Chapter X: The Advance on Dongola

“_14th Oct._—I arrived at Sheykh Obeyd and remained there only a fortnight, going on from Cairo up the Nile to visit Upper Egypt and Nubia, a part of the Nile Valley still new to me. I travelled on this occasion alone, my family not having yet arrived, and got as far south as what was then the extreme frontier of Egypt towards the Soudan.

“_29th Oct._—Left Sheykh Obeyd for the Upper Nile, taking Ali Suffraji with me as body servant.

“Passing through Cairo called on Gorst, who begged me to inquire on my journey whether there was any ill-feeling in Upper Egypt between Moslems and Copts, and on other points to get him what information I could. He told me that as to Philæ, the reservoir scheme was for the time laid by, the finances being not quite safe, and the political conditions too uncertain.

“At sunset I drove out beyond the Kasr el Nil bridge, to enjoy the cool breeze and see the villages still partly surrounded by water and at nine I started by train. I travelled all night, comfortably enough but for the exceeding dust, with a fine moon in its second quarter, and a splendid morning star, showing the country still half inundated. People are beginning to sow their beans and wheat in the immense flats of mud. In other places the plain is covered with sheep feeding on the new green grass before it is ploughed. Sugar cane is the only growing crop.

“_30th Oct._—At half-past ten reached Girgeh, where the railway ends, and took boat in a stern-wheel steamer leaving at one. No first-class passenger besides myself, except three French engineers connected with the railway now being constructed to Keneh. With one of them, Megie, I had some interesting talk. He has been thirty-five years in the country, having come as a boy with his father, a _protégé_ of Linant Pasha—now for eight years in Upper Egypt—intelligent and kindly. He tells me there is absolutely no ill-will between Moslems and Copts—never was any, even in the time of Arabi—knew Arabi—considered him a _brave homme_—had remained at Kaliub till after the bombardment, when he left by the last train for Suez—could have stayed on, if he had liked, in security at Cairo, though perhaps not in the villages. I asked him whether the fellahin were better off now or in Saïd Pasha’s time. ‘Dans le temps de Saïd,’ he answered, ‘les œufs se vendaient cent pour une piastre. Voilà ce que j’appelle la misère. Pour le bien être, oui. Ils étaient à leur aise, et les impôts étaient moins élevés. Mais ils n’étaient pas au courant de la civilisation.’ A characteristic French answer. This is a good specimen of the ideas even intelligent foreigners have, and he certainly spoke with sympathy of the fellahin. Stopped for the night at Farshut, where they are making the new railway bridge. It has been sweltering hot all the afternoon, thermometer 85, but cool after sunset.

“_31st Oct._—Travelling due east, a pleasant wind in our faces—multitudes of birds, not yet scared away by the tourists’ guns, herons, pelicans, little white herons, cormorants, pied kingfishers, hoopoes—few signs of European life—immense crops of millet, taller than a camel and rider, this makes the banks green. The Nile has fallen three metres, and the _shadoufs_ are at work. This is the season to see the Upper Nile, or any part of it for that matter. I never had a pleasanter fortnight at Sheykh Obeyd than since the 12th, when I returned there—the garden a paradise of birds and beasts, two wolves every evening in the palms at El Kheysheh, and numberless foxes—millions of sparrows roosting nightly in the orange trees (so that the whole garden smelt in the morning like a bird-cage), everything perfection.

“Past Keneh there are splendid reaches of the river, with banks beautifully wooded with _sont_ trees in full flower besides _abels_, _nebuks_, and palms of both sorts—no _lebbeks_ nor _gemeysehs_, though I saw a huge dead trunk of a _gemeyseh_ by the water side. The _lebbek_, though an old Egyptian tree, seems to have become almost extinct till the present century, when it was reintroduced with the other modern improvements. There can be none in the country older than seventy or eighty years, big trees as they are.

“_1st Nov._—Luxor. The Luxor Hotel is open, but empty with the exception of an invalid doctor (Dr. Ruffer) and his wife, and Newbury, an archæologist, who comes in for meals, having been here through the summer. Tourists there are none. I went out before sunrise and looked at the temple, and later to Karnak. The ancient Egyptians seem always to have built on the Nile mud, a mean foundation.

“The Consul, Ahmed Eff. Mustafa, called on me and invited me to luncheon, an Egyptian meal served with much hospitality. He is an honest, good man, of the fellah type, very proud of his visitors’ book, which dates from 1855, and is a pretty complete history of modern Egypt. I found my brother Francis’ name and Alice’s, and Lady Herbert’s party, and the Mures and Spencers, who were here in _dahabiyahs_ in (the autumn of) 1863, and Lady Dufferin’s in 1858, with a vast number of others recalling old memories, Strangford’s, Beaufort’s, down to ‘H. M. Stanley’s of the “New York Herald,”’ and General Gordon’s in 1884, and Lord Waterford’s last year, who shot himself a month ago—nearly all dead now.

“_2nd Nov._—Across the river before sunrise to the statue of Memnon and the temples of Gournah and Medinet Habou. The latter is a really fine thing, and I was able to see it alone without guides or fellow sightseers. But I am left with the impression that the Nile itself, with its great flow of water and its ever green banks and eternal youth is the really interesting thing, far finer than its monuments. These are interesting as part of the river’s history, not the Nile because of them. The greatest of human works are a very small matter, after all, and the world would be hardly poorer if mankind had never been—greatly richer, indeed, seeing how much beauty we have destroyed. To Karnak again in the evening, and rode through by the light of the full moon.

“_3rd Nov._—Again across the river to see some minor monuments not worth visiting. I was followed by a troop of little girls whom the tourists have debauched with bakshish. I thought at first they were Ghazawiyeh, so shameless were they, a sight I have never seen before in all the lands of Islam. Coming in, I received a visit from Minshatti Bey the Ababdeh Sheykh to whom I had sent to tell him I was here. He is a delightful old man, whom our military people have quarrelled with, suspecting him of Mahdist tendencies. Kitchener deposed him from the Sheykhat and put in another, Beshir Bey, in his place, who now lives at Assouan under the eye of the Government, and does their business with the tribe. But Minshatti is the real Sheykh. The young Khedive, when he was here, sent for Minshatti, and made much of him, and gave him a robe of honour. This was made one of the points of Kitchener’s quarrel with the Khedive. The old man tells me that the Sirdar now treats him better, and he is allowed to go about where he likes, and is not molested by the police. He promised—but I think rather doubtingly, for he is probably afraid—to send one of his relations with me if I went travelling, as I intend to do this winter, among the Ababdeh.

“Had some talk with Dr. Ruffer, who is a distinguished man of science, a bacteriologist. He had a paralytic stroke six months ago (it was a case of blood poisoning caused by one of his experiments), and is here for his health. He is looking for bacteria in the desert sand.

“Later I went to Minshatti’s house, which is just outside the town, a clean, new building, where he received me with carpets spread on the _mastaba_, a nice cool place. I asked him about the Soudan, and the Mahdi, and the Khalifa, and he told me much that was interesting. He never saw the Mahdi himself, but several of his relations knew him when he was a _najar_ (carpenter), a boat builder at Dongola. He was an _alem_ and a _faki_; but his political fortunes were the work originally of Jaffir Bey, who had quarrelled with the Government. He said the Mahdi was a good man; and as long as he lived everybody in the Soudan believed in him as the true Mahdi. But the Khalifa had ruined everything. The reason of the Baggara power was that the Khalifa had put forward all the best men of the other tribes to fight, and these had got killed in the wars, while the Baggaras were held in reserve and reaped the profits. The Khalifa had got possession of all the firearms in the country on the pretext of having them in readiness to resist an invasion, and so the Baggaras, his own tribe, were the only ones thus armed. El Nejumi had made his expedition, which ended at Toski [this was the battle won by Grenfell, see later], because an attempt had been made to poison him, and he wanted to get away somewhere where he should be his own master. The chiefs of the tribes when not killed in war had been got rid of on various pretexts by the Khalifa. They had been accused of treason and put into a kind of fetter which Minshatti described to me as being a long tube of iron holding the arms straight out from the shoulder to the wrist. A man with his arms thus fettered was helpless and died in a month. Thus only children were left in the tribes, and the Baggaras, an ignoble tribe with whom the Jaalin and Kababish and Hadendowas and Ababdeh would not in former times intermarry, had got all power into their hands.

“I did not, however, gather from him that the fellahin were ill off. He told me _durra_ was at three _reals_ the _ardeb_, and all things were plentiful. But the richer people suffered exactions, so that it was the common cry that the Baggaras’ rule was worse than the rule of the Turks. He talked a good deal about Salatin (Slatin) and Neufeld. He said that an expedition from the Government would be joined by everyone in the Soudan. I asked him if it would be so if the expedition was an English one. He said that the opinion now in the Soudan had changed, and that the people there no longer regarded the _gufara_ (infidels, meaning Christians) as they did ten years ago. Many of them had been wounded and taken prisoners, and had afterwards been released, and had related at home that the _kufara_ had treated them well. As Minshatti was certainly suspected of being in league with the Mahdists, and probably was so a few years ago, his evidence is of more value than most. But I expect that the Baggaras are stronger in the country than he quite makes out. The noble tribes are doubtless jealous of them, as there are always jealousies among Arab tribes. Of his own position he said that he was one of the three great Sheykhs of the Ababdeh, the others being Beshir and Saleh Ibn Khalifeh, lately killed at Murad. They each used to received £40 a month from the Government, but Beshir’s allowance had been reduced to £32, and his own to £5. He asked me to try and get his raised. I said I would try to do so, but fear there is no chance.

“_4th Nov._—On board the _Ibis_. We passed Erment this morning where there are many lebbek and gemeyseh trees apparently twenty years old, also larger factories and some cotton cultivation. I did not notice any dogs there, though Erment is famous for its large rough breed. The dogs generally of the Upper Niles are rougher than those in the north. Matana, a beautifully wooded place, was one of the Khedive Ismaïl’s properties. Esneh in the afternoon, away from the river with two square masses of ancient stonework on mounds of rubbish. Stopped for the night at Silsilis, the moon very splendid, as red and bright as a fire lit just under it when it rose.

“My companions on board are three or four English officers of the Egyptian army, with the limited conversation of their kind. But I like young Broadwood who commands the cavalry at Wady Halfa.

“_5th Nov._—Some attractive desert places on the left bank where cultivation has been abandoned and its place taken by _halfa_ grass and green bushes—the palms gone wild. There are a good many horses turned out, tethered in the barley to graze, and on the _durra_. Some of them are bays with white faces and four white legs, probably of the Dongola breed—tall, with straight shoulders and drooping quarters. Kom Ombo close to the river, temple and fort on a natural mound. The river is now generally from a kilometre to a mile broad, a few mud banks beginning to show in places.

“At 1:30 arrived at Assouan. It has a European appearance. The approach to it is fine. Having made acquaintance on board with Mustafa Bey Shakir, deputy mamur of Assouan, I inquired of him what government lands there were for sale—this for Evelyn, who has an idea of purchasing here—and he sent me on a donkey to look at a building belonging to the Government known as the Mukhtab el Miri el Buhari, about two miles down the river. There are well wooded gardens near it, which the guard said might be bought from the fellahin owners for £10 and £15 the feddan. The Government is asking £300 for the building. In a few years the railway will be brought near it, and it might not be a bad purchase.

“Then by train to Shellal, put my things on board the steamer, and spent the evening sailing about Philæ and the edge of the cataract, one of the loveliest things I remember of the kind. Indeed, the only recollection I can compare with it is the boating expedition we made on the great tank at Hyderabad ten years ago. It was a perfect evening, and the rocks and swirling water in the twilight, and the boat with the Berber crew singing were everything one could imagine in Philæ.

“_6th Nov._—Rode on donkey-back before sunrise to see the position of the proposed dam, which is a mile or so below Philæ. Philæ as it is, is perhaps the one perfect thing in the world, and anything added to or taken from it would probably spoil it. So I trust they will leave it alone. At the same time if they would be content with banking the river to the natural height of the Nile at flood, I do not see that it need do a great harm. But of course they want more, and to make it the biggest engineering thing in the universe. The situation is tempting to an engineer, as the solid boulders of granite would make it an heroic bit of stonework.

“At eight we started again up the river. The change of scenery above the cataract is most sudden and complete, made more so by the as sudden and complete change in the inhabitants, who are here Berbers. Indeed, Egypt ends abruptly at Assouan. The Soudan begins at Philæ. These upper reaches, between piled-up granite boulders, are very attractive, as there are many places one might use as hermitages, islands of rock with a few sont trees and palms, some having the remains on them of buildings. At Kalabsheh a new and still narrower gate is passed. This is where the French chose their site for the dam. It is difficult to say which of the two sites would be the best for the purpose. Thus, all day long, between endless granite boulders on the eastern shore, and the same, partly covered with drift sand, on the western, the cultivation almost nil, a narrow fringe of palms and _sonts_ and _seyyals_, with here and there a patch of vegetables sown at the river’s edge or a field of _durra_.

“_7th Nov._—We stopped for the night at Dendur, and in the morning light found ourselves outside the narrow gorge, and among drifts of _nefud_—red sand—on the western bank, apparently encroaching. Broadwood tells me there is a long line of _nefuds_ running north-west which is impassable for camels. This, as I understand him, west of the road to the oases. But I doubt if he has been far enough to know.

“I have made friends on board with a military doctor, Mohammed Eff. Towfik, who began by quarrelling with me as an Englishman for the occupation of Egypt, but we speedily came to an understanding, and I find him to be a friend of Mohammed Abdu’s, and a staunch Nationalist of the fellah party. Though still a young man, perhaps thirty-five, he remembers the Russian war of 1877, and knew Arabi. He told me very frankly that there were people who suspected me of having stood in with our diplomacy in 1882. It was pleasant to find a man so fearless and outspoken, especially as much of our conversation was within hearing of the English officers, Broadwood, Lawrie, and a third, Healy, who understands Arabic. The doctor is a fellah, proprietor of 300 feddans near Benisouef, and declares that the fellahin are in a worse condition materially than before the rebellion. I doubt this. But I think it likely he is right about Upper Egypt. Certainly all this district south of Assouan shows traces of decline; and the Berber population is lean and hungry. He was eager to know about the Armenian question, and about the condition of India, and I explained both to him. He is a very intelligent, worthy man, of the kind most required. He admitted freely the personal liberty now enjoyed and the liberty of the press, but complained bitterly of there being no self-government, no constitution. I agree with him on all points, except that of the material poverty. He is opposed to the reservoirs, but in favour of an advance on the Soudan, at least to Dongola. My own impression is that it would have been best in 1885 to have made Assouan the boundary of Egypt, instead of Wady Halfa. It is a much stronger frontier and far less costly. The only reason for an advance now is to forestall a European one, either Italian or French.

“We stopped for the night at Korosko, and I went ashore with the Commandant, Ibrahim Bey Fathy, a fine looking fellah soldier, who showed us round the barracks by starlight. They are making surveys for a railway to Murad, and Broadwood tells me they intend, whenever the advance to Khartoum is made, to take that route. But there is nothing in contemplation at present. The English officers are good fellows, and are very polite and amiable to their Egyptian brother officers; but it is easy to see that there is no real intimacy or knowledge of each other’s thoughts. Broadwood complains of this; and I should think that, if it came to a pinch, the Egyptian officers could not be implicitly relied on. I fancy they all resent the superior commands being English. They do not mess with the English officers, and live much apart. This is no doubt partly because the English know very little Arabic. Ibrahim Bey spoke excellent English, and dined with us on board. There are two young fellows, Englishmen of the Royal Engineers, who have been sent out here to make the railroad to Murad, excellent ingenuous youths of perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four, to whom it is great fun and solid advancement, as they are given the rank of majors in the Egyptian army. This is a sample of what leads to discontent among the native officers, for the work is an absolutely simple one, and could be performed by any of their own engineers. Yet these young Englishmen have it. Again, the command of the cavalry at Halfa is left during the summer months to a native officer, but as soon as the winter begins, when there are manœuvres and parades of the kind soldiers love, young Broadwood comes to take his place. My friend the doctor is eloquent on these things, and I have no doubt reflects the general sentiment.

“_8th Nov._—Passed the battlefields at . . . and Toski, the former fought with an advanced body of the Dervishes, the latter with the main body under Wad el Nejumi. The English officers gave me an account of the two actions. By their showing, it was little more than a massacre, for the Dervishes were in the last stage of exhaustion from hunger and thirst, their camels dying, and their women and children. The way they had come is still marked by the skeletons left on the sand. They marched some five miles from the river, along the left bank, sending the women and children at night to get water, the English-Egyptian army meanwhile cruising comfortably parallel to them in boats. They had forced the Berber inhabitants of the left bank to cross over the river and take all eatable things with them, so that Nejumi’s army found nothing. Then, when the Dervishes were quite worn out, the troops were landed and drove the dervishes into a gully, where these made their final stand, and were all shot down. Mohammed Towfik, who was there, says that of all the 4,000 who left Dongola with Nejumi, only 300 combatants remained to fight at Toski. The action at . . . was a smaller affair than Toski, and, if I understood rightly, one of cavalry on the Egyptian side. The left bank in this part is a desolate region of drift sand with a few bushes, but at Toski there is palm cultivation for a mile or two. The right bank, where there is no sand, is mostly planted.

“At four we came to Abu Simbel and stopped for a quarter of an hour, so that we were able to land and look at the temple. Broadwood showed me a pompous marble tablet let into the rock outside, of which he was ashamed. It recorded the gallant victory of General Grenfell over ‘the rebels.’ The temple is very fine, and has the great merit of being no ruin, but a perfectly habitable place cut out of the rock, and very little injured by time. There was a party outside it clearing away the sand. There is a grave, too, where an English officer is buried who happened to die on board a passing steamer—‘a rotten place,’ Laurie remarked, ‘to bury an Englishman in.’ The Berbers are a poor, narrow- chested, feeble, half-starved people, reminding one much of the natives of Southern India. There can hardly be a greater contrast than between them and the Egyptian fellahin. The Berbers are exempted from recruiting, and should be exempted from taxation. They live almost entirely on dates, and are much subject, it is said, to fever. At night we passed a Government steamer having on board the English acting commandant of Wady Halfa, Lewis, a little talkative man of whom Broadwood and Laurie, who are fine young fellows, made light. We stopped to pay him a visit and then went on in the dark.

“_9th Nov._—Arrived at Wady Halfa, a beautiful cool morning, with a strong north wind blowing over the plain. Wady Halfa has the advantage of being placed where the hills are low and stand back from the river. Otherwise a quite uninteresting place—low military huts fronting the river, with bits of trees and gardens about them, officers’ quarters and the rest.

“I lunched at the Commandant’s quarters with Lewis, who has returned, and then went with Broadwood to Sarras by train. From the railway one sees the cataracts well, a wild and pretty country with plenty of small trees, principally _urdi_, a kind of acacia, on the islands. The palms have been all cut down by the Dervishes in their hunger. They occupied Sarras for two years, and, Broadwood tells me, had no commissariat of any kind, living on anything they could get. They used to make raids on the villages under Government protection, and on one occasion cleared out Towfikieh, the civilian quarter of Wady Halfa, killing some 600, and driving the Greek drink-sellers into the river, where several were drowned. The country between Wady Halfa and Sarras has been in part re- peopled, but beyond Sarras it is still No Man’s Land, the Dervish out- post being now at Akasheh, 100 miles away. We were entertained in the fortified camp by Sellem Bey, an English officer, who recaptured Sarras from the Dervishes, a good fellow and intelligent.

“_10th Nov. (Sunday)._—Walked round the camp with Broadwood and then back to Halfa in time to see the camel corps, 275 strong, marching in from a field day—a really fine sight—the camels mostly white ones.

“Several Berbers came to seek my intervention with Lewis to get permission to return to Dongola, their native country. They told me that there would be _amán_ for them there; that the Khalifa was pleased at the return of refugees, and that they could re-occupy their lands without hindrance; that there was less oppression than there had been, and that they would be better off there than here; that the population of Dongola had been so thinned by the emigration of seven years ago, and afterwards by the famine, that there was land for all comers, dates in plenty, _durra_ at thirty piastres the _ardeb_, and wheat at fifty. I asked them about the taxes, and they told me that the Khalifa took a tithe in kind, but that the Baggaras entrusted with the government did this in a very arbitrary way, as, for instance, if there was an _ardeb_ of dates, they would count it an _ardeb_ and a half; also that nobody dared make a display of wealth, all superfluity being taken to the _beyt el mal_. People, however, were not interfered with if they were content to cultivate a few feddans and live on the produce. If they made money, they must hide it in the ground. As far as I could gather from them, they considered the independence of the country (_wátani_) from the Government an advantage, now that there was no longer excessive oppression. They assured me that, out of 4,000 or 5,000 refugees in Egypt, most would be glad to return. I promised to talk to Lewis about it, and, failing his permission, to bring their general case before Cromer. It seems absurd to keep them starving in Egypt, now they are willing to return.

“I left Halfa with Lewis in the Government steamer for Assouan—with us several of the officers who were going as far as Sarras on a shooting excursion. I noticed a pair of _hubaras_ (frilled bustards) on the right bank, and had seen one yesterday between Halfa and Sarras. We stopped at four, and they all went shooting except me, bringing back a few ducks, gadwells, shovellers, and teals, also a snipe and a cormorant. Sarras is a very pretty place, with a lake in the sandhills well grown over with tamarisks, unlike anything I have seen north of the Fayum—a village and a little cultivation in the tamarisk scrub, just now beautifully green.

“Much military talk in the evening, my host being a loquacious little man with a crudest of ideas political. According to him, we are to have an English fleet in two years’ time which will enable us to do what we like in the world, when we are to annex Egypt and Constantinople too. An empty-headed little fellow, who has been eight years in the Egyptian service and has acquired a certain command of _qui-hi_ Arabic most comic, which he imagines to be the purest dialect—all pronounced as written, in a plain English accent. But his servants and men are used to it and make out his meaning. The relations between the English officers and the natives seem to be much what they are in India—that is to say, there is absolutely no community of ideas or sympathy on either side. Broadwood and one or two of them try to be polite and kind, but they know so little Arabic, and have so little knowledge of Eastern good manners that they are unintentionally rude and inspire no affection, only just such respect as their power to reward and punish gives. They would be deserted, I am sure, by their men if it came to any real difficulty. They seem to feel their position rather a precarious one, and would all leave the Khedive’s service if the British occupation ceased.

“_11th Nov._—Arrived at Korosko at four. Walked to the top of the hill overlooking the road to Abu Hamid, the road Gordon took on his last journey. It is a rough bit of country, a wilderness of black wadies and ravines which extends they say for twenty miles, when the open plain or plateau begins. The young engineers pointed out the road of their new railway.

“Dined at the Egyptian officers’ mess. Here at Korosko the battalion is wholly Egyptian, a really capital set of fellah officers commanded by Fathy Bey, a big fellah Colonel reminding me not a little of Arabi in 1881. They mess together and live on the friendliest terms; and here, entertaining Lewis and me, and the two young engineers, their demeanour was quite different from what I had noticed at Halfa, and they seemed to be most pleasant in their relations with the English officers. At Halfa they chafe at being under them. Here they are on an equal footing. I sat between Fathy Bey and a captain, Emir Eff. Fowzi, the latter a very good fellow with whom I talked much in Arabic about affairs in Arabia, at Constantinople, and in India, and in Tunis. He had just been on the pilgrimage and complained greatly of the Ottoman misgovernment there. We also talked about Arabi, and I was pleased when Fathy Bey, who joined our conversation, expressed himself warmly about Arabi, and in favour of his being allowed to return to Egypt.

“_12th Nov._—Arrived early at Shelláll, and descended the cataract in a _feluka_—no very hazardous affair. Lunched at Assouan with the English mess and met there Beshir Bey and Ahmed Bey Khalifa of the Ababdeh. Then on board the steamer for Cairo.

“_13th Nov._—We stopped two hours at Edfu, which gave us time to see the temple, the most perfect in Egypt. Indeed, it might be ‘restored to public worship’ without the smallest repair. Mere ruins are tiresome, but this is not one. We have half-a-dozen tourists on board, the first of the season—Dr. Ruffer and his wife, a Spanish diplomatist from Constantinople, an old Frenchwoman, and an English geologist. Stopped at Esneh, where there is a temple partly underground, and arrived at Luxor, and for the night, Kus.

“_Nov. 14th._—A quite cold morning with clouds to the west and a feeling of dampness in the air. There has probably been rain at Alexandria, and very likely a south-west gale in the Mediterranean, where Anne and Judith are to embark to-day. Arrived at Girgeh, where our few passengers got out; but I have decided to go on to Cairo by steamer with the Ruffers. A wonderful sunset, followed by thunder and lightning and some rain—this off Ahmim, a very beautiful part of the river. The night too dark to go on, so after running aground, we stopped for the rest of it.

“_15th Nov._—I have had much talk with Dr. Ruffer, who is a superior man of science. He was for two years a pupil of Pasteur at Paris, and speaks of him with enthusiasm. He tells me that Pasteur had a physical dislike for surgical operations and, he believes, never was present at the experimental ones made on live animals. But he did not hesitate to have them performed by others. I asked him how much truth there was in the accusations made against him of having kept dogs for months under torture, and he said that Pasteur had made a mistake in experimenting on dogs for hydrophobia, as they were much more dangerous to handle; that it had now been found that all the symptoms of hydrophobia could be equally well studied in rabbits; that, after inoculating dogs with the disease, it was necessary to keep them and watch whether or not they went mad, and so he had kept some of them for years, but that they were well treated—some twenty-five of them at the time he was there. He said it was a choice between making experiments of this kind and not proceeding with the inquiry. But I gather from him that he is not certain whether the object has been obtained. The difficulty of being certain was that only some fifteen per cent. of cases of bites from a certainly mad dog led to hydrophobia. He talked of Pasteur as the one great man of Science France had produced. He described him as a most simple-minded man, entirely destitute of humour, and incapable of thinking about more than one thing at a time. If you started him on a conversation he could not change the subject till he had exhausted it. This was the secret of his success. His mind was not a French one.

“Dr. Ruffer is at the head of the Pasteur Institute of London. He tells me he is only thirty-six, though he has grey hair and looks fifty. But he was junior to George Curzon when at Oxford, so I suppose he is of the age he says. More thunder and lightning in the evening, away to the north-west. There must have been heavy rain in Jendali and probably on all the hills between the Nile and the Red Sea. It is cold and damp and raw. I am getting weary of the Nile and cannot understand the patience of travellers not invalids who travel on it in _dahabiyahs_. We stopped at Beni Hassan, but I did not go ashore, as I draw the line at tombs. Beni Hassan, however, might, I think, be a good point of departure for our winter’s journey. Farther down the river there are impassable places where rocks come down to the water’s edge.

“_16th Nov._—Arrived at Cairo in the afternoon, and glad to get home. The Lower River seems to me vastly superior to the Upper, and has a familiar and pleasant aspect. I had the rare pleasure of seeing a real _seyl_ come down into the Nile some forty yards across, and strong and deep enough to carry away a camel—a great turbid flood which had broken through the Nile bank and was rushing some two hundred yards out into the river. It must have come from Wady Senhur, a few miles south of Wasta.

“There has been an earthquake at Rome and a change of Ministry at Cairo. Nubar, the old rogue, has retired, and Mustafa Fehmy is put into his place.

“It was dark before I got to Sheykh Obeyd, and I had some difficulty in making myself heard at the gate, but all is well. _El hamdul illah_.”

The disappearance of Nubar here recorded marks the beginning of the new _régime_ in Egypt which was to last for nearly ten years, during which Cromer was to be supreme in every branch of the Egyptian administration, governing through merely dummy native Ministers, with Mustafa Fehmy at their head. Lord Salisbury, now at the head of a strong Unionist Government in England, had made up his mind at all hazards to continue the military Occupation and retain Egypt permanently as a dependency of the British Empire. He also, though we did not know it at the time, had a settled design of avenging the death of Gordon and the disgrace of Wolseley’s defeat by the Mahdi in 1884 as one of the two matters necessary for England’s honour, the other being the defeat at Majuba in South Africa. We know this from his own boast in 1902, shortly before he retired from public life, and we have every reason to be sure that at the back of his determination on both points stood his mistress, Queen Victoria. The present chapter will show the first steps taken in accordance with this policy on the Nile, in its commencement not altogether with Lord Cromer’s approval, his objection to it being a financial one, as certain to overburden the Egyptian Budget, and as such premature, but, as will be seen, his opposition on this head was overruled from Downing Street and financial caution, in large measure overcome by the parsimonious ability of Lord Kitchener, to whom the advance up the Nile was entrusted, and who ran it on the cheap.

Having made this brief explanation I resume my diary.

“_17th Nov._—There have been tremendous _seyls_ all round Sheykh Obeyd. Part of our garden wall is broken down by it and the house at El Kheysheh flooded, though no great damage done. Suliman Howeyti had his tent carried away just outside. At Kafr el Jamus eleven houses are ruined, and at Koubba a great _seyl_ from the hills broke through the old railway embankment and destroyed fifty houses and a French public garden, threatening even the Palace with flood. The like has never been seen before. Old Deifallah is dying of old age, like Job, on a dung-hill outside Dormer’s garden wall.

“Things have gone rapidly in Turkey during the last three weeks. Disturbances everywhere in the provinces, the devil generally let loose.

“_20th Nov._—Anne, Judith, and Cowie arrived at Sheykh Obeyd. I dined with Dormer last night.

“_28th Nov._—I wrote yesterday to Lord Cromer about the permission asked by the Dongola people to return to their homes. I said that the story they gave me was that they had emigrated into Egypt after the Mahdi’s death to escape the tyranny of the Baggara chiefs who represented the Khalifa’s government at Dongola; that they assured me that they would be subject to no vexation now; that living there was cheap and land plentiful; that I had mentioned their case to the Commandant at Wady Halfa, who had told me that the chief reason for the prohibition was a fear that the return of the refugees would hamper and endanger the spies sent by the Intelligence Department, but that this seemed hardly a sufficient reason for retaining in Egypt so many persons who were a burden and a trouble. I suggested that perhaps the time was come when the question might be reconsidered; there seemed to be no immediate prospect of a military advance and the circumstances of the case had changed since the frontier regulations were enacted.

“To-day I went to Cairo and saw Lord Cromer, who told me he had forwarded my letter to Kitchener and would let me know when his answer was received. He then talked of other matters and of the possibility of Mohammed Abdu being named head of the Awkaf. This I, of course, strongly commended. I also saw Gorst.

“_30th Nov._—Started with Anne for the eastern desert. On our return

“_3rd Dec._—Found a letter from George Wyndham with an account of little Percy’s accident, touchingly told.

“_7th Dec._—A visit from Ibrahim ibn Abdallah Thenneyan ibn Saoud el Nejdi who has just escaped from Constantinople. He gave much interesting information. The Sultan is now entirely under the influence of Sheykh Abul Huda; and Jemal ed Din is never received at the palace. Things are going as badly there as possible. He has come to Cairo, hoping through the Khedive’s influence to get back to Nejd. His father’s grandfather, Thenneyan, was for a couple of years Emir of Nejd, while Feysul was in captivity at Dar el Beyda. But when Feysul escaped and returned to Nejd, he and his family were driven to Bagdad. Speaking of the Anazeh he assured me their migration North dated from 200 or 300 years ago. The Ibn Saouds are of Anazeh stock.

“_12th Dec._—I have written another long letter to Cromer about the return of the refugees to Dongola. Kitchener, in reply to my first letter, declared the road to be open to them _via_ Assouan and Berber. That would give them a journey of 1,000 miles to accomplish the 100 miles which separate them at Sarras from their homes. He pretends, too, that the Dervishes are threatening the frontier. Our people are humbugs about this almost more than about anything else. The officers when I was there were all complaining that there was nothing for them to do on the frontier if the Dervishes would make no move.

“We went to-day to look at some desert land 280 feddans outside Kafr el Shorafa, for sale by the Government at 50 piastres the feddan, for first price. I would give £2. Ibrahim ibn Saoud came to-day to luncheon. He had been to the palace. He asked me for a letter to Lord Cromer, explaining that his business was to invite English protection for Nejd. He declared that six months ago Fawzi Pasha, Turkish Waly of El Hasa, received orders from the Ottoman Government to send an expedition to take over the Government of Riad and El Haryk. Fawzi was a Syrian, knew Arabic, and would have been able to effect his purpose through the Arab tribes. Correspondence had passed between the Sultan and Ibn Rashid, who had consented to the aggression. Now, however, Ibrahim would wish the British Government to undertake a protectorate as at Bahreyn and Muscat—at least to forbid the Turkish advance inland. I gave him the letter, but warned him not to trust too much to English magnanimity. If we once got our foot into Nejd, it would be difficult to get us out again. Perhaps the Turks might be worse, but we were dangerous too. For that matter the Ottoman Empire was too near its dissolution to think just now of any forward movement. Neither was it in the least probable that England would undertake a protectorate or do anything. His seeing Cromer cannot do much harm. So I gave him the letter.

“There is news of a great defeat of the Italians by the Abyssinians. I am much pleased at this, as their aggression has been one of the most abominable of our abominable age. Perhaps now the Dervishes may drive them out of Kássala.” This was the least excusable of the many lawless raids made by the Italians in Africa, prompted in part by the vanity of the parvenu kingdom of Italy to show itself as aggressive as its older neighbours, France and England, partly by mining speculation. Unlike most of these raids undertaken by the Christian nations in our time, it had not even the excuse of calling itself a crusade, seeing that the Abyssinians were themselves Christians, of a wild, old-fashioned kind, but still just as much Christians as the inhabitants of Calabria, while, compared with the Abyssinian Emperor who is lineally descended from the Queen of Sheba by King Solomon, the House of Savoy enthroned at the Quirinal is but a stem of yesterday, yet not a shadow of reproof was uttered by our statesmen in Downing Street, and the general remark about the Italian expedition in the London Press was that the ending of the Abyssinian monarchy would not be ‘felt upon the Stock Exchange.’

“_16th Dec._—Went in to Cairo to see the Khedive. He was very cordial as usual, and made me a number of confidences, some very interesting. He told me the full story of his visit to Constantinople this summer. His object, he says, was not a political one, but to get permission from the Sultan to build a house on the island of Thasos where, and at Kavala, he has the direction of the Awkaf. He wanted a place to spend the summer in with his wife and child, instead of going to Europe. He went to Stamboul in his yacht, and found it so pleasant there that he stayed two months. The Sultan was polite to him, and asked him constantly to dinner, and to hear music, but would not talk business. At last he got tired of waiting, and sent word that he wanted permission to go to Thasos, and also to lay certain papers before the Sultan connected with the Halim succession and the claim of the Azhar University to a part of it. But he got a number of evasive answers. At one time he was told ‘yes’—at another that the Sultan had a cold and could not see him—at another that he had bad eyes and could not read the papers—and other foolish excuses. In the meantime he had been dogged by spies, and on one occasion when he had made an arrangement privately to see Sheykh Jemal ed Din he had been followed so closely that he had turned on the spy and beaten him, and had sent a message to the palace that if he was thus annoyed again he would shoot his persecutors.

“At last a day of audience was fixed with the Sultan for him to say ‘good-bye.’ But after being kept waiting for an hour, Osman Pasha came to him and began to talk about the Thasos plan, and to try and dissuade him. At this he lost patience, and asked Osman straight whether he had been sent with the message from the Sultan, and, on his admitting it, he spoke his whole mind. ‘I told him,’ said the Khedive, ‘that I was tired of the Sultan’s way of treating me, that I had been not yet four years on the throne, and I had come three times to Constantinople to see him, which was more than any of my predecessors had done, and yet he had not spoken to me a reasonable word. My great-great-grandfather, I told him, Mohammed Ali, had never gone to Constantinople, though he was near it once, by way of Nezim and Kóniah. My great-grandfather Ibrahim had never been, though he had a stronger army than the Sultan’s. My father was eleven years on the throne, and he never went. I alone went, to do the Sultan pleasure. I even, to please him, gave up last year my visit to England. Her Majesty the Queen, who is Empress of India and 300 millions of subjects, and on whose dominions the sun never sets, had done me the honor of inviting me, and I had accepted the invitation; yet, on account of a miserable bit of paper, a telegram from Constantinople, I broke my engagement and went to the Sultan instead. I am tired of this. You may tell the Sultan that this year I will not go to Thasos, but for the future I shall know how to regulate my conduct towards him. While talking thus—and I never talked so strongly in my life—Nuri Bey joined us, and he and Osman were horror-struck at my words, and shook with fear, and went at once to the Sultan, who sent for me and apologized and loaded me with civilities. But I told him that it was no case for apologies, that I understood now what his diplomacy was, and that I should return to my own country, and forget as far as possible that I stood to him in the relation of a subject. And so it has been. From that day to this I have cut the Sultan’s name out of my prayer; I have never been to the mosque where the prayer for the Sultan is made, and, when I pray in my own mosque at Koubba, my chaplain omits the Sultan’s name. We pray for “the welfare of Islam and all believers, but not for those (he quoted the words in Arabic) who are bringing Islam to its ruin.”’

“I am not sure that I have quoted the Khedive quite verbally, but this is the sense of his words. He spoke with animation, and told the story admirably. He told me also that he had seen Abdallah Nadim[14] at Constantinople, and that he was allowing him to return to Egypt. Of the prospects of Constantinople he said he feared the Sultan’s subjects would never succeed in getting rid of him, though the European Powers might depose him. He asked me about affairs in Arabia, and told me he had seen Ibrahim ibn Thenneyan, but Sheykh Mohammed Abdu had warned him that he was perhaps a spy of Sheykh Abul Huda’s. I told him that I did not think this to be the case, though it might be well to be cautious. Then he talked about the desert, and an expedition he intended to make to El Arish in the Spring, and how he was having the post road repaired to Dar el Beyda. He certainly is a charming young man, and brim full of intelligence.

“I lunched with Gorst and talked to him about the affairs of the Soudan. He told me, as an instance of the humbug that went on at the frontier, of the way in which Wingate had got the credit of Slatin’s escape from Khartoum. This has been represented as entirely Wingate’s cleverness, whereas in point of fact Wingate was away at the time at Souakim, and the plan was Slatin’s own. Maxwell (?), who was in charge of Wady Halfa, received a letter from Slatin, addressed to whoever was in command, asking him to pay the bearer £100, and to promise another £100 in case of success. This Maxwell had done, but nothing more was thought about it till Slatin arrived and embraced Wingate, who had meanwhile returned, calling him his deliverer. Wingate then looked up the papers for the first time, and promptly endorsed them, ‘I approve.’ There has been a raid quite recently, thirty miles north of Wady Halfa, and sixteen persons have been killed in a village.

“Left a card on the French Minister, M. Cogordan, who sent me a message last summer through Mlle. Lagréné that he would like to see me.

“_19th Dec._—Eldon Gorst came, with his sister, to spend the day. We took them to the sand hills and set up a shelter and lunched there. I had a good deal of talk with Gorst. He is a worthy young man, very painstaking and desirous to do rightly, but hardly a man of genius. One does not understand why he should have been chosen, out of the many thousand young men whose services are to be had, to be Prime Minister of Egypt. I imagine that he would command at home perhaps £400 or £500 a year. But this is one of the mysteries of Anglo-Egyptian rule. He has a moderate knowledge of Arabic, having served an apprenticeship under Cromer. The fact is, there is no country so easy to govern as Egypt is, given fair intelligence and perfect honesty in the governor.

“_21st Dec._—M. Cogordan, with his secretary, lunched with us. Cogordan is a man of about forty, of good presence and manners and very amiable. We sat on the roof after luncheon and I took the opportunity of explaining to him something of the history of Arabi’s revolution, as to which the French have the absurdest ideas. The origin of my calling on him and of his visit was a message I received in the summer from Mlle. de Lagréné, saying he wished to make my acquaintance. Of current politics we talked little, except as to the Khedive’s character, which he praised highly.

“_24th Dec._—Kitchener gives a final answer about the refugees, refusing on the ground that he does not wish the district re-peopled, for fear it should serve as a basis for Dervish raids. Rubbish!

“There is a fine quarrel on between England and the United States about Venezuela. Lord Salisbury is getting into nice hot water. He has a war with Ashanti of the most causeless kind. His diplomacy at Constantinople has entirely broken down, as the Turks are massacring the Armenians worse than ever—and now he will have to fight or sing small—doubtless sing small—in America. I should not be surprised to see the Egyptian question raised at any moment as a European one.

“_29th Dec._—Went in to Cairo yesterday to see Ali Pasha Sherif’s horses. They showed us half-a-dozen which were for sale. We shall bid for two, a chestnut colt, two years old, very like Mesaoud, and a grey filly, a Jellabieh, also a two-year-old. We did not see the best mares, but we saw the stallions. They have nothing left now but Aziz, aged nineteen, Ibn Nadir, aged twenty-four, and Ibn Sherara, also an old horse. They are terribly in want of new blood.

“Ali Pasha Sherif has had a decree of interdiction passed on him as incapable of the management of his affairs, and Shakir Pasha is appointed Wakil. He has quarrelled with his seven sons and receives an allowance of £500 a year. Such is the position of the man who a year ago was President of the Legislative Council, by favour of the late Khedive Tewfik and Lord Cromer.

“Afterwards to call on Riaz, whom I found with Tigrane, showing him his estate accounts at Mehallet el Roh. These bring him in £10 an acre, gross—expenses of cultivation £4 and tax £1. Net income £5 an acre. He reviewed the state of agricultural things since he had first been in the Government service in 1850. He said that the wars of Mohammed Ali had ruined the country, much of which had gone out of cultivation, but that under Abbas and Saïd the population had nearly doubled. The taxation was then one third what it is now. Everyone was well off. Then Ismaïl ruined it again. The price of land went up after his deposition and stood in 1880 at its highest. It was going down now with the fall in prices of produce. On the other hand the public expenditure had increased since the English occupation by two millions a year, and ten millions capital had been added to the debt.”