation and render it habit-
able and wholesome for the northern races. And in this
great peaceful recon quest of the South the Wellcome
Laboratories of Khartum will be in the vanward 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.

CHAPTEE IV

OMDUKMAN

The transmutation of Omdurman is as strange in its way
as that of the sister city across the Nile. Omclm-man
has had a curious history. Some thii'ty years ago it was
an unimportant native village. When Mohammed 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 destruction of Khartum he turned the
camp into his capital, and brought together a vast con-
course of his friends and subjects. The poHcy was continued
by his successor, Abdullah, the Khahfa. 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 Omdm'man iifteen years ago. I have heard the number
put at half a miUion, 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 Khahfa's regime of blood and famine the inhabitants
of the Sudan had decreased by at least seventy per cent.
The figure seems incredible ; but the best authority on the

80 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

subject, the Sirdar, who knows everything about the Sudan
that is worth knowing, regards it as an unduly moderate
estimate. When we came into possession the eight or
nine milHons of the Sudanese peoples had been reduced to
less than two ; and perhaps a quarter of them or more were
gathered under the Khahfa'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 Khahfa'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 Omdurman so that they could be watched
and guarded. Here, too, were all the European and Egypt-
ian prisoners whose lives it had been deemed desirable to
spare. In a little house adjacent to the Khalifa's hved
Slatin during the ten precarious years of his captivity,
sometimes petted by the capricious tyrant, sometimes
insulted and bulhed, but always, in spite of his forced con-
version to Mohammedanism, treated as a slave and aware
that his hfe hung by a thread. Now he is Sir Kudolf 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,

OMDURMAN 31

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 Omdm-man, 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 hned and seared
that was a history in itself, and deep earnest eyes with a
glint of humom' in them. This was Father Ohrwalder, who
hkewise 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 Keginald Wingate.
When the end of the dervish rule came, Father Ohrwalder
went back again, not to a palace or to high office, but to
hve 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 co munity in the Sudan, himself
the friend of men of all rehgions 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 um'egulated mass
of mean buildings, which was appropriated 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

32 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 crusading pattern to Tower muskets and Eemington
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 con-
verted to the use of the present administration 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 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 sending 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 filled by Captain
Young, a very able officer lent to the Sudan service by the
British Army ; and Mrs. Young was then the only English

OMDURMAN 33

lady in Omdurman except the wife of the officer com-
manding one of the Sudanese battaHons. EngHsh 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 incon-
gruity. I could not dismiss the thought that these pleasant,
EngHsh-seeming apartments, with their quiet, home-like
air of comfort, were, in fact, those in which Abdullah had
carried on his orgies and taken counsel with his trembling
satellites. 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 enthusiasm. My
eyes could scan the spot where he held his daily revivalist
meetings, his daily floggings, his not infrequent hangings.
The civil gaffir, or watchman, 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

84 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

small bazaar shops, doing a brisk business. Omdurman
is the mart and entre'pot 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-Ghazal negro,
in a loin cloth, who first saw the light not far from the
Equator. I was introduced to certain of the local manu-
facturers. 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 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 supphed. In a small back yard
we found the estabhshment of a local miller, a man of
substance, though his plant consisted of a couple of grind-
stones 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

OMDURMAN 35

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 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-magis-
trate, 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 appa-
ratus in these clustering rows of huts of dried brick and

D 2

36 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

sun-baked wood and straw. The furnace was lighted, and
long jets of water were spouted into the air, to the keen
dehght 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, some-
thing I was unconsciously expecting and 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 West-
end poulterer. Then I perceived 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
humanity 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. Omdur-
man 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.

CHAPTEK V

ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY

The winter visitor to Khartum comes away with a some-
what exaggerated behef in the amenities of Anglo-Sudanese
hfe. 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 January it would be perfect, save for an
occasional sandstorm. 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 blossoms glowing on one
side of you and the great white river gleaming on the other ;

or at night, after a pleasant dinner party, as you stroll

88 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

back under the golden southern moon floating through
the purple velvet of the sky.

Then there is so much that is novel and still unhackneyed.
Even the small discomforts of existence are enjoyable.
There are few carriages in Khartum, except 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. Consequently, 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 plentitude of their hospitahty 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 unexpected 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, unsophisticated no longer, and a horde of
the pestering touts who make Cairo hideous ; and then,
I suppose, Khartum society will grow reserved and in-
accessible. Meanwhile, it is still new enough to retain the
pioneering tradition ; it still feels itself a settlement of the

ANGLO-SUDANESE^ SOCIETY 39

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 visitant
with some credentials, it is ready to open its heart and its
doors.

All these things naturally predispose one to a favourable
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 communicated 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 regi-
ments or governing provinces at an age when in England
they would be helping to drill a company or sealing docu-
ments in Downing Street. The Englishman 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 initiative and direct many native sub-
ordinates. The Sudan may not have more than ten years
of him altogether, and it cannot afford to let him spend

40 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 chmate 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 suppose that the
qualifying examination for admission includes a beauty
competition. But it is not altogether 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 communi-
cates 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 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

ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 41

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 incor-
rigible, 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 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, administering, educating,
drilling, pohcing, civilising their miscellaneous 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

42 EGYPT 1^ TRAN'SITION

■J

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 Depart-
ment 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 Came. 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 ? ' ' 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 quahty could be cor-
rectly gauged by the examples one meets in the Sudan.
As a fact, these are all picked men, and they are not un-
conscious of the circumstance. The Government insists
on mind as well as muscle. It will have its young men

ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 43

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
examination 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
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 inconsistent with
hard fighting and the winning of battles. Sir Keginald
Wingate, hke his former chief, but perhaps in a greater
degree, is a scholar, a hnguist, a student of antiquities and
history. But he had to do his share of rough and perilous
soldiering work, though the pubHc knew httle about it
at the time, being just then otherwise 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 correspondents went home, most of
the 11,000 British troops went home, even Lord Eatchener
went home. There came the friction with France, and
then in a httle while the growing quarrel with the Boers,
and we all forgot the Khahfa. But that inconvenitnt
person had got away after his Baggara had been mown

44 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 Keginald Wingate was in hot pursuit
of him. There were no British solders 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 Keginald Wingate was greatly outnumbered, and
his troops in their final dash had to march nearly two 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 now. 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
zariha, 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 shoulder. 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

Photo hy\EllioU & Fry.

LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR FRANCIS REGINALD WINGATE, K.C.M.G., ETC.

ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY 45

of the children of Islam when it is the will of Allah that
the end shall come. Many evil deeds were done by Abdullah
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 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 a student as well as a soldier, 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 ' Euro-
peans,' 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.

46 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 thermometer 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 red-
hot 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.

CHAPTEK 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
Omdm^man 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 EngHshmen 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 English,
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
pohtical 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

48 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 main-
taining order, with some British officials to help the
Egyptians in the business of government. In this condi-
tion 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 together throughout the terri-
tory ; that the miHtary 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 Khedive without the consent of the British Govern-
ment ; 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 EngHsh Mudir,
cr Governor, responsible to the Governor- General, who is
nominall}^ 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 by
African natives, administered by English officials, with
the assistance of Egyptian subordinates, and defended
by a force of Egyptian and Sudanese troops under

CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS 49

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
adjutant-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 nainly 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. Eng-
lishmen are running the territory without disguise, 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 Egyptian, but their
nationality is only, so to speak, incidental ; many, in fact,
are Syrians, Greeks, and Levantines, and some are Sudanese

50 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

natives. Egypt at present furnishes the best available
supply of intelligent Arabic-speaking persons, with educa-
tion 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 train-
ing at the Gordon College, in the military school, and in
the technical workshops. There will be Sudanese captains
and subalterns, Sudanese schoolmasters, kadis, and clerks,
Sudanese surveyors, 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 regiments, 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 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 Egypt-
ians, especially those who contributed to the Nationalist
newspapers, complained bitterly of the burden. In practice

CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS 51

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 deficit 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 £E35,000 ;
by 1906 it has risen to £E804,000 ; in 1912 it was
£E1, 710,000. The contribution by the Egyptian Govern-
ment in the last-named year was £E335,000 ; but against
this was to be set off a return payment of £E1 72,000 for
maintenance of the army in the Sudan, so that the net cost
to Lower Egypt of the Upper Provinces is only £E1 63,000.
But in the current year (1913) this charge disappears
altogether, under a new settlement of the financial relations
between the Cairo and Khartum Governments. By this
settlement, the contribution of Egypt to the Sudan Ex-
chequer and the payment for the maintenance of the army
are abolished, on condition that the Egyptian Government
hands over to the Sudan the customs duties on goods des-
tined for the territory collected in Egypt. Thus the Sudani
is now self-supporting. Its revenue and expenditure, /

E 2

52 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

if all goes well, will balance without external subventions.
But even if Egypt were still called upon to contribute a
hundred thousands 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 repose and immunity ; and in the future she will
double her irrigation supply, and add many miUions 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 w^aters 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 a civihsed Power can
deal with the Niles, and their tributary streams, as a whole.
Egypt, which thirty years hence, thanks to the engineers
and administrators 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 Enghsh 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 civilisation 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 monuments show ; and we know,

CONCERXING POLITICS AND PERSONS 5B

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 destroy it ; for centuries after the Arabs had over-
whelmed 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 fourteenth
century these Ethiopian States maintained their individu-
ality, 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 indigenous civilisation, which
had in it, perhaps, the germs of something higher than the
Asiatic Orientalism with its bad European veneer, intro-
duced 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 flourish-
ing caravan trade was broken up, and wholesale slave-
hunting was encouraged. The ' Turks ' had rendered their
own tenure precarious by their oppression, 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 event-
ually 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

54 EGYPT IN kANSITION

Pasha is here, and I dare say you would hke 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 ; for this old man, who lived right down into the
second decade of the twentieth century,^ 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 contribu-
tions, pretending to suppress the slave dealers, and mean-
while 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

1 He died at Berber in 1913.

CONCERNING POLITICS AND PERSONS 55

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 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 after-
wards enjoyed the hospitality of England in Gibraltar.
Eventually Lord Cromer caused him to be released, pensioned,
and returned to the Sudan. He lived patriarchaily amid
a whole tribe of his kinsfolk and descendants, 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 damage done to his property in the time
of the sequestration.

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 communicative, and did
not in the least mind being questioned 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

56 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

how many children he had had in the course of a much-
married hfe. 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 inteUigent 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. Comfortably
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.

CHAPTEE 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 Enghshman in the remote parts of
the earth, ccelum 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 movement was so com-
plete that they can start with something like a tahula

58 EGYPT m TRANSITION

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 complex 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 centmy. 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 Egypt-
ian of the old regime, the hated and oppressing ' Turk,'
was at least a Mussulman ; we are ' Nazarenes,' 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 ! '

SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 59

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 deahng
with a Mohammedan community, which, having a quite,
respectable religion of its own, was not to be regarded as
a fair subject for proselytism. Nothing, 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 Mohammedans can send their boys to
the Gordon College, the primary schools, and the technical
classes, with a complete conviction that no attempt will
be made to undermine the foundations of their faith. The
obligation 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 appreciated
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 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 encouraged ;
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

60 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 enterprise. But I should think there would be
abundant scope for your energies among your own country-
men 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 concerned 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 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. LegaHsed slavery
ceased to exist with the annexation. No man is entitled

SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 61

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 department, 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 stimulated
thereto by the excellent wages which any able-bodied
person can obtain in the Government workshops, on the
railways, and in private employment. The Khahfa left
us a legacy of a horde of female slaves when he bolted from
Omdurman, and these were all manumitted, 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 difficulties that beset the process of
abohshing slavery in a community long accustomed to
this ' pecuHar 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
landowner finds himself deprived of the means of cultivating
the soil, and the labourer sometimes discovers that he has
exchansjed 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 labom^ is a harsher tie

62 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

than that which hnked 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 perpe-
trated 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 already 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 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 otherwise than gently and cautiously in this delicate
business.

SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 63

Three things the Sudan needs above all others if it is
to become rich and prosperous : Better communications,
more water, and abundant labour. Given these things,
and with its fertile and varied soil, its fine chmate, and its
vitalising sunshine, it will export great quantities of grain
and cotton. Under the old Turco-Egyptian regime it was
lamentably deficient in all the three essentials. Eoads 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 traversed the roadless deserts, and somehow
contrived to keep up communication right across the fiery
continent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and
from Morocco to the Equator. Where time is of 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

64 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

exhibited a most creditable energy, and a lofty confidence
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 Medani,
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 west-
ward and crosses the White Nile by a great steel swing bridge,
wrought by skilful hands in the EngUsh north country.
Thence it runs on to El Obeid, in the heart of the Kor-
dofan 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 Eahad 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 penetrate
still deeper into Central Africa, and perhaps eventually join

SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 65

hands with a French railway from Timbuctoo and the West
Coast, or with an Enghsh railway fi'om Northern Nigeria.
Long before this connection is achieved the direct north
and south Une will have got on to Gondokoro, where in
due course it will meet the Cape-to-Cairo line and the Uganda
railway, and so carry us, if we please, to the Indian Ocean
or the goldfields of the Transvaal.

Another extension is projected from Sennar to the
Abyssinian frontier, through the fertile district between
the Blue Nile and the Atbara. Aheady 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, important and interest-
ing, 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 monu-
ments of the flowering period of Ethiopic civilisation.
At the junction of the Atbara with the Nile begins the rail-
w^ay 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
w^ith 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 province is reached, it does not
get enough moisture from the heavens to produce crops,

66 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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, flowing from end to end of the country along the
broad 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

'. SOME SUDANESE PROBLEMS 67

tribes'^from the interior of Africa may move northward,
but not much dependence can be placed on them. Sooner
or later, I cannot but think that 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 aw^ay,
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 Government
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.

s 2

CHAPTEK VIII

SIMPKINSON BEY

I AM afraid you are not interested, Captain Simpkinson/
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 Eoyalshire Regiment was At
Home to its friends at its depot in the highly respectable
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 Eoyalshires 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 different

SIMPKINSOX BEY 69

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 fore-
ground the dreamer saw rows of mud huts, roofed with
corrugated iron ; in front was drawn up a company of
soldiers, not the trim httle red-coats of the Koyalshires, but
tall, lathy black men, in white uniforms, with Martini rifles
and long, triangular bayonets. A couple of young Enghsh-
men, in khaki, rode up and down. Presently the company
sprang to attention, and rigidly presented 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, vrith. si,
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 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

70 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 120 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 unques-
tioned 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 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 Koyal-
shires, 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 bimbashi, which is a major,

SIMPKINSON BEY 71

one of the four European officers in a Sudanese regiment,
with mature native captains and Heutenants, 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 trans-
ferred to the administrative side ; and thus it came about
that he found himself, at little more than thirty, a colonel
(in the Egyptian army hst), a bey, and the governor of a
province twice as large as Wales. He had all sorts of duties
and responsibihties ; he was commandant of the troops,
head of the pohce, 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 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 Flandrm ;
and the English and the Belgians had had some gemal
nights at bridge together after the day's wrangling was
done.

But the full and busy years, punctuated with welcome
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

72 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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
promotion. 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 downward 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 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 himself 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.

SmPKINSON BEY 73

If Simpkinson Bey never got on to the staff or obtained
an administrative appointment while he bore the Crescent
badge, but remained with his battahon, 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 service),
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, according as the English-
man finds himself posted to one of the battalions composed
of Egyptian conscripts or one of those recruited in the Sudan
by voluntary enlistment. 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-Hke precision.
He is very amenable to disciphne, and gives comparatively
little trouble in camp and barracks ; so that it is deemed
requisite to have no more than three European officers in

74 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 restless, more
impatient of routine, a little too fond of native beer, and the
stronger liqours of the West, if they can get them, and
altogether they demand more constant supervision, both in
the field and on the parade ground. Yet I beheve that the
EngHsh bimbashi gets on better with his negroes and Arab
tribesmen than with the Egyptians. There is a fine man-
liness and simplicity about these blacks ; they are soldiers
because 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 con-
tingents at a review of the Khartum garrison, held before
the Sirdar one morning. The 'Gyppies made a fine show,
for they marched past hke a moving wall, every bayonet in
its right alignment. For physique you would fine 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 shaduf or 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

SIMPKINSON BEY 75

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 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 Khartum
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 Scottish 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. Therefore did Mohammed
Ahmed Ibn Sayid, the Mahdi, warn his followers against this
indulgence. ' Abstain,' said the puritan prophet, ' from all

76 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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-humoured, indolently sensual in the ordinary way.,
can be stirred to paroxyms of animal fury when the
right stimulus is applied. That is what makes him a
' first-class fighting man,' on occasion, formidable but un-
certain, and needing above all things sure leadership and
careful handling.

CHAPTEE IX

CONCERNING WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS

Our friend Bimbashi Simpkinson Bey has varied

duties 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 Egyptians. 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 enhsted as professional 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 useless 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 partner is

officially recognised ; the soldier is granted quarters for

her and an allowance towards her maintenance and that

of her children.

78 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

The ladies, in fact, form part of the regiment, and may
be said to be under mihtary disciphne. 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 negli-
gence or dirt. The women, however, 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 delin-
quencies. 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. Sometimes
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 Eng-
land 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.

CONCERNING WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 79

* 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 10th 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 10th Sudanese, I beheve, 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, Hke 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 dwelHng-places in excellent order.
Fine, soldierly men were the Sudanese non-commissioned
officers and the Egyptian captains and the heutenants
who accompanied us on our tour of inspection ; one of
these, a 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

80 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 Hkewise to the
subordinate sheikhas, each of whom is responsible for the
discipHne 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 10th 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 commanding 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 dis-
guishable through the prolonged piercing howl. It has a
rather mournful effect, but I beheve expresses great exulta-
tion when given with energy, as it certainly was by these
daughters of the regiment.

The first government of the Sudan was a government
of soldiers. It began with a conquest, the suppression
of armed rebelHon, 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

CONCERNING WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 81

of the Interior, a third Minister of Railways. The civil
administration was necessarily subordinate to the military.
In an Indian district 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 commandant 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 places were 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, 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 excellent specimens of our academic
and athletic culture. As to how far these graduates are
doing much better than the picked young soldiers they

82 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 Balhol, 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 dis-
cover 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 useful 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 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 opinions 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 ?

CONCERNING WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 83

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 school-
masters 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 students
have not found time to learn French. They can play
cricket, I beheve; 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 mihtary
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
civihans are now supplemented to some extent during their
probationary period by the authorities of Oxford and Cam-
bridge. But since those seats of learning are laying them-
selves out to train the servants of the Empire they might

G 2

84 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

do more to fit them for their task. It is rather absurd that
at four-and-twenty, after some fifteen years of elaborate and
expensive education, Jones, B.A., and Smith, B.A., have to
be put to school again in the Sudan. In fact, the youthful
British civiHan 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 responsibihties and serious
duties of life. But the graduate is still redolent of the class-
rooms and the playing-fields, of boyish studies and boyish
pastimes. The Sudan, by the way, is pretty well supplied
wdth university Blues, but they are not always appreciated
as they deserve. Not long ago the most coerulean 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
hbellous 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

CONCERNING WOMEN, SOLDIERS, AND CIVILIANS 85

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 mihtary admini-
strators. But these latter deserve their gratitude — and the
gratitude of their countrymen and the civihsed world
generally — for the manner in which they piloted the Sudan
ship of state into smooth water during the years when
it was rolHng in the troagh of the storm.

CHAPTEE X

THE NEW GATE OF AFKICA

Kathek more than seven years ago an event occurred which
was hardly noticed in the Enghsh newspapers, though few
happenings of the time were of more importance 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-Eed-Sea Eailway
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 sub-
stantial and rapid progress which had been made under the
direction of the British officers and officials who control
the affairs of the Eed 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 troops and tribesmen,

THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA 87

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 con-
sciousness of the work that is being done at this point on
the Eed 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 displayed
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 development 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 massive warehouses, cranes and loading
machinery, some fine buildings already erected, others in
progress ; streets, squares, and pubHc gardens planned
and partly laid out ; a busy population of Greeks, Italians,
Levantines, 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 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

88 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

Eed 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 earher. There
was much discussion as to the Suakin-Berber Eailway
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 Government, 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 scrub and desert ; for
England presently found herself in difficulties with Eussia
on the Afghan frontier, and in the war-scare the Suakin-
Berber Eailway 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.

THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA 89

Its terminus was changed. Suakin, the outlet for cen-
turies 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 picturesque town with respect-
able 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 success-
ful, 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 30 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 deliberately set about to prepare the
new entrepot for the destinies that await it.

The work had to be done from the very foundation ;
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 Bed 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

90 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 administration 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 residential 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 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 Company and those of
the Austrian Lloyd and the North German Lloyd — but I
wanted to see what the Suakin-Berber Eailway, that vision

THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA 91

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 Government Eailway Department, by whom it
is operated. The Hne is well laid, the engines are powerful
and reasonably 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 remember
ever finding myself in more comfortable quarters on any
railway, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or North America.
The Sudan Express can quite safely challenge 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 beheve in the
future.

You feel this very much in the town itself. The 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 w^ill unload ; they can glance up the
estuary to the point where the great bridge crosses it,
a steel hinged bridge that can be hfted out of the way by
the mere pulhng of a lever so as to allow ten-thousand-
ton steamers to pass up to the docks that will He 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 break-
water, they can see the new mudiryeli, the residence of

92 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

the Governor, and the offices and law courts of the province,
a handsome 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 milHon
sterHng, 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 Egyptian
Press, who maintained that too much money had been spent
in haste on a speculative enterprise. Whether the specula-
tion 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 Eed 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

THE NEW GATE OF AFRICA 93

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 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
year's 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 Argen-
tina, and surely its agricultural prospects are as good.'
It is a sweltering little place. Port Sudan — with a trying

94 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 compensations, 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 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 gardens,
travelling down to their offices by motor-cars and fast
electric tramways. Farther inland the mountains rise
higher, and here the Sudan Government is establishing 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 Eed Sea and the desert
would have made it in the past.

CHAPTEE XI

STATE SOCIALISM IN THE SUDAN

When I left England that fortunate country was in the
whirl of a furious discussion over sociaHsm and anti-sociahsm.
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,
disHking Kadicals and Little-Englanders and Labour
pohticians. If they had any opinions on these subjects
at home they were probably against ' nationahsing ' any-
thing, against interfering with private enterprise, and
against municipal trading. But in the Sudan they are not
swayed by theories ; and deahng 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.

96 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

State Socialism is in a condition of vigorous activity
in ttie Sudan. Some of its developments were inevitable.
The Government, set up in 1898 in the wake of the invading
army, found itself planted upon a ruin. Political institu-
tions there were none ; society was a chaos. The new
Government had to be everything and to do everything.
The most ardent individuahst could not have wished to
confine its functions to the maintenance of public order
and the raising of revenue. There was no room for laissez-
faire 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, housebailder,
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 coald 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 pubhc 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 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

STATE SOCIALISM IN THE SUDAN 97

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 Hkely to get one.

The Sudan Government beheves — I suppose it has had
to believe — in the public ownership of pubKc 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 httle shooting with a glimpse of primitive Africa, you
can apply to the Commander-in-Chief of the Sudan navy,
who wiU 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 company to
build the tramways between Khartum and Omdurman — in
Egypt the tramways and the light railways are in private
hands — and built the Hne 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

98 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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
sociahstic 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 dis-
appeared 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 completed, it is supposed that
good legal titles will be estabhshed 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 deaHng
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.
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 vacant 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

STATE SOCIALISM IN THE SUDAN 99

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 authorities 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 Eegent Street — when it gets
one — of Port Sudan.

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 sociahsm : which is that it
tends to give imdue power to officiahsm, with the result
of checking progress and deadening commercial activity.

H 2

100 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

One very able business 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 obstructing 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 ventures 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.

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 nationalities. 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 Northumber.
land 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

J >

STATE SOCIALISM IN TfiE SUD^iN ■ ■ ^ ICl

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
uncompromising refusal to sell freehold sites will probably
not be persisted in.

One cannot but sympathise with the Sudan Government
in its dilemma : on the one hand, it is anxious not to deprive
the State of the property it holds in trust for future genera-
tions ; 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 adventurous Hellenes and Syrians of the Sudan may
become the founders of the gi'eat landowning aristocratic
families of the coming centuries. History has a way of
working itself out on extremely threadbare lines.

CHAPTEE 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 agricultural develop-
ment 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 English
and I only a few words of Arabic ; but with the help of
this limited vocabulary I was enabled to understand that
a hitch had occurred in the programme. Owing to some
mistake in transmitting or reading telegrams, 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 station-
master, the post-office clerk, an intelHgent young Egyptian,

102

A NOCTURNE 108

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 planta-
tion. He salaamed, and gave voluble directions to an
interested 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
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.

104 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 dosed 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 platform. 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 stationmaster. 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 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

A NOCTURNE 105

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
village, 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 proceeded
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 11 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
conversed 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 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-intentioned Egyptian
stationmaster.

Presently I was conscious of hunger. I remembered
that it was many hours since I had breakfasted in the train

106 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 obviously they must eat some-
thing, and that a little of that, whatever it was, would
do for me. At this the deputation 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, consump-
tive 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 station-
master 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
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 themselves 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 angarieh of
string, with his staff snoring in some comer rolled up in

A NOCTURNE 107

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 man-
fully 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 stationmaster was with
difficulty prevailed upon to accept payment 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 morning 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-

108 EGYPT IN TRANiSITION

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 servant 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
saiHng 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 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 stifT 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 chmate that you can enjoy
sleeping in the open with only the sky and stars above you.

A NOCTURNE 109

But for those who commonly he 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 hght screen of branches, until the false dawn
stole timidly in, robed in pearly grey, and then flushed rose-
red, Hke 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 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 pro-
duce cotton in large quantities it will not want for markets.
Sir William Garstin thinks that at present wheat must be
the staple crop, and that cultivators for some time should
devote their main attention to this. But cotton is so much

110

A SUDAN PLANTATION 111

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
Depopulation, 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 Government, 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 Americanisa-
tion craze in those years ; the Government jumped at the
notion, and the New York millionaire — I do not know
whether Mr, Leigh Hunt came under that description, but
at that time all American financiers were millionaires to the
excited British imagination — obtained his concession and
set to work. The scheme, however, was not very successful
in its original shape. Those who know the American

112 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

* 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 Plan-
tations 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 dividends 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 possibilities
of this part of the Sudan. The original concession 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. 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

A SUDAN PLANTATION 113

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 mad brought down from the Abyssinian
hills. This perennial water is carefully guarded lest the
amount should run short before the next flood ; 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,

114 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

in English or native hands. The patriarch Zubeir Pasha,
of whom I have ah^eady 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 prosperity ; 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-
stantially built, whitewashed, brick edifice, rather remind-
ing 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, storehouses, 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 hve 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

A SUDAN PLANTATION 115

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 30-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
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 wonderful piece
of .engineering and agricultural science, but it involves,
of course, a vast expenditure, and it could only be under-
taken 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

I 2

116 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 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 possibility 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

A SUDAN PLANTATION 117

are Jaalin Arabs, and the Jaalins were the victiras of the
Mahdist fury, at its worst and bloodiest when it was just
tottering to its fall. The Jaahns were a high-spirited
and rather haughty tribe, who thought much of their
pure Arab descent, of the prowess of their men in old fron-
tier 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, and the desert
railway was pushing on, the Jaalins revolted against the
Omdurman tyranny. Mahmud, the Khahfa's fighting
emir, swept down upon them with a horde of dervish
spears and rifles. The Jaalins, completely outnumbered,
retired into Metemmeh, fortified the place, and held it till
all their ammunition was exhausted. Then the Mahdists
broke in, and an orgie of brutal massacre and mutilation
ensued. Two thousand 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 der^dshes
devastated the whole Jaahn country, killing, plundering,
and maiming. You met few middle-aged men in the
Jaahn 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 Khahfa'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 swathes of dead lying on the field of

118 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

Kerreri a year later there must have been a good many
who deserved their fate.

These Jaahns are among the most attractive of all
the Sudan peoples — good-looking, good-natured, dignified,
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 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, laughing 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 com-
mands Billy in Hoxton. There was also a baby, who put

A SUDAN PLANTATION 119

his fingers into his eyes and wept aloud when he saw me
directing a strange implement upon him ; and was com-
forted 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 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 shapety, 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 somehow ultra-modern, crude, vulgar.
* You had better not photograph her,' 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 imita-
tions 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

120 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

ultimate destiny are all these Eastern folks tending whom
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 tumultuous ways.

Photo by Elliott dt Fry.

SLATIN PACHA, G.C.V.O., ETC,

CHAPTEE 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 Wilham Will cocks,
* iB nothing more than the deposit left by the Nile in flood.'

121

122 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

The wider part of the country where it spreads out into the
fan-like Delta has been made by the river itself as it dis-
gorged 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 agricultm^al 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 utihsed 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
Menes is said by tradition to have begun the system of basin
irrigation, and he is supposed to have lived about B.C. 4400.
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
has been so closely studied as the Nile, or handled with such
consummate mastery and resourcefulness. The greater
Pharaohs of the middle dvnasties, the Ptolemies, the
Eomans, brought to bear upon its problems an engineering
capacity which we can envy. Of the behaviour of the Nile,

LAND AND WATER 123

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 onlv
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 occasional
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 Wilham 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 Eipon Falls into
its second reservoir, Lake Albert, and thereafter, as the
White Nile, flows steadily northward, leaving Uganda to
pass into the Sudan. In these days we may almost claim
the Nile as a British waterway. In no part of its course
of 8700 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,
filters wide over the country in spongy swamps, and winds
and creeps deviously through beds of tangled vegetation,
the famous Sudd barrier. A httle farther north the White

124 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 bom. For
the Blue Nile, scouring the volcanic detritus from the
mountains, brings the rich red water that leaves the fertilis-
ing 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 con-
tinues 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 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

LAND AND WATER 125

all-important for Egypt, and has been, and always must be,
the subject of the most anxious solicitude and calculation.
Shakespeare, who knew everything, 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 insufficient for
the higher levels, whereas anything between that figure
and about twenty-six feet and a half 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

126 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

on the Sudan. For seven thousand years Egypt Hved 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 system 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 manur-
ing, for the deposit itself was sufficient. Under the old
native dynasties, and the Greeks, and the Eomans, and the
Cahphs, 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 w^atercourses, 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 ;

LAND AND WATER 127

the crop requires water at other seasons than that of the
flood. Mehemet Ah'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 accomphshed in Egypt. The engineers of the Pubhc
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 hydrauHc 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, combined 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

128 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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. Eents have
more than doubled in the last dozen years, and in some 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
Eand 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 Gars tin. 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 below that which inhabited it in the palmiest
days of the Pharaohs. The dream of Mehemet Ali has
been fulfilled : Egypt is helping to feed the cotton mills
of the world.

CHAPTEE 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 some time, 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 super-
seded. 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 stored for the next year, which might, perhaps, turn out
to be one of scarcity.

129 K

130 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 regulate 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 Eosetta 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 hoplessely 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 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

THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 131

Delta provinces. The works have been paid for many
times over ah'eady, by the increased value they have given
to the lands of Lower Egypt and the rise in the tax which the
Government 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 question 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 Benjamin
Baker and a French and Italian colleague, sent in a recom-
mendation to the same effect. It was accordingly decided
to build barrages at Assiut and Esneh to regulate the flow,
and to create an enormous reservoir or lake by a gigantic
dam of masonry above the Assuan Cataract. The firm of
Aird & Co. agreed to construct this for about £2,000,000
sterling. Egypt was too poor, or 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 payments of £78,613. The Assuan dam and the
Assiut barrage, and their subsidiary, works had cost about
£6,500,000 up to the end of 1908 ; and Sir William Garstin
estimated that as a result the annual rental value of lands

132 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 Philae, 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 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 basements 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- underpinned, and their annual washing
is even said to bind and consolidate their foundations.

THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 133

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
he^-n by the hands of the dead ; but, after all, we are
concerned with the present, and w^e cannot sacrifice the
interests of the milhons of Egyptians, Uving and to come,
in order that a few genuine students and a considerable
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 compensation
in the charm of an imposing and significant contrast. 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. The stone colonnades,
looking more Greek than Egyptian 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

134 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

3000-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 w^eirs 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 Assuan Dam was begim in the summer of 1898
and finished in June 1902. As then left, it was 1|
miles 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 500,000 cubic feet per second. The reservoir
above, or rather the Nile lake 100 miles long, would
store 1300 miUion cubic yards of water, which sounds a
perfectly appalHng 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

THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 185

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 chff. Wooden wedges were to be driven
into these slots, and water pom-ed 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
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, perhaps by w^ar, 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 immemorial
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

136 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 milhards 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 measures
for increasing the supply. Since 1907, they have been
engaged in repairing, in part, the mistake made in modifying
Sir William Willcocks's original design in deference to the
sentimental outcry about Philse. The dam has been
raised bv 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 w^anted.

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 becomes apparent ;
for Sir William Garstin and his coadjutors have been
considering several audacious schemes for increasing the

THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 137

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 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 dockyard 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 inventor has
discovered a method of converting the dried blocks of
vegetable debris into fuel, and a company is at work in
the Sudan for carrying out the process. 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,

138 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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.

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 sug-
gested a bolder project — nothing less than that of diverting
the course of the river, so as to make it avoid the swamp
region altogether, 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 Cataract. 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
authority, ' 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 Ihes the flag of Great Britain.'

THE BRIDLE OF THE FLOOD 189

That is a conclusive answer, if there were no other, to the
people who talk lightly of terminating 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 tumultiiously 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 majority are content to bring
their southward journey to a close at Assuan. They senti-
mentalise 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.' Erom 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 occupation 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 the cold luminosity of the moon. Before
evening, the tourists, thirsty for tea after the jaunts of

140

THE CLIENTS OF COOK 141

the day, would assemble on the terrace to watch the tre-
mendous 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 transmitted
by the broad refracting mirror of the Nile. Fantastic and
amazing are the variations of the aetherial 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 themselves 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 : Elephan-
tine, where once Juvenal, an unwilling exile, pointed wrath-
ful hexameters against Egyptian superstition and Eoman
officialdom. But Juvenal, groaning for the club-life and
fashionable society of the metropolis, was a mere upstart
modern like ourselves. Austerer 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

142 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

by the waterside, where they will see the cartouches and
texts of Thothmes II and Eameses 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 mission-
ary, and man of genius, did, it is true, re-open the Nile
lands for Western and Northern holiday-makers in the
nineteenth century. But his chents were only following
a very ancient tradition. The Egyptian winter excursionist
is of a venerable antiquity. 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 pubHcation,
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 Kome was still
young. The Father of History is his great exemplar.
Herodotus, the first special correspondent, was filling his
journahstic notebooks with points about Egypt even as
his humbler successors are doing to-day. Strabo, another
useful member of the craft, was occupied in similar fashion
four hundred years later. He had an introduction to the
ofiicer-in-command at Assuan, who took him out for a drive
in the desert, and showed him the sights of the locaHty,
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 Eoman war office was simply
ruining the Service. Plus ga change plus c'est la meme

THE CLIENTS OF COOK 143

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 bv
rapacious ragamuffins over the ledges of the Pyramid.

He was indeed very hke 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 Eoman
times have left their mark all over the feet and legs of the
majestic northern Colossus of Memmon 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 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 perma-
nence 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

144 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

MgesLYi 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 djnaasties and the cartouches,
and can hardly distinguish Queen Candace from Queen
Hatshepu, or Amenhotep from Psammetichus. 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 resolved to enjoy themselves. Of
modem 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 monu-
ments 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 jocu-
larities with the guides ; young folks of both sexes, much

THE CLIENTS OF COOK 145

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 chmate hardly deserves its reputation. 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 faMy 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 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 cosmo-
politan 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 monu-
ments seriously, come earher or later in the season, before
the hohday horde has arrived or after it has gone away.

146 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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
milhons sterHng are spent in Egypt each year between
December and March. But of this sum the gi-eater part
goes to the tourist agencies, the steamship companies,
and the great hotels, and returns to Em'ope as dividends
and 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 meditation, 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
thei: contact with Western civihsation. Too many of the
peasantry are tempted away from their villages by this easy
method of earning money. The thrifty, laborious peasant

THE CLIENTS OF COOK 147

is converted into a tout and hanger-on ; he becomes extor-
tionate and insolent, and has grown too lazy by the end of
the season to retui'n to the monotonous toil of his hamlet.
He idles about all the summer, reserving himself for the excite-
ment of baksheesh-hunting and hotel-haunting in the winter.
Old residents deplore the demoralisation produced by
this annual gamble for piastres, and complain that it is
aggravated by the careless bounty of the visitors, who
treat the natives with a famiharity which they often abuse.
One hears Imid stories in Cairo of the relations of some
European lady-visitors towards certain of the pictm'esque
Arab ruffians who swagger about in the capacity of di'ago-
mans. 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 shght 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 impertinent,
and contrast disagreeably with the unspoilt fellahin, who
are respectful, reserved, and not without a certain humble
dignity. The visitor usually comes away rather unfavour-
ably 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
tarbooshes 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.

L 2

CHAPTEE XVII

THE HILLS OF THE DEAD

These winter visitors to Egypt are, as I have endeavoured
to explain, for the most part in a buoyant frame of mind.
The gloomy grandeur of the ancient monuments 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 necropoHs of
Thebes.

One might well come from the ends of the earth to
Egypt, if Egypt had nothing else to show but these over-

148

THE HILLS OF THE DEAD 149

powering vestiges of a vanished civilisation. There are
people who find something barbaric in mere size. By this
criterion the ancient Egyptians were barbarians ; for in
actual bigness most modem buildings are band-boxes by
comparison with some of theirs. But I cannot agree that
the temple of Kamak is imposing only by its magnitude,
Hke an English railway terminus or an American sky-
scraper. 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
mammoth wedge of the Matterhorn and the splintered
peaks of the Eockies. Carry the mind for a moment away
to the works of classic or Gothic art : the Parthenon, in its
white beauty; Chartres and Canterbury, with all their
wealth of flying arch and fretted buttress and petrified
embroidery, seem toy-hke before the superb simplicity of
those colossal lotus capitals that blossom above the swelling
vastness of the columns, But Kamak, 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 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 Kamak temple, with its mile-long

150 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 conditions
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 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

THE HILLS OF THE DEAD 151

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 sohtude. 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 skyHne, 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, and then you find yourself
on level ground again, the infinite level of the Sahara, that
stretches for two thousand 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.

152 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

In the heart of the mountain are the courts, the palaces,
the mansions of the dead. The funeral procession 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 Eome 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, 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 3000 years ago :
Pharaoh, magnificent and vindictive, binding his enemies
in ropes, dragging captive kings behind his chariot-
wheels, building, smiting, sacrificing, destroying; there

THE HILLS OF THE DEAD 158

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 yefc 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 treasm'es found
by Mr. Theodore Davis in the tomb of Queen Thya's parents.
Mr. Davis is a wealthy and enthusiastic 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 at Cairo are of extraordinary interest. There
are beautiful inlaid coffers of sandal-wood and ivory;
delicate 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 cofiins 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 Hghtly on some soft bosom, a jewel to hang from a little
brown ear, with the same sure workmanship and unfaltering^

154 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

skill with which they wrought at the great monoliths that
stand solemnly among the lamp-posts of the Thames
Embankment and the statuettes of the Place de la Concorde.
Truly a wonderful people, with more mysteries to them
than the antiquarians have revealed.

CHAPTEE 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 photo-
graphing Coptic clerks and Levantine hawkers under
the belief that they are representative 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 sometimes roughly awakened hj 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 latter has a natural dislike

155

156 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

for the unconventional and the outre in dress ; but the
voyager from the Fatherland 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 Em'ope. 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 sug-
gestion. In Cairo, the visitor lives and spends most of his
time in a quarter which is entirely modern and Occidenta-
lised : 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 EngHsh, to reflect that, in spite of all
we have done in the world, in spite of our success, our
energy, our material power, it is not our particular type
of civihsation and society that our rivals, our clients, even
our dependents, are anxious to copy. It is a case of Grcecia

CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 157

capta over again. Here, in Egypt., we are the victors and
the rulers : we ' run the show,' pohtically 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. ^Vhen Young
Egypt casts its eyes outwards it looks to France It reads
French books, it Hkes 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, mascuhne and feminine — especially feminine.
When it takes a European holiday 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 Eome and Vienna, and the Eiviera, and, above
all, Paris, and returns with ultra-Parisian tastes, which it
endeavours, 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 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 pubHc buildings, its hotels, its theatres and
cafes-chantants, its pleasant residential suburbs, and its
general air of brisk activity. When I saw the city first,

158 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

ifc 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 econo-
mising and retrenching; and, moreover, Egypt had been
adversely 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 luxuriously 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 convention
still demands from the one sex, even as it rigorously pre-
scribes the invariable red tarboosh above the frock-coat
or tweed suit of the most Europeanised members of the
other.

The most attractive spot in modern Cairo is the outlet
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

CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 159

outlying villages, with loaded camels and donkeys ; in
the afternoon by strings of polo ponies, and by fashionable
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 Hve 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 Mohammedan popu-
lation, the narrow lanes, and tall, overhanging houses, with
barred and trellised window^s. Some of it is a little cockney-
fied too. The main highway, the famous Musky, is not
what it was ; its shops are about as Oriental as those in the
Tottenham Court Eoad, 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 cosmopoHtan
and diversiiied throng : Greeks, Syrians, Copts, Arabs,
ItaHans, Jews, Mohammedan peasants, Cairo tradesfolk
and workpeople, fakirs, beggars, Enghsh 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,

160 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

graduate of the University 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
labouring 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 place ht
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 Kosa-hke 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 fascinating
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

CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 161

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, some-
times dark and dirty, but perhaps with a noble recessed
doorway, 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 neces-
sarily stagnation and barbarism will alter 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 Khalifate were fit compeers of the master-
builders of the Western churches. The Egyptians 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

162 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 Cahfate, 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 where-
on Cairo rests. A great city, seen from an adjacent height,
is 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 fiat, 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 disappointingly 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 stupendous
tumuli. We are constantly told that the greatest Pyramid
covers exactly the area of Lincoln's Inn Fields. I some-

CAIRO IMPRESSIONS 163

times 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 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 Eosa 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.

M 2

CHAPTEK 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 provincial 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 influential
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 tradition
with the Englishman in the East as it is with the Oriental
himself. The British element in the Delta is select rather
than numerous ; it consists of a few officials, inspectors,

164

IN THE DELTA 165

irrigation engineers, and the superior staff of the banks and
the great land companies which have bought agricultural
estates, and are supervising 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 settle-
ments, with the Em^opean, Greek, Syrian, Amenian, 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 Eomans
came. His aspect when you come upon him at work in his
dykes and ditches is startlingly reminiscent of the ancient
monuments. In appearance, colouring, physical conforma-
tion, 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
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 hne 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,

166 EGYFI IN TRANSITION

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 picture-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 arahiyah 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 accom-
panied 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 Daman-
hur 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 chmate, let me add, I
was earnestly assured that I had fallen upon an exception-
ally bad spell of weather, and that the locahty 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

IN THE DELTA 167

SO as to be clear of the flood in the days of basin irriga-
tion, 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 to —
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 neighbouring 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 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 PubHc
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

168 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 measuring-chains
and spirit-levels. That meant that the Irrigation Depart-
ment 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 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

IN THE DELTA 169

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
without 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 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 companies, which farm
scientifically, and pay much attention to rotation and
drainage. Even to my amateurish eyes the difference
between the progressive, and the stagnating, holdings was

170 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

apparent. There would be two blocks, practically identical
in site and situation, lying side by side along the course
of a canal, one occupied by the company and the other by
native proprietors : 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 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 knowing. 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 activity 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 performed 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

IN THE DELTA 171

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 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 village —
a mere cluster of mud-huts thrown together promiscuously.
Some of the houses are flat-roofed ; but that kind of con-
struction 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 battlement 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,

172 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

or omdelis, without 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, suspicious, extremely shrewd
in all matters that come within his comprehension, a bundle
of prejudices and fanatical superstitions ; A\ithal, an ex-
cellent 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 sunburnt, 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 Eastern 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 to
mortgage his holding or his crops ; and it is to repress
this tendency that Lord Kitchener's new Five Feddans

IN THE DELTA 173

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 preventing 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 some-
where a hoard of sovereigns and piastres. On one estate
I visited, I was present at an interview between the overseer
and a man who held a lease of 1000 acres at £5 an acre.
A farmer who could pay £5000 a year by way of rent
would be a person of some pretension in most countries.
But this man was working like a peasant on his own land,
and he was dressed in the same shabby dark-blue cotton
gown as the feUahin. I heard another case of a land com-
pany selhng an estate to a fellah for £40,000. When the
documents were executed, and the time came for paying
the money, the purchaser went back to his house and brought
the whole amount in bags of gold loaded upon donkeys.
No one knows how many millions are hoarded and buried
under the soil of Egypt. Slowly, very slowly, the fellah is be-
ginning 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 without being compelled to disgorge
to the local officials under the kourbash. He still likes to

174 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

keep his investments 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 1 hat
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 venahty of the nearest tax-gatherer.
He leads a dullish life in the village, with few amusements,
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. Phy-
sically, in spite of those insanitary customs which
have been mentioned, he is finely developed, 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
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 factory. Industrial civilisation,
like other luxuries, is not bought without a price.

CHAPTEK 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 Vaporo-
poulos, 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 bom; and that is why he was baptised
WilUam 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 considerable knowledge
of the world. He served thin wine to Italian sailors,
coffee and lemonade to his own countrymen and the island
aborigines, occasionally bad spirits to adventurous British
bluejackets. He picked up EngHsh, ItaHan, French, and

175

176 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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.
Disagreeing with his father about a httle 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 Wolseley's
unwieldy Gordon Eelief 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 attached 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 tourists in the
winter, and, being reasonably honest and 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

MR. VAPOROPOULOS 177

behind the counter ; in five years he had a branch estabhsh-
ment 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 campaigns
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. Gro^Ti 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
ma^y 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 uhder 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 assistants,
unclean to look upon, but unwearyingly assiduous, prepared
to supply perspiring and exhausted warriors with a variety
of very welcome commodities — at a price.

Such enterprise could not fail to be rewarded. The tins
of sardines, bottled peas, mixed pickles, jam, Indian 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

178 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

somehow while the mihtary 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 rapidty. 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, Kumbeck, 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 consohdating 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 banks knew
and honou-ed him, and his draft would have been cashed at
sight over half Africa. He found no difficulty in extending
his activities in various profitable dkections. He bought
building land in Cairo and the suburbs, financed transac-
tions 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, EngHsh, 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

MR. VAPOROPOULOS 179

mostly with his own compatriots, 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 acquaintance of a person mth 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 a bachelor, a
dapper httle middle-aged gentleman, supposed to be even
wealthier than he really v/as. 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 agreeab e.

It was in this phase that he became acquainted with

2T 2

180 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 investing public was being earnestly besought.
London society, thanks to Mr. Cashless's connections, was
a good deal interested, and various influential persons had
accepted allotments of shares. The market, however, 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 Aristides 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 happi-
ness. Privately, Miss Cashless referred to him in conversation

MR. VAPOROPOULOS 181

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 obhge 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 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 necessary
filhp 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 £1 shares
went up to 50s., 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
season, but she wrote him httle notes occasionally, and she
had given him her portrait — of a few years' earUer date —

182 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

to look at. Aristides left his mercantile business mainly to
his subordinates, not to its advantage ; and dreamed of
becoming a millionaire when the time came for selling his
Sesostris shares. He never meant to keep them, of course ;
be knew too much about the property in Egypt for that :
but of the proceedings 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 tumbhng 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 ofT to their brokers, and threw their shares
on the market, only to render the situation hopeless. In
three days ' Great Csesars,' as the dealers called them, had
fallen to par ; in a fortnight the}^ 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 thmk you need give yourself 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

MR. VAPOROPOQLOS 183

still sound, and though he had crippled it a good deal by
his financial adventures, and found it 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, ahke 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 6s. 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 hkely to
require.

CHAPTEE 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 kingdoms 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. Milhons 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-Azhar, and the
teachers, the sheikhs, ulemas, and tutors, are counted by

184

THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 185

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 Adriatic, and Mongols
from near the Pacific, Afghans, Punjabis, Abyssinians and
Somalis, blue-eyed Circassians, and ebon-hued negroes.
It is a microcosm of Mohammedanism, a museum of those
various populations — white, brown, yellow, and black — who
are the children of Islam. There is no place like it anywhere,
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 enlightened administrator who knows and
admires the ways of the English. My credentials being
found sufficient, I was invited to put felt sHppers 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 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 quad-
rangles, you come upon the Liwan, or great hall of lectures.

186 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 so all the students ; 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
talking 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 explaining
vigorously ; but their efforts did not always meet with
much response. x\ccording to the rules, no pupils are
admitted below the age of sixteen ; but this regulation
is not strictly observed, for many of the students were
mere children. These boys were alert and interested,
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 hke those of a crew in a racing-eight. The
elder students were of all ages and conditions — some, quite

THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 187

grey and old ; some, intelligent young Syrians and Egyp-
tians, 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, hstless, 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 estabhshment, 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 neighbouring
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 hfetime, dawdhng 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

188 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 apart-
ments, scantily furnished (but one does not have much
furniture in the East), watertight and whitewashed, and
kept in fair order by the university servants. 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
Enghsh-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 become a really learned doctor in Islam would hardly
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 cmgariehs, and they showed
me, behind the doors of a glass-fronted bookcase, quite a
respectable little library of Mohammedan 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-

THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 189

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.

This seminary has been the workshop and arsenal
of Moslem obscurantism. Modern science, modern literature,
modern history, modern philosophy were, until quite
lately, almost unknown. A little algebra was taught,
and, I beHeve, 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 connection. He once,
he says, asked the head of the university 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.

190 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

The anecdote is characteristic of the whole spirit of
El-Azhar. It Hves in the past ; it is hedged in by a narrow
formahsm, and its main interest is in the dogmas, the theo-
logy, and the traditions of Mohammedanism. Some hterary
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 ' AKm ' spend in its crowded cloisters
are for the most part devoted to theological formulae
and rehgious studies. They learn by heart 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 commentators on the commentaries.
Or they read the lives of Mohammed, and the lives of his
wives, and companions, 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 fullness of time, quahfies
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

THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHET 191

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 spiritual 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 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-rehgionists
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 transformed into a
genuine modern university, with its vast resomxes employed
for more useful objects. They would like to see the fanatical
sheikhs supplemented, if not replaced, by teachers properly
trained in learning and science. But El-Azhar is immensely
powerful, it has a hold upon the whole body of priests
and ulema, and it has a papal contempt for the temporal
authority. The present Khedive, a devout but progressive
Mussulman, 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

192 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

des Wakfs to the purpose of founding a modern uni-
versity. 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 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 stronghold
of mediae valism. In 1911, a new law was promulgated by
which a professional council of teachers and educational
experts was appointed to assist the Principal, and the
syllabus was enlarged by the addition of such subjects
as geometry, hygiene, drawing, and natural history ; and
' the difference,' writes Lord Kitchener in his Eeport 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.

CHAPTEE XXII

THE OCCUPATION

Egypt, according to Lord Milner, is the 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 fuU 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 orna-
mental 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 estabhshed
etiquette ; an elderly Dutch gentleman, the representative
of the Queen of the Netherlands, first ; then the others

193 o

194 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

in due order — Spaniard, Austrian, Eussian, German, and
the rest — down to the smaller states of both Continents.
Very nearly last of all, you will notice a slightly built young
Enghshman, 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 ministers 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 Portuguese 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 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

THE OCCUPATION 195

in Turkish ; for this army is theoretically a part of the
armed force of the Sultan of Turkey. The ofi&cers 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 Commissioner 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 Turkey 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 control
of his suzerain, the Khedive is the soverign ruler 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 bom-
barded 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,'

!o 2

196 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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
temporarily ' 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 manage-
ment of his finances : they are paid and employed 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 legisla-
tion is supposed to emanate from him. The actual Egyptian
system is unique. We 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 material 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.

Photo by Dittrich.

H.H. THE KHEDIVE.

Vis^^i^ ^40 Ci.sl c^T i^iNii

THE OCCUPATION 197

The anomalous sitaation 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 w^ould have involved a quarrel with Turkey
and probably with France. Still, in 1882, with Germany
encouraging us and Eussia 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, ac-
cording to every canon of political thought, was unworkable.'

198 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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
Government ; but, in practice, he would insist on the Khe-
dive and the Egyptian Ministers conforming to his views.
He would, in theory, be one of the many powers exercising
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 practical 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 accomphshed financiers — 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 Willcocks ; above all. Lord Cromer himself,
the great pro-Consul — resolute, tactful, far seeing, and
inexhaustibly patient, who never lost his temper or his

THE OCCUPATION 199

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 estimable prince, exemplary in his
private life, courteous, kindly, intelhgent, and humane.
But his was an amiable, rather than a powerful, personality ;
and the weakness he had shown at the decisive moment,
when Arabi's mutinous regiments assembled before his
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 himself to tutelage,
and for some years there was much friction between
himself and his EngHsh counsellors. But Abbas II
gradually reconciled himself to the situation, and found an
outlet for his energies and his undoubted ability in schemes
for promoting the material and social welfare of his country
and the development of his extensive estates. So the
the system gradually crystalhsed, and it has long since
settled into the estabUshed 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-

200 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

Egyptian 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 emoluments, 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 minister's portly
native under-secretary looks more imposing. This busy
Briton is the adviser — nominally, the subordinate — 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

THE OCCUPATION 201

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 admonition ; but if he refuses too
frequently, or on sufficiently 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 alternative, 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 content 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 ren-
dered Lclerable. 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.

202 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

but to the Consul-General and the Home Government,
that some other sphere of usefuhaess would probably be
found for him.

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 pubhc service. Due credit
should also be given to the members 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 talented and intellectual Nubar, and it
must always be a little trying for any ambitious man of
capacity and personal force. But of late years, the Khedive's
ministers have usually found no difficulty in reconciling
themselves 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.

CHAPTEE XXIII

GOVERNING ELEMENTS, OLD AND NEW

From what has been said about the character of the Occupa-
tion, 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 be-
ginning, 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 sometimes complained of this com-
plicated 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 made
it was ; and the policy it suggests has been steadily kept
in view. Honestly and laboriously, we have been trying
to pave the way for complete internal autonomy under

203

204 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 pohcemen. 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 authorities
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 administrators 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, w^e have
a radical difference between the condition of things in
Egypt and the Sudan : in the latter territory there are
no native mudirs. At the head of every province there
is an Englishman as governor, who is directly responsible
to the Governor- General for the entire administration

GOVERNING ELEMENTS, OLD AND NEW 205

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 personnel ;
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 governing 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
Mussulman 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
developed more intellectual interests than their agricultural
neighbours. They make excellent clerks, scriveners, book-
keepers, surveyors, and minor officials of all kinds. They
are intelHgent and industrious ; but they are no more
capable of assuming serious responsibility or power than
the peasantry, and, being Christians, they are not suit
able persons to exercise authority over a Mohammedan
communitv.

206 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 descendants
of prosperous fellahs, who did well, laid by money, added
more and more feddans to their holdings, until 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.

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

GOVERNING ELEMENTS, OLD AND NEW 207

estate worth thousands of pounds, left in charge of a nazar
or baihff, 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 shop-
keepers do elsewhere. 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
prosperous, 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
farm their own land, are much looked up to by their poorer
neighbours, and exercise a good deal of influence. The}'-
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 apart-
ments 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

208 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 observances, and in the habit of getting up
at an unearthly hour of the morning to say his prayers.
But he 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 ceremonious 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 complained bitterly of the depredations of his
nazar ; but I do not think that this functionary could often
have got 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, acknow-
ledging freely the benefits the Irrigation Department had
conferred upon the country, and the improvement 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 money-lenders, 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

GOVERNING ELEMENTS, OLD AND NEW 209

again,' he said ; and he did not Hke 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 intervention,
and, to some extent, they do so still. They constituted the
mihtary caste, the higher official hierarchy, 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
OsmanH, including in that term Circassians and Albanians ;
and the Egyptians were regarded as a subjugated, inferior,
population.

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 administrative
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 CaHf
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

210 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

influential. The blood of the masterful, fighting race
tells ; and the Turk, even with a good strain of Arab or
Egyptian in hiin, 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 belonging 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 EngHsh
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 wilhngness to accept responsibility
are required. From this stock sprang Eiaz Pasha, probably
the ablest statesman of modern Egypt — except Nubar, that
subtle and versatile Armenian. The mudirs and mamurs
of the provinces, and the pohce 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 vengefully
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 Occupation bitterly

GOVERNING ELEMENTS, OLD AND NEW 211

condemned by an Albanian officer in the Egyptian army,
who had fought bravely under Kitchener 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 rewarded and honoured for doing
so, wished us away, and talked of Egypt for the Egyptians :
meaning Egypt for himself and his kindred. The feehng
of the ' Turk ' is intelHgible. He knows that he has more
ruling capacity than anybody in the country except our-
selves. If we left, he believes he would have the upper-
hand once 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 pohtical level as his former serfs and subjects, 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 Osmanh blood. He probably would not be allowed
to ' boss ' the country again ; but he thinks he would and
could, and naturally resents his supersession.

r 2

CHAPTEE XXIV

GOVEENMENT 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 administra-
tion 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 command. They have no English advisers,
but there are a number of English inspectors, who travel
about the country, vigit 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 of
the provincial and municipal administration. It is the
inspectorate which prevents the local machinery from

212

GOVERNMENT BY INSPECTION 213

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 Europeans — French, Italians,
EngKsh — even before the Intervention. Ismail, though he
preferred the French, had some liking for Enghshmen in
positions of responsibility. A story was told me of one of
those English employes of the Khedive by his son, himself
in the service of the present Egyptian Government. The
Englishman, a retired naval officer, had an important
administrative 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 entitled 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. The Enghshman
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

214 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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
Enghsh universities, their qualifications are considered
by a Board of Selection composed of high oflicials, and
the best of them are chosen to fill the annual vacancies.
There is a large field to choose from ; for the Egyptian service
ofTers 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.

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 problems of an older and more

GOVERNMENT BY INSPECTION 215

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 civiHan 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 inter-
course with them in a difficult foreign language, and under
conditions with which it takes years of close observation
for most Europeans to grow familiar. His duties are dehcate
as well as responsible, and much tact, temper, judgment,
and firmness are needed to perform them properly ; for
the inspector is not the direct official chief of the governors
and district magistrates, who carry on the local adminis-
tration, 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 criticised
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.

216 EGYPT IN TRANSITIOX

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 Enghsh civihan
may come in at any moment to ' sit upon ' his Excellency,
overhaul his accounts, investigate 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 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 colloquial 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. ' 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 ! '

GO\TERNMENT BY INSPECTlOx^ 217

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 labours — 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 trans-
lator. He questions the mudir, who deeply deplores the
unfortunate incident which has occurred. He himself has
spent sedulous days and nights over it, and, after much
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 magis-
trates, the police, and the village headmen, he finds that they
all support the mudir's version of the case with singular
uniformity. 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 wishing 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 ascertain.

218 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

Another Anglo-Egyptian of great experience, with whom
I conversed on this subject, was so much impressed by the
difficulties of government by inspection that he advocated
its abolition and the substitution of direct British respon-
sibility. He thought that an Enghsh 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
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 maladministration
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 disbehef in
administrative 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 sometimes 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
controlled, 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

GOVERNIVIENT BY INSPECTION 219

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.

At any rate, the expedient of enlarging direct British
action is not Hkely to be adopted : the tendency is the
other way. Instead of still further reducing the powers and
responsibihties 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
existence 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 administration of his province, and
to judge him by the results. If he need 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.

CHAPTEE 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 exultingly to
the fact that in a prosperous and improving country, with
a population, on the whole, docile, submissive, and peaceable,
life and property are less secure than they used to be in
some provinces of European 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 Bedouins about,
the great majority of the villagers are quiet, hard-working
peasants. Yet in the Behera province, and other parts
of the Delta, crimes of violence 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.

Englishmen are not often the victims of personal violence,

220

HALTING JUSTICE 221

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 nationahties 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 (considerably
more than half) go unpunished, and everybody knows that
many serious offences are committed in the villao^es 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 magistrates, for wilful murder with premedita-
tion, 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.' ^ ' 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 exaggerate the futihty.
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

^ Lord Kitchener, Report on Egypt and the Sudan, 1911 and 1912, pp. 31
and 35.

222 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

drain ; in Girga, a third, because his son stole a date ; and
a girl is murdered for purloining a head of maize.' ^ In
the great cities, there has been a steady growth of crime ;
and in Cairo, with its large sprinkling of cosmopolitan
rascaldom, 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
12,000,000 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 fugitives 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 organising the ghaffirs or village
watchmen into a sort of local gendarmerie, giving them
regular pohce training, and some mihtary drill and in-
struction in the use of arms. There are over 40,000 of
these ghaffirs, under their own special officers and the
general authority of the omdehs, or village headmen, and
a good deal is expected fi'om 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

^ Lord Kitabener, Reports on Egypt and the Sudan, 1911 and 1912, pp. 31
and 35.

HALTING JUSTICE 223

visitor who spends a short time in the Delta towns and
villages. I went into the hving-room of an English bank
manager, and observed that he had a small armom:y 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 contempt and inspired
no terror. One could never tell, he observed, whether
some incident might not produce 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 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 neighbouring village, and found him
going his rounds gii't 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 considerable 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 :

224 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

the causes are of another kind. The poKce, besides
being weak in numbers, work under many disadvantages.
They w^ere organised as a quasi-mihtary force, and in the
early years of the Occupation they did good service under
direct EngHsh command. There was much open defiance
of authority, the dregs of the Arabist rebelHon were still
simmering, and there was soldiers' work to do. Every-
body in Egypt knows how one iron-handed Briton dealt
with disaffection and disorder in a perturbed district. ' Will
you undertake 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.' There was no
failure ; and in a couple of years that province showed
as clean a crime-sheet as Bedfordshire. To-day, brigand-
age 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 respons-
ible for the security of the province, has no control over
the parquet ; and his authority is liable to be weakened
by the interference of the English inspector, who may know
nothing whatever about police work, and sometimes knows
very little about the people and the district. The police,
too, are largely independent of the civil administration.
Neither the Ministry of the Interior nor the local authorities
have the right to see a yroces verbal after it has come into
the hands of the parquet. This separation of powers sounds
rather well theoretically ; but in practice, where the poHce

HALTING JUSTICE 225

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 Eeport, ' as if our very
hygienic and up-to-date Egyptian prisons hold few terrors
for 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 practic-
ally non-existent here. We can only hope that, with the
advance of education and other civilising 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 certainly 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 peasantry
do not understand the modern method of administering
criminal justice, and do not co-operate with it. We have
introduced the principle of Enghsh law which requires
that a person, even if known to be guilty, shah not be
punished unless his guilt can be proved in open com^t 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

226 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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
precincts who could not denounce the author, account for
his motives, and describe his crime off-hand. But before
that criminal can be convicted he must be tried in open
court, and his guilt proved by the testimony 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 wit-
nesses 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 w^aging war against

HALTING JUSTICE 227

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, 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 professed
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 understanding that on receiving
their salaries they should give them back to him to be
redistributed among the enlightened ratepayers. Thus the
administrative pressure was not felt, and the penalty in-
flicted 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 arranged 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 recognise the increased police-tax
or contribute to it in any way.

In these matters, Egypt is suffering, Hke other Oriental

countries just now, through the transition from the old ways

Q 2

228 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

to the new. We have endeavoured to adapt 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, pro-
bably 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 somebod}?- 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 emphasis, that
murder was a proceeding which might involve unpleasant
consequences for somebody, or perhaps everybody; and
that the commission of murder was, therefore, an in-
dulgence which, in the general interest, should be kept
within due limits. It was not ideal justice, and no trouble
was taken to obtain conclusive evidence of guilt. The

HALTING JUSTICE 229

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 svstem 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.

CHAPTEK XXVI

SOME EECENT EEFORMS

In the preceding chapters, I have said something of the
defects which mar our administrative record, something of
the difficulties which still remain to be surmounted. 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, almost 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
educationalists have performed a work of organisation and
reconstruction which cannot easily be overpraised. Nothing
that England has done in Asia, or France and Germany
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-derehct, rolling heavily
across the track of international politics. In the later
years of Ismail it had become a bad example of Oriental
misgovernment, rendered worse by a veneer of Western

230

SOME RECENT REFORMS 231

extravagance and vulgarity. Ismail's palaces and railways
and boulevards and theatres and steam-yachts, his cara-
vanserai of wives and concubines, 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 cosmopolitan
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 iliem. The rich lands of the
Delta and the river banks, which once fed the populace of
Rome with com, and are now feeding the mills of Lancashire
with cotton, could barely find a living for their own inhabi-
tants. The concessionnaire and the foreign middleman
waxed fat under the shelter of the international conventions
and jurisdictions which the Powers had extorted from
the weakness of the Sultanate and the insolvency of the
Khediviate. Military insubordination had followed social
disruption ; and three very ordinary 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.

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 eventual^ created for us a new empire in the

232 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 w^hich we entered upon military
occupation of the Khedivial dominions. We are preparing
the Egyptian people for self-government and self-reaHsation ;
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 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

SOME RECENT REFORMS 233

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 super-
visor of economic and political reforms ; and in the two
concise Annual Eeports, 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, E.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 inevitable result
of the excessive inflation of the preceding 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 bank-
ing and business community was in disorder, and there
were numerous failures. This disturbance of the financial
atmosphere may have helped to render Egypt more easily
responsive to that wave of unrest which passed over the
Mohammedan world after 1908. The operations of the
Young Turk Committee affected all Islamic countries,
more or less ; and in Cairo the Committee had its agents in

234 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 domina-
tion. Sir Eldon Gorst's Hberal 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 diminution 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 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 authority, had created a
somewhat unfortunate impression. 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 Khahfa

SOME RECENT REFORMS 235

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 state-
ment 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, 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 cosmopolitan, and
more or less denationalised, agitators did not really express
the sentiments of the great mass of the population. Egypt
was not ' seething with disaffection,' 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 Eeport. ' 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,

236 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

who have thus shown an admirable devotion to duty,
law, and order, in spite of the intensely sympathetic and
religious feehngs 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 significant sentence :
'Defective military arrangements aipj)ear to he responsible
for the breakdown of one of the finest fighting armies that
existed in the ivorld.' But as to the internal agitation in
Egypt we read : —

I am glad to be able to report that political feelmg in other
respects has lately been much calmer, and that the consideration
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 milikely
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 in-
habitants, 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, com-
bined with respect for learning and the experience of age, is an
unnatural proceeding, fraught with inevitable division and
weakness. The development and elevation of the character of
a people depends mainly on the growth of self-control and the
power to dominate natural impulses, as well as on the practice
of unobtrusive self-reliance and perseverancCj combined with

SOME RECENT REFORMS 237

reasoned determination. None of these elements of advance are
assisted 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 intelligent
character of an Oriental race.^

It is not through politics that salvation will come. ' The
future development of the vast mass of the inhabitants of
Egypt depends upon improved conditions 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 repres-
sion, 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 realising 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

» Egypt, No. 1, (1912), p. 2.

238 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

become careless and extravagant in his use of the fertihsing
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 suffi-
cient 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 opera-
tions 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, in-
spection of their general working being carried out by the
Ministry of the Interior through the medium of a British
inspector. The official weighing-machines placed in them

Photo by Elliott <£■ Frt/.

SIR WILLIAM WILLCOCKS, K.C.M.G.

SOME RECENT REFORMS 239

are periodically inspected and tested by inspectors attached
to the Department of Weights and Measures.

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 position, 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 than 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 Alexan-
dria 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 entering the
halaka, and this amount goes to meet the expenses incurred
by the Councils ; the ow^ner 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.

The scheme, as might be expected, has met with

240 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 fellahin at exorbitant rates of
interest. Not even a country as agriculturally prosperous
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 clutches of the
money-lender, 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

SOME RECENT REFORMS 241

on peasant proprietorship everywhere, in Ireland, in
Hungary, in Roumania, in Bengal, and all wise govern-
ments 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 adminis-
tration 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
' 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 communicated its opinion on

242 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 legislation, 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 proposal to
extend the concession of the Suez Canal Company 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 member-
ship 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 secondary election, through ' electors
delegate,' one for every 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 provision which might be intro-
duced into some other constitutions. Why should whole

SOME RECENT REFORMS 243

orders and professions 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 Govern-
ment ; the Ministers are responsible to the 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 Assembly has now enlarged
opportunities for influencing legislation. It may initiate
a project of law, ' sauf en ce qui concerne les his constitu-
tionnelles,' 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

E 2

244 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 discus-
sions by the Legislative Assembly and one private conference
with Ministers, whenever there is a disagreement between
the Government and the Assembly concerning a project
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 members
of the Egyptian community are acquiring a gradual associa-
tion with the business of public affairs. The Government
is still nominally absolute ; it keeps high poHtics and the
final control of legislation and administration in its own
hands. But if it does not recognise the existence of a
' Sovereign People,' it consults its subjects, it hears their

SOME RECENT REFORMS 245

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 opportunities judiciously, it
may eventually be entrusted with larger powers and fuller
responsibilities.

CHAPTEE 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 parlia-
mentary 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 Govern-
ment if it so far departed from all its practices and profes-
sions 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 adminis-
tration of justice and the exercise both of legislative and
executive authority. The horde of foreigners and foreign
subjects are exempt fi'om the jurisdiction of the Egyptian
courts and largely freed from the restraints and obligations
of the ordinary Egyptian laws. The Mixed Tribunals,

246

THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 247

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 Ameri-
cans 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
certain 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 legisla-
tion, 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 contrary 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
by agreement amongst themselves, while the Government
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.

248 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 particularly the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a very considerable 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 irrespon-
sible 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 Eeport :

White Slave Traffic

Under the limits imposed on their activity by the Capitulations,
the Egyptian police have done their best during the year to
cope with this deplorable evil. Over 1100 girls of minor age
have been met on disembarking and handed over to various
authorities who accept responsibihty for their welfare, while
others have been rescued from vice and consigned 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

THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 249

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 purpose. 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.^

It must also be remembered that it is not only foreigners
who are amenable to this extra-territorial justice. 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 nomination of their respective Govern-
ments. 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
go to the Mixed Courts, that is to say to what is practically
a foreign tribunal administering a foreign system of law.
He will require the assistance of French-speaking 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 complete

1 Egypt No. 1 (1913), p. 36.

250 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 ser-
vices of judges of the high stamp of Sir John Scott and his
French colleagues, nor have they quite the same reputation
for independence 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 im-
ported 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 prosecutors, 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 interrogatories, 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 Judical Adviser has suggested
that various changes in the organisation and procedure of
the courts should be introduced. But here the Egyptian

THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 251

Government is met by the old trouble. Nothing can be
done except by negotiation with a bevy of Foreign Offices
which cling obstinately to their lever for interfering with
the affairs of Egypt. ' I regard it as very unfortunate,'
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 Capitulations.

Every reader of the books and official publications
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 obstacle 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 con-
ventions 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. Mohammedanism, in its haughty
disdain for the Christian dogs, had no legal system which
could apply to them ; the law of Islam w^as too sacred
to extend its protection to infidels. The European Powers
were, therefore, allowed to arrange that if their nationals

252 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 Euro-
pean 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 great, had a Capitu-
lation in full working order for its own subjects. Thus
there was, and is, an imperium in imjperio, 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 administration 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

THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 253

were bound to obey any ordinance issued by a despotic
Oriental government. Without the protection afforded
by the CapitulationST— 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 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 dechne 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 poHce 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 trolly, 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

254 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

before a magistrate, and have him duly fined or imprisoned.
As a European, they can only take his name and 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 supposing 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
furthering 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 criminals ;
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 indulgence 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 nondescripts
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 flag. The
smuggler of hashish, the keeper of a gambling hell, the

THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 255

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 authorities ought to be able
to suppress or coerce them promptly and effectually. But
the cumbrous Capitulation 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 dis-
orderly classes. The Em'opean 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 abohtion, or rather the modifica-
tion, of the Capitulations, on which it is understood that
the Government has again quite recently approached the
European Powers.^ If the Capitulations were abandoned,
the Mixed Tribunals could be swept away and replaced
by native courts, in which, for some time at least, European

^ ' 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 famihar with the details
of the case, neither, for the purposes of my present argument, is any know-
ledge 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 EngHsh poHtical conscience. It has become

256 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

judges or assessors would be employed as well as Egyptians,
and the whole vexatious system of international interference
in domestic legislation would disappear. The Capitulations,
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 bargaining remains to be seen.
France would not object, for her acquiescence seems to
be imphed by the Treaty of 1904.^ But it is different
with some others of the large and little Powers, who will
not give up their last political foothold in the Nile valley,
and their opportunity for bringing pressure to bear on
the de facto rulers of Egypt, without some consideration.

clear that a country which is not, indeed, British territory, but which is
held by a British garrison, and in which British influence is predominant,
affords no safe asylum for a political refugee. Without 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 anomahes 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.

^ The clause of the Anglo-French Agreement, which was at first kept
secret, but has now been pubUshed, runs as follows :

' In the event of their [His Britannic Majesty's Government] con-
sidering 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 Govern-
ment 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 ref orm s in Morocco. '

THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 257

Moreover, they can always urge with plausibihty that they
have no guarantee for the permanence of the existing
situation, for to them Egypt is still a semi-independent
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 Occupation 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, responsible
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 converting its occupation of Bosnia
and Herzegovina into formal incorporation, and Italy seizing
the TripoHtaine, it would have seemed natural enough that
an English Protectorate should have been proclaimed,
particularly as that step would have been extremely bene-
ficial 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

258 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

Turkey in the hour of her distresses, and inflicting a further
shock upon Mussuhnan sentiment. Moreover, the con-
version of our anomalous supervision into a definite
poHtical 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 inconvenience of reforming an
Oriental country through the medium of its own govern-
ment. 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 concerned. 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 Eesident. But we owe it to ourselves,
and to the pledges we have 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

THE DRAG ON THE WHEEL 259

of Sir Keginald 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
Eeport :

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 administration, 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

bomid 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 commmiication have brought markets hitherto undreamt

of to their doors. The development of the rich products of the

country has been 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. WTien 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 encumbrance of an alien legal

system. In Egypt, where the task is more complex and

s 2

260 EOyPT IN TRANSITION

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 peaceful and more stable than ■ it was when the
Occupation began.

CHAPTEE 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 English-
man 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 w^e have to rule civilised or partly
civilised communities we are less successful in conciliating
our subjects. We have the defects of our qualities, the

261

262 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 surrounding itself, as far as possible,
with home-Hke associations. Of native society it sees
little ; and though it may meet educated natives in the
pubhc offices, in the orderly-room, and in business, it does
not really get into touch with them. And the educated,
Europeanised 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 removing foreign (which
means British) control and supervision. We have been
doing our work, subject to constant opposition and interrup-
tion 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 intervention,
has never died down. It has given birth to various schools
of ' Eeformers,' some of whom merely affect to ask that
the official administration should be left in native hands,
while others demand a full parhamentary constitution with
a cabinet responsible to an elected legislature. It finds an
outlet in more dangerous ways, in plans and combinations

CONCLUSIONS 263

to overthrow 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 con-
spirators, 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 con-
cocted an abortive atte'mpt 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 con-
nection between certain of their clients, who talk with
so much cultured ease of enlightenment and 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 Feringhi 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

264 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

greed, of yeasty idealism, of impatient vanity, in the
Egyptian Nationalist movement. So there is in all such
agitations. 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 inevitable,
political expedient.

The Nationalists might be more effective for mischief
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 argu-
mentative resourcefulness, and some of its articles, if bad
politics were excellent journalism, forcible, expressive, and
ingeniously calculated to rouse native passion against
British influence in every shape. Mustapha Kamel's
nationalism was of the most aggressive and assertive type.
His aim was to persuade his countrj^men 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 admini-
strative achievements which have evoked the admiration
of the w^orld. 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

CONCLUSIONS 265

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 mis-
managed under English supervision, and would remain
mismanaged 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 citv. 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
favourable to the propaganda of the Nationalists, and have
done something to counteract the weakness they have in-
flicted 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 Eussia before Japan which came
like the blast of a thunderbolt — 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,

266 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 violent shock
throughout the East as it gradually oozed out that Eussia,
the greatest military Power in Europe, had been signally
and ignominiously defeated by a native Oriental race. I
do not suppose that one Egyptian 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 east
— the tidings of Eussia'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 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 Eevolution, the rise
of the Young Turks, the establishment of parliamentary
institutions under the very shadow of the Calif 'ii throne.
All things considered, it is not surprising that the Egyptian
agitators have been active during the past decade, nor is
there any immediate likelihood that this activity will cease.
Fortunately, though it is always troublesome it is not often

CONCLUSIONS 267

dangerous, and its least perilous phase is that which shows
itself among the articulate sections of the population — 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 members
of the Turco-Egyptian famihes, the sons and grandsons of
the men who were beys and pashas under Ismail and Said,
are hostile to the Occupation, though they may not deem
it advisable to give overt expression 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 con-
sideration 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 predominance.

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 Enghsh, 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 gather-
ing in arrears of interest due from them ; and I was
interested to observe how accurately informed these people

268 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 have to pay on it. It was in the course
of the same journey that I had visible proof of the agrarian
progress 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
Enghsh engineers have poured the life-giving fluid through
the canals, and the English inspectors of the Public Works
Department 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 receive
credit for these reforms. The peasantry have little con-
sciousness of the part we play in the administration 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

CONCLUSIONS 269

that 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, work-
ing under contract, voluntarily pay a foreman to stand over
them with a stick and use it freely on shirkers, immunity
from personal chastisement is not highly appreciated.
Besides, the present system has endured long enough to
have dimmed the memory of past evils. The confiscations,
the oppression, the forced contributions of the old days,
are forgotten 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 administration,
our failure to suppress disorder in the country districts,
to keep violent crime within limits, and to secure the con-
viction of offenders. The fellah grumbles 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 quite able to
accomplish them without our aid, and that a native
government, purged of the abuses of the old Khediviate

270 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

— ^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 introducing 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 Mussulman senti-
ment in the villages against the Christians. His emissaries
did what they could to push the Nationalist 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 surveyors, 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 Nationalist agitation calmly, it
is not without its effect upon him. The perfervid oratory
and violent journalism of dissatisfied townsmen may be
comparatively harmless. But in India and in Eussia 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

CONCLUSIONS 271

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 w^ere
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, con-
temptuously 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 centuries, 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 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
Mediterranean to the Pied Sea and the equatorial regions.
Except for a few anaemic remnants in Abyssinia, Syria,
Armenia, all these have disappeared, absorbed by Buddhism

272 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 Eeformation, 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 Christendom.
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 orthodoxy of his teachers. He is more
likely to turn Atheist or Kationalist 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 searching for some solid foothold amid the floods
that surge across the old landmarks. These men are not

CONCLUSIONS 278

quite content to accept ready-made the ethical conven-
tions, a Httle 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 enlightened, but
conservative, Moslems who insist that it is the immorality,
rather than the virtue, of the West which is transmitted
to the East.

' Om' 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 w^hich has not
prevented your own societies from being the battle-ground
of the animal instincts 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
fi'ee ; 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 system of religion and morals, and we shall
do wisely to cling to it.'

274 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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 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 impediment
to electric tramcars, steam turbines, representative govern-
ment, 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 favourable sense. A
priesthood, which could not stretch the articles of its religion
so as to cover the requirements 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

CONCLUSIONS 275

Oriental society, the fatal influence that negatives all genuine
progress. But it is an institution which has existed for
many centuries, which fits without friction into the con-
ditions 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 Mussul-
man 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 on the seclusion
and segregation of women, and recognising, 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 squahd muddle,
not unmixed with sordid tragedy, of the sSxual 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 ?

T 2

276

EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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, which you vainly
strive to keep in cheek by ferocious, but apparently in-
effectual, 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.^ Your matrimonial arrange-
ments 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 your-
selves 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

^ See the passage from Lord Kitchener's Report 'quoted above
(chapter xxvii. p. 248).

CONCLUSIONS 277

street in Cairo to see that there are plenty of ladies in
Egypt who are evidently allowed, or who allow themselves,
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 the Indian purdah.
But on the other hand one sometimes hears that the move-
ment for the emancipation of married women has little
vitality, except among the reformers and the small European-
ising ' smart set ' of the capital. Some of the ladies reject
the veil and the separate female apartments, receive mascu-
line 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 considerable
extent. One hears of cases of well-born and highly cultured
Moslem ladies who, after some experience of emancipation
and intercom'se 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 \sath,
though I have never seen, her. She is the wife of an accom-
plished 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 society
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

278 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

veiled, in her carriage. But occasionally she will con-
verse on the subjects which interest her with an Eng-
lish professor or learned official or some other foreign
gentleman — through the telephone ! Thus do science and
Moslem convention work comfortably 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 country. ' 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 Education are crowded, and to meet
the growing demand sites have been acquired and fresh
schools are to be constructed, one in Alexandria and two
in Cairo. Very many applications for admission have, how-
ever, 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 educa-
tional 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,
however, it is clear that neither the Training College nor

CONCLUSIONS 279

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 providing adequate
accomodation.' i-

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 ;
and here the Ministry of Education, under its late capable
chief, Zaghlul Pasha, set the good precedent of picking out

^ Egypt, No. 1 (1912), p. 25. In the Report for the following year,
Egypt, No. 1 (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 accom-
modation 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.'

280 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

promising female pupils from the secondary 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 recognised 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 nomination, immediately received no fewer
than seventeen offers of marriage, which shows at least
that the Egyptian bridegroom does not despise feminine
culture. But one wonders how an educated young woman
will contrive to settle down to matrimonial immurement
after her year or two spent at a training college or a university
in England.

Feminine education, as well as technical and agricultural
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 gentle-
men, with the latest imported 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 of business generally, and students properly prepared
for industrial and commercial pursuits. And these the
technical schools and colleges are gradually furnishing.
In this way we may produce some effect on the intellectual
movement, and the attitude of those who will give it shape

CONCLUSIONS 281

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, perhaps in
unison with the West, quite possibly by shaping a different
synthesis for itself. We may have to abandon our con-
ception of the huge, somnolent, amorphous 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 tke 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 independently constructive.
The East may take over from us various external forms
and material appendages, such as parliaments, military
tactics, super-Dreadnoughts, and bowler hats, without
necessarily assimilating 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.

282 EGYPT IN TRANSITION

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, economically and other-
wise, according to our lights. Our lights may not be those
of our clients, they may even sometimes be a little dim
and flickering for ourselves ; 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 Cromer 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.

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 anticipate
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

CONCLUSIONS 283

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 experi-
ment, 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, 191; State recep-
tions held by, 193 ; he remains
nominally the supreme power in
Egypt, 196, seq. ; character of,
199 ; abortive assassination plot
against, 234

Abu Hamed, 6, 7, 10 ; station of,
37, 65

' Advisers ' British, Report on
prisons, 225 ; suggested reform
of mixed Courts, by, 196, 251,
seq. ; duties of, 200

Agitators, Lord Kitchener, on, 235

Agricultural Bank, working of, 267

Ahmed, Mohammed. See Mahdi.j

Amenophis II, tomb of, 152

' Anglo -Egyptian Sudan,' its poli-
tical position, 5, 136 ; and see
Sudan.

Army, Egyptian, Sudanese regi-
ments of, 47 ; conscription in,
50 ; 10th Sudanese inspected,
79 ; theoretically part of Turkish
forces, 195

'Army of Occupation,' British,
49 ; Kasr-en-Nil barracks of, 158

Arabi Pasha, 197

Assiut, barrage at, 131

Assuan dam, 124 ; cost of, 131 ;
original designs for, modified
to save temples at Philae, 132 ;
begun in 1898, completed, 1902,
134 ; its length and storage
capacity, 134 ; additions to,
1907-1912, 136

Atbara, bridge over the, 7, 65, 88 ;
cotton land, 111

Baker, Sie Benjamin, his schemes
for Nile irrigation, 128 ; his
appointment on Sir Colin Scott-
Moncriefi's Commission, 1890,
131 ; modification of his design
for Assuan dam, 132

Berber, 7, 54, 88, 111

Bernard, Col. E. E., Financial
Secretary to Sudan Govern-
ment, 51

Blue Nile. See Nile.

Blue Nile Province, 64

Boutros Pasha, murder of, 234,
263

Cabinet Ministers, position of,
242, 243

Cairo, Egyptian War Office in, 49 ;
climate of, 145, 155 ; shops in,
146 ; museum in, 153 ; first
impressions of, 155 ; French
infiuence on, 156, 157 ; citadel
of, 161 ; mosques of, 161 ; its
position as the seat of the Uni-
versity of El-Azhar, 184 ; school
for girls in, 279

Capitulations, the, not in force
in the Sudan, 48 ; hampering
efiect of, in Egypt, 251 ; advan-
tages of, before the Occupation,
253 ; necessity for their modi-
fication to suit modern require-
ments, 255

Cassel, Sir Ernest, 131

Christianity, eliorts at conversion
of Mohammedans forbidden in
most parts of the Sudan, 59, 60 ;
its waning power in the East, 60,
271

286

INDEX

Condominium, Anglo-Egyptian, 5,
23,48

Consular Courts, 252-4

Cook, Thomas, pioneer of Egyptian
tourist-travel, 142

Copts, their employment in Sudan
Government offices, 23 ; their
clerical employment in Cairo,
155, 159 ; their character and
origin, 205 ; their representation
in the Legislative Assembly, 242

Corvee, 129, 170

Cotton, its cultivation in the
Sudan, 110, 111 ; crop on Zeidab
Estate, 116; Egypt's contribu-
tion to the world's supply of, 128 ;
official markets for sale of, 238

Crime, frequency of, 220 ; increase
of, 222 ; Eastern attitude to-
wards, 226 ; old and new methods
for punishment of, 228

Cromer, Earl of, his release of
Zubeir, 55 ; he opens Nile-Red-
Sea Railway, 1906, 86 ; his
abolition of the corvee, 10 ; his
opinion of British policy in
Egypt, 197 ; his great achieve-
ments in the early days of the
Occupation, 198 ; his later policy,
219 ; his opinion on the Capitu-
lations in Egypt, 255 n. ; and
on the possible abandonment of
the Occupation, 282

Delta, the, 66 ; British element
in, 164 ; climate of, 166 ; neces-
sity of drainage, 169 ; the Delta
farmer, 173 ; inadequate punish-
ment of crime in, 220, seq.

Dual Control, 213

DufEerin, Marquess of, his Report,
241

Education ; Lord Kitchener's first
educational efforts in the Sudan,
24 ; Gordon College and its
aims, 25, 26 ; University of
El-Azhar, 184, seq. ; institution
of New University College, Cairo,
184 ; antiquated system of, at

El-Azhar, 190; Minister of,
191 ; New law promulgated in
1911, to enlarge syllabus at El-
Azhar, 192
El-Azhar, university of, 184 ; cos-
mopolitan constituency of, 185 ;
expenses of the establishment
met by the Administration des
Wakfs, 187 ; its antiquated sys-
tem of education, 189 ; syllabus
enlarged, 1911, 1912, 192

Fellahin, 50 ; their attempts to
evade conscription, 73 ; physique
of, 74 ; description of, in the
Delta, 165, 170 ; their aversion
from innovations, 172 ; their
tendency to hoard money, 173 ;
Lord Kitchener's interest in,
237 ; their indebtedness to
English rule not acknowledged,
267, seq. ; influence of Nationa-
list agitators among, 270 ;
religious feeling of, 270 ; their
sympathy with Turks, 271

Five Feddans Law, enactment of,
172 ; its operation dependent on
Mixed Legislative Council, 248

Flogging, daily practice of, under
Abdullah, 33 ; indifference of the
fellahin, towards, 269 ; abolition
of, in prisons, 225; abolition of
the kurbash, 173, 268

Garstin, Sir William, his opinion
on wheat and cotton crops, 110 ;
his irrigation schemes, 123, 128 ;
modification of his original de-
signs for Assuan dam, to save
temples of Philae, 132 ; his
further irrigation schemes, 137 ;
his project for diverting the
course of the Nile from the Sudd
regions, 138

General Assembly, the scope and
policy of, 242 ; its reappearance
as the Legislative Assembly
under the New Organic Law,
1913, 242 ; its restrictions, 246,
248, seq.

INDEX

287

Ghedit, Sir Reginald Wingate's
victory over the Khalifa at, 44

Ghezireh, 159

Gordon, Charles George, attempt to
rescue him, 11 ; memorial to, 15 ;
death of, 16, 54, 55 ; his crusade
against slavery, 62

Gordon College, Khartum, 25;
aims and methods of, 26, 50, 59

Gorst, Sir Eldon, his report on
Nile-Red-Sea Railway, 86; his
succession to Lord Cromer, as
British Agent, 86; his real and
nominal position, 194 ; misin-
terpretation of his attitude by
Nationalists, 234

Halakas, or official cotton-markets,
institution of, 238 ; description of,
239

Haifa. See Wady Haifa.

Herodotus, the first special corre-
spondent on the Nile, 142

Hills of the Dead, sterility and
solitude of, 151 ; Tombs of the
Kings, 150

Inspectors, British, attached to
Ministry of Interior and Ministry
of Finance, 204 ; functions of, 212 ;
nomination of, 214 ; some diffi-
culties experienced by, 214, seq.

Irrigation, allotment of perennial
water, 113 ; pumping apparatus
at Zeidab, 115; antiquity of
basin irrigation, 122 ; use of
Nilometers, 125 ; basin irrigation
superseded by perennial irriga-
tion, 127 ; canals, chains and
barrages, 130; Assuan dam, 131;
completion of Assuan dam in
1902, 134 ; antiquity of bucket
and lever, water-wheel and hand-
pump, 135 ; advantages of
perennial irrigation, 169 ; its
abuse by the fellahin, 237, 238

Ismail Pasha, Khedive, oppressive
rule of, 54 ; his preference for
French officials, 213 ; his extra-
vagance and extortion, 231

Kamel, Mtjstapha, death of, 264 ;
attacks on English officials, 264,
265 ; his agitations in the
villages, 270
Karnak, 148, seq.
Kerreri, Battle of. See Omdurman.
Khalifa, the (Abdullah), 10, 29,
30 ; his house and enclosure in
Omdurman, 31, 33 ; his death,
45, 61
Khedive, position of, 48
Khedives. See Abbas, Ismail, Said,

Tewfik.
Khartum, romance of, 9, 11 ; its
foundation, destruction, gro^i;h,
trade, 17, seq. ; its climate, 37
Kitchener of Khartum, Viscount,
his expedition to the Sudan in
1898, 6 ; his entry into Khartum,
18 ; his educational projects in
the Sudan, 24 ; his destruction
of the Mahdi's tomb, 32 ; his
treatment of the religious ques-
tion, 59 ; his new Five Feddans
Law, 172 ; his campaigns in
1897, 177 ; his report on El-
Azhar, in 1912, 192 ; his en-
deavours to supplement police
force in the Delta, 222 ; his
report, 'Egypt, No. 3 (1913),'
232, seq. ; his appointment to
British Agency, 1911, 233, 234;
plot to murder him, 234 ; his
report on Nationalist agitations,
1912, 236 ; his interest in the
fellahin, 237 ; his reform of the
Legislative Assembly, 243 ; his
account of progress in the Sudan,
259
Kom Ombo, 115
Kordofan, province of, 64
Kurbash, 173, 268

Legislative Assembly, election
to, 242, 243 ; restricted powers
of, 243. (^ee General Assembly.)

Legislative Council, constitution
of, 241. {See General Assembly.)

Luxor, climate of, 145, 148 ; ruins
and monuments at, 148, 149 ;
situation of, 150

288

INDEX

Mahdi, the (Mohammed Ahmed),
12, 15 ; his order to spare Gordon
disobeyed, 16 ; his destruction
of Khartum, 18 ; his capture of
Father Ohrwalder, 31 ; his tomb
in Omdurman, 32 ; his Puritan-
ism, 75
Mehemet Ali, 12 ; his foundation
of IChartum, 18 ; conquests of,
53 ; founder of modern Egypt,
127; initiator of system of peren-
nial irrigation, 130 ; mosque of,
161
Meroe and Merowi, pyramids and

temples at, 65
Metemmeh, massacre at, 117
Mixed Tribunals, established 1876,
246 ; authority over Egyptian
legislation of, 247 ; unsatis-
factory conditions of, 250 ; their
abolition suggested, 255
Mudir, position of, 48 ; military
status of, in the Sudan, 81 ;
nationality of, in the provinces,
204 ; responsibilities of, in the
provinces, 212, 224; local im-
portance of, 216
Murders, frequency of, 220 ; large
proportion unpunished, 221 ; in-
adequate causes for, 221 ; in-
crease of, in Cairo, 222 ; difficulty
of obtaining convictions for, 226;
Mohammedanism, its prevalence in
the Sudan, and the deference
paid to its observances by British
officials, 57, seq. ; its former
attitude towards Christians,
251, 252 ; its influence over the
peasantry, 270 ; its increasing
power in the East, 272 ; its
ethical system, 273 ; its effect
on progress, 274 ; its matri-
monial system, 275

Nationalist agitations, attitude
of Sir Eldon Gorst and Lord
Kitchener towards, 234, seq. ;
plots and murders connected with,
262, 263 ; death of ablest leader
of, Mustapha Kamel Pasha, 264,
265 ; influence on the peasantry,
270

Nile, prior claim of Egypt over the
Sudan, to its waters, 1 12 ; canals,
115 ; its supreme importance to
Egypt, 121, seq. ; its source, 123 ;

[~ basin irrigation now obsolete,
130 ; barrages and dams, 130,
131, 134 ; navigation of, 134 ;
clearance of sudd and a use found
for the refuse, 137 ; its whole
length laid open, 137

Nile, Blue, its junction with the
White Nile at Khartum, 20,
124 ; tides of, 124

Nile, White, its junction with the
Blue Nile at Khartum, 20
source of, 123

Nilometers, 125

Nukar Pasha, political ability of,
202, 210 ; his institution of the
IMixed Tribunals, 246

Ohrwaldeb, Father, 31

Omdurman, battle of, 13 ; town of,
transmutation of, 29 ; area and
population, 29 ; its market and
cotton mills, 34

Organic Law of 1913, new consti-
tutional system promulgated by,
241

Philae, temples of, 1 ; agitation
against their submersion by the
erection of the Assuan dam, 132

Police force, inadequacy of, 222,
224 ; necessity of extra police-
tax, 226 ; restrictions on, im-
posed by Capitulations, 253

Port Sudan, opening of Nile-Red-
Sea Railway at, 86 ; rapid growth
of, 87 ; harbour of, 89 ; construc-
tion of, 89 ; imports and exports
of, 92; climate of, 93, 94;
buildings of, 100

Provincial Councils, 278

Pyramids, the great, 162, 163

Pyramids at Merowi, 65

Public Works Department, ad-
ministrators of, 123 ; engineers of,
127 ; English inspection of, 268 ;
advantages of, to the fellah, 170

INDEX

289

Railways, 63, seq. ; opening cf Nile-
Red-Sea Railway, 86 ; Suakin-
Berber Railway project, 88, 91 ;
their^ public ownership in Sudan,
97.

Riaz Pasha, race and ability of,
210

Said Pasha, Khedive, father of
Ismail, 167

Scott-Moncrieff, Sir Colin, his
services in the Egyptian Public
Works Department to further
Nile irrigation, 123 ; his adapta-
tion of Mougel's barrage, 130 ;
his commission in 1890, 131 ;
his services, 198 ; his irrigation
schemes attacked, 265

Slatin Pasha, Sir Rudolf von, 30

Slaves, import and export of, pro-
hibited in the Sudan, 48 ; manu-
mission of, 61 ; special depart-
ment to control trade in, 61

Strabo, in Egypt, 142

Sudan, conquest of, 2 ; under two
flags, xi., 4 ; its area, fertility,
population, 5 ; its possibilities
of development, 6 ; character-
istics of natives, 22, seq. ;
government of, 46 ; its division
into fourteen provinces, 48 ; its
revenue, 51 ; religious observ-
ances in, 57, seq. ; slave trade in,
61 ; its three chief requirements,
63 ; irrigation of, 66 ; need of
labourers in, 66 ; physique of
natives compared with Egyptians,
74 ; musical taste of natives, 75 ;
wives of native soldiers, 77, seq. ;
first Government of, 80 ; Civil
Service, 81, seq. ; Civil Service,
genesis of, xii. ; train-service of,
91 ; state socialism in, 95, seq. ;
its control of the irrigation of
Egypt, 121 ; its virtual position
as a British dominion, 204 ; Lord
Kitchener on increased prosperity
of, 259

Sudd, 123 ; use discovered for, 137

Tewfik Pasha, Khedive, character
of, 199

Thebes, Colossi of, 143 ; the City
of the Dead, 150

Tombs of the Kings, 150

Tourists in Egypt, their antiquity,
142 ; Greek and Roman, 143 ;
modern, 144

Turkey, its participation in govern-
ment of the Sudan, 47, 48 ;
theoretical control of Egyptian
politics, 194, seq.

' Turks ' (Turco-Egyptians), real
governing element in Egypt before
1882, and their attitude towards
English rule, 210, 211 ; relations
with Nationalist agitators, 234 ;
rise of Young Turks, 266

Turkish, official language of Egj'p-
tian army, 47 ; High Commis-
sioner in Cairo, 195 ; Revolution,
266

Wady Halfa, site of, 1 ; railway
junction, 3

Wellcome Institute, 27

White Nile. See Nile.

White slave traffic, 248

Willcocks (Sir WiUiam), 123; his
scheme for perennial irrigation,
128 ; his presidency of Sir Colin
Scott - Moncrieff's Commission,
1890, 131 ; modification of his
designs for Assuan dam, 132 ; his
proposal to utilise the great
lakes as storage reservoirs, 138, 198

Wingate, Sir Reginald, Sirdar of the
Egyptian armj- and Governor-
General of the Sudan, 1 ; Lord
Cromer's testimony to value of
his long tenure of office, xvii. ;
in the Palace at Khartum, 15 ;
rescue of Father Ohrwalder, 31 ;
a ' shrewd and kindly autocrat,'
40 ; his linguistic and antiquarian
attainments, 43 ; his military
capacity in the campaign of
Ghedit, 44 ; his brilliant and final
victory over the Khalifa at that
place, ih. ; student and soldier,
45 ; at review of Khartum garri-
son, 74 ; extraordinary progress
in prosperity and good order of
Sudan under his direction, 259

290

INDEX

Wolseley, Viscount, his expedition
in 1884, 6, 176 ; his attitude to
Suakin-Berber Railway, 88 ; his
entry into Cairo in 1882, 197

Women, more numerous than men
in the Northern Sudan, 21 ;
education of, in Khartum, 59 ;
their position and treatment in
lines of Sudanese regiments, 78,
80 ; question of their future in
Egypt, 274 ; seclusion of recog-
nised by established Eastern
usage, 275; steps towards eman-
cipation of, 277 ; education of,
278

YomfG, Captain, formerly Mudir of

Omdurman, 32
Young Turk movement, its effect

in Egypt, 233, 266

Zaghltjl Pasha, his scheme for
sending native girl-students to be
trained in England, 279

Zeidab Estate, visited and de-
scribed, 110, seq.

Zubeir Pasha, his origin and career,
54 ; meeting with him at Khar-
tum, 55 ; his farms and estates,
114

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a rare susceptibility and sense of humour.'

DAILY NEWS. — ' A survey of India, thorough and complete. Mr. Low . . .
has used his knowledge and his skill in a way that is at once rare and delightful.*

BIRMINGHAM POST.— ' A memorable book. It is exceedingly well
written. It is both grave and gay. . . with many charming stories and anecdotes.'

London: SMITH, ELDER & CO.,
15 Waterloo Place, S.W.

^■.fui iL^^nna

Demy 8vo. 72. 6Ck. net.

The South African Scene.

By VIOLET R. MARKHAM,

Author of 'South Africa, Past and Present,' 'The New Era in South

Africa,' &c.

*,* In this work Miss Markham has recorded the development which
has taken place in South Africa since the war.

Demy 8vo. 6S. net.

India of To-day.

By E. C MEYSEY THOMPSON, M.P.

*** Impressions and reflections of a Conservative M.P. after travel
in India ; reviewing our policy from a standpoint which contrasts with
that adopted by some recent visitors to that country.

WORKS BY
SIR FREDERICK TREVES, BART.

6Sa net Editions with Illustrations and Maps.

Uganda for a Holiday.

Country Life. — ' One feels in reading the book precisely as if one were
traversing the region with a companion who was extremely well informed,
agreeable, and natural.'

The Land that is Desolate :

An Account of a Tour in Palestine.

Glasgow Herald. — 'Admirable illustrations re.ich the very highest
standard of amateur work. The author's pen is as remorselesslj' faithful as
his camera. The caustic humour which enlivens the book helps to make it
most interesting.'

The Cradle of the Deep :

An Account of a Visit to the West Indies.

Academy. — ' It is fascinating, absorbing, astonishing. We have read
it from cover to cover — we have re-read it, and even as we write we are
itching to read it again.'

London: SMITH. ELDER & CO.,
15 Waterloo Place, S W.

THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW

AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS

WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN
THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY
WILL INCREASE TO 50 CENTS ON THE FOURTH
DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY
OVERDUE.

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MAV 10 1940

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YC 47154

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

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