Part 8

And yet they pleased him, and he ordered more and more, so that wherever his eye might rest it would fall upon a palace which would serve as a fitting covering for his royal person, and as a testimony to his magnificence. He wanted many, and he wanted them at once. He had them built at night by the light of candles. The Palace of Gizeh, which is now a museum, was reared in this way while Cairo slept, and at a cost of twenty-four million dollars. The curtains ordered for its windows cost one thousand dollars each, and when it was found that they did not fit the windows, the entire front of the building was torn down, and a new front with windows to match the curtains was put in its place. He built an opera-house as fine as that of Covent Garden in six months, and a grotto as dark and cool as the Mammoth Cave, with stalactites of painted rope and rocks of papier-mache and mud, with its sides lined with aquariums, in which swam strange fish. The wind and the dust play through this grotto to-day; for he no sooner reared a palace in air than he turned from it to some new toy. These are the things you can see. You can hear stories--some of them true, some of them possible--of things that are past, such as his swimming-tanks where a hundred of the slaves of the harem bathed together for his edification; the pie out of which, when it was opened, there stepped a ballet-dancer; and the story of the disappearance of the Pasha who grew too rich. This is, unfortunately, a true story, and not one out of the _Arabian Nights_. This Pasha was invited by Ismail to see a new dahabeeyah, and never returned. But one of the attendants on the Khedive came back some weeks later with his finger bitten off at the joint. He and Ismail alone know where the Pasha who was too rich has gone.

These extravagances and these eccentricities were all in keeping with our idea of what an Oriental despot should be, but it would be most unfair and ungenerous to give only this side of Ismail's character. He was a man of much mind and of large ideas, as well as a man with the tastes of a voluptuary, and the means, for a time, of a Count of Monte Cristo. It was he who built the harbor of Alexandria; and the railways and canals that others have completed were started under his regime. All of these things--railroads, palaces, canals, and grottos made of mud--cost money; and there were other expenses. Knights of industry and rascals of all degrees extorted vast fortunes from him in indemnities for supposed failures on his part to keep up with his agreements, and to stick to the letter of concessions. Some of these, like the payment of fifteen million dollars to the Suez Canal Company, were just enough; but there was also an enormous sum given in backsheesh to Turkey to gain the consent of the Porte to a proposed change in the line of succession and the establishment of the rule of primogeniture. Up to that time the eldest male member of the ruling family had always succeeded to power, but Ismail obtained a firman from the Sultan allowing his son to follow him. The gratification of this natural vanity or love of family was not obtained for the asking, and cost his people dear. They were already groaning under a multitude of taxes; the army was unpaid; the bureaucracy was rotten throughout; bribery and extortion, unfair taxation, and open seizure of the property of others had reduced the country almost to bankruptcy. Ismail in sixteen years had brought about a state of things that threatened utter ruin, to not only the native, but to the strangers within and without the gates. The strangers made the move for reform. I have told this much of Ismail not because it is new or unfamiliar, but because it shows how, through his misrule, the foreign element was able to obtain a footing upon the shore of Egypt, which footing has now grown to a trampling under foot of what is native and properly Egyptian. This entering wedge was called the Dual Control, and France and England were appointed receivers for Egypt, just as we appoint receivers for a badly managed railroad, and Ismail was deposed, his son Tewfik taking his place.

But although this was the first important and most official recognition of the right of the stranger to dictate to Egypt, he had already obtained peculiar rights in Egypt through capitulations, or those privileges granted in the past to foreign residents in Turkey and its dependent state of Egypt. In the sixteenth century the foreigners who traded in these Oriental countries stood in actual need of protection from the natives. Because they were foreigners they were regarded with such lack of consideration that, in order to balance the disadvantages of having their shops destroyed and their throats cut, the Sultan gave them certain privileges--such as immunity from taxation, immunity from arrest, the inviolability of domicile, and the exemption from the jurisdiction of the local courts.

These privileges were unimportant when the foreign element in Constantinople was so little and so weak that the position of the Chinamen in San Francisco in '49 was that of a powerful aristocracy in comparison; but the snake warmed at the hearth-stone grew, and the Sultan's empire dwindled, and the privileges which were given to bribe the foreigner to come and to remain became a bane to Turkey and a curse to the weaker state of Egypt. The inviolability of domicile, for instance, is at this very day made use of by foreigners who are carrying on some wickedness or who have committed a crime for which they cannot be arrested by an Egyptian policeman unless he is accompanied by an official representative of the country to which the foreigner belongs. Let us suppose, for example, that the police of New York wished to raid a gambling-house. This, I know, is asking a good deal of the reader's intelligence, but we will suppose it to be a gambling-house which has not paid its assessment to the police regularly, and which should be given a lesson. All that the proprietor of the house would have to do, did capitulations extend in New York, would be to lease the house to an Italian, or to take out papers of naturalization from the British government. You can imagine the chagrin of an officer of the law who, when he goes to make an arrest, is confronted with a German who says he is an Englishman, and whose domicile is accordingly sacred. This, as you can imagine, would impede the wheels of justice.

When I was in Cairo a Greek, who had taken out papers as an American citizen, flaunted this fact in the faces of the native police whenever they came to arrest him for keeping a gambling-house. They applied to our consul-general, Mr. E. C. Little, of Abilene, Kansas, who so far differed from the etiquette observed by some other consuls-general in Cairo as not to delay and not to warn the criminal. He sent his soldiers to be present at the arrest. The offender met this by bringing forth another American citizen of Greek parentage, to whom he claimed to have leased the house, and whose family were inside. Mr. Little, feeling that the American flag did not look well as a cloak for gambling-houses, and being a young man who has assisted at county-seat fights and who can pitch three curves, said that if the roulette tables were not out of the house in twenty-four hours he would himself break them into kindling-wood with an axe. This incident shows how the capitulations of the sixteenth century are acting as stumbling-blocks to the Egyptian of to-day, even when the consuls-general are willing to assist the native government, which is seldom.

This is not all. The immunity from full taxation, now that the foreigners are among the richest inhabitants of Cairo, is most manifestly unjust; and though the mixed courts of an international judiciary have done away with trial of the foreign resident, or lack of trial, in civil cases, by the several consuls-general, the abuses of the capitulations are still a grievous and most unjust imposition by the great powers, ourselves included, upon a weaker one. To return to the Dual Control and to the story of the growth of the foreigners' hold on Egypt. The Dual Control was unpopular; so was the foreigner and his capitulations, who, waxing fat on the weaknesses of the country after Ismail's debauchery of its strength, grew insolent--so insolent that the cry raised by a general in the Khedive's army of "Egypt for the Egyptians" was taken up, and found expression in the Arabist movement or rebellion. Its leader was Arabi Pasha. He wanted what the Know-Nothing party of America wanted--his country for his countrymen. What else he wanted for himself does not matter here. He was, in the eyes of the Khedive, a rebel. In the eyes of some of the people he was the would-be preserver of his country against the plague of the foreign invasion.

The trouble began at Alexandria, where the excited people attacked the foreign residents, killing some, and destroying valuable property. Men-of-war of the two powers represented in the Dual Control had already arrived to put down the rebellion. When the riot on shore was at its height, the English war-vessels bombarded the city. The bombarding of Alexandria was war, but it was not magnificent. There are certain things made to be bombarded--forts and ships of war--but cities are not built for that purpose or with that ultimate end in view. The English people, as a people, however, regret the bombardment of Alexandria as much as any one. The French war-vessels, for their part, refused to join the bombardment, and so were requested by the English admiral to sail away and give the other half of the Dual Control a clear field. Different people give you different reasons for the departure of the French fleet at this crisis. Some say that M. Clemenceau, who hated M. Freycinet and his policy, possibly raised the cry of the German wolf on the frontier, and pointed out the danger at home if the army and navy were engaged otherwise than in protecting the border. Others say that, like the good one of the two robbers in the _Babes in the Wood_, one of the Dual Control drew the line at murder or at the bombardment of a country she was supposed to protect. Plundering the Egyptians was possible, but not bombarding their city. They stopped at that. The English followed up the bombardment of Alexandria by the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, which ended the rebellion. The Citadel of Cairo surrendered at their approach, and the Khedive's rule was again undisturbed. The English remained, however, to "restore order," and to see to the "organization of proper means for the maintenance of the Khedive's authority." They have been doing that now for ten years, and it is interesting to note that they have made so little progress that the last "disorder" in Cairo was due to the action of the British consul-general himself in allowing the young Khedive just twenty-four hours in which to dismiss one of his cabinet. This can hardly be described as "maintaining the authority of the Khedive," which the English had promised to do.

After the battle of Tel-el-Kebir Great Britain stood undoubtedly in the position of the savior of the Khedive if not of Egypt. Her soldiers had crushed the rebellion, and as she had sent her Only General and one of the royal family and many thousands of good men to do it, and as she had lost not only men, but money, she thought she deserved something in return. The something she has taken in return has been taken gradually, and is the control of Egypt at the present day. It is possible that had the English not lost many more men and much more money in the campaign in the Soudan, which followed immediately after the suppression of Arabi, they might not have gone so far as they have gone in settling themselves in Egypt. But there was a not unnatural feeling that the Soudan campaign, which had cost so much, and which was a failure in all but in showing the bravery of the British troops, ought to be paid for, or made up to the English in some way. I should like to go into the story of this most picturesque and heroic of campaigns, but it would require a book by itself. Its history is briefly this: The religious and military chieftain known as "the Mahdi," shortly after the defeat of Arabi, threatened all Egypt from the Soudan, which rose under his leadership. General Hicks, an Englishman, with ten thousand men, in the service of the Khedive, was sent against him. He was killed, and most of the troops with him. The English, who were at that time the only power in Egypt with authority of any sort back of it, and who were virtually in control, felt that they should take the responsibilities of their position as well as its benefits, and avenge the massacre, drive back the Mahdi's forces, and, if possible, crush him and them for all time. The campaign was later further complicated by the presence at Khartoom of Major-General C. G. Gordon, who had gone there to lead back in safety the Egyptian troops still remaining in the Soudan. He was, after his arrival at Khartoom, virtually a prisoner at that place, which is a mud city on the banks of the Nile far above the fifth cataract. The attempts to rescue him and to suppress the Mahdi were equally unsuccessful.

This is, in a few words, the story of a campaign which has been unequalled within the last twenty years in picturesqueness, heroism, and dramatic surprises. It had been said that the old days of personal bravery, of hand-to-hand slaughter, and of the attack and defence of man against man, were at an end; that owing to the new weapons of war, by which an enemy can be attacked when several miles distant from the attacking party, when the pressing of an electric button destroys an army corps, and when turning a handle will send three hundred bullets a minute into a mass of infantry, the necessity for personal courage was over. But seldom in history has there been as fierce personal encounters as in the Soudan, or as unusual methods of warfare. On the one hand were the naked supporters of the Mahdi, armed with their spears and knives, and protected only by bull-hide shields, but actuated by a religious fanaticism that drove them exulting at their enemies, and with no fear of death, but with the belief that through it they would gain joyous and proud immortality. Against them were the British troops, outnumbered ten to one, with hundreds of miles of sandy desert before, behind, and on every side of them, cut off from communication with the outside world, in a country barren and unfamiliar, and attacked by tens of thousands, who came when they pleased and where they pleased, rising as swiftly as a sand-storm rises, and disappearing again as suddenly into the desert.

When I was in Cairo I was told of one of the Mahdi's men who continually rushed at a British square during an engagement holding his shield clear of his body as he advanced to throw a spear, and then retreated again. This looked like the worst form of foolhardiness to the English, until they saw that he was protecting with his shield his little boy, who was hiding behind it, and that when the chance offered, this child, who could not have been more than seven, and who was as naked of protection as his father, would throw a spear of his own. The father was wounded four times, but each time the bullet struck him he only shook himself, as a dog shakes off water, and once more rushed forward. When he fell for the last time the boy tumbled across him, unconscious from a wound in his thigh. The surgeons dressed this wound and bandaged it; but when the child came to and saw what they had done, he leaped up and tore the clothes from around him, and then, as the blood from the reopened wound ran out, fell over backwards dead. The English officer who told this story asked if fighting such men could be considered agreeable work from any point of view.

But the Soudan is only of interest here as showing how, having lost so much through it, the British did not feel more inclined than before to evacuate Egypt, although there were many who thought, as a few still think, that Egypt has cost them too much already, and more than they can ever get back. The loss of Gordon was perhaps the disaster of all the most keenly felt. How keenly is shown partly by the statue the English have placed to him in Trafalgar Square, surrounded by their kings and greatest generals. It shows him with one foot placed on the battlement of Khartoom, with his arms folded, and with the head thrown slightly forward, looking out, as he had done for so many weary months, for the relief that came too late. This monument is a reproach to those whose uncertainty of mind and purpose cost Gordon his life. It was doing a brave thing to put it up in a public place, being, as it is, a standing reminder of the neglect and half-heartedness that lost a valuable life, and one that had been risked again and again for his country. It is not only a monument to General Gordon, but to the English people, who have had the courage to admit in bronze and stone that they were wrong.

For the last ten years the English have been as tardy in getting out of Egypt as they were in going after Gordon into the Soudan. They have repeatedly declared their intention of evacuating the country, not only in answer to questions in the House, but in answer to the inquiries of foreign powers. But they are still there. They have not been idle while there, and they have accomplished much good, and have brought benefits innumerable to Egypt. They have improved her systems of irrigation, upon which the prosperity of the land depends, have strengthened her army, have done away with the corvee, or tax paid on labor, and with the kurbash, or whip used in punishment, and, what is much the most wonderful, they have brought her out of ruin into such a condition of prosperity that she not only pays the interest on her enormous debt, but has a little left over for internal improvements. There has also been a marked change for the better in the condition of the courts of justice, and there has been an extension of a railroad up the Nile as far as Sirgeh.

But the English to-day not only want credit for having done all this, but they want credit for having done it unselfishly and without hope or thought of reward, and solely for the good of mankind and of Egypt in particular. They remind me of those of the G. A. R. who not only want pensions and medals, but to be considered unselfish saviors of their country in her hour of need. There is no reason why a man should not be held in honor for risking his life for his country's sake, and honors, if he wants them, should be heaped upon him, but not money too. He either served his country because he was loyal and brave, or because he wanted money in return for taking certain risks. Let him have either the honors or the money, but he should not be so greedy as to want both. England has made a very good thing out of Egypt, and she has not yet got all she will get, but she wants the world to forget that and look upon her as an unselfish and enlightened nation that is helping a less prosperous and less powerful people to get upon their feet again. Of course it is none of our business (at least it is our policy to say so) when England stalks forth like a roaring lion seeking what she may devour all over the world. Americans travel chiefly upon the Continent, and unless they go into out-of-the-way corners of the world they have no idea how little there is left of it that has not been seized by the people of Great Britain. For my own part I find one grows a little tired of getting down and sailing forth and landing again always under the shadow of the British flag. If the United States should begin with Hawaii and continue to annex other people's property, we should find that almost all of the best corner lots and post-office sites of the world have been already pre-empted. Senator Wolcott once said to Senator Quay: "I understand, Quay, you want the chairmanship of the Library Committee. You seem to want the earth; if you don't look out you will interfere with my plans."

If the United States had taken away the little princess's island from her and continued to plunder weaker nations, she would have found that England wants the earth too, and that she is in a fair way of getting it if some one does not stop her very soon. There are a number of good people in England who believe that for the last ten years their countrymen have spent their time and money in redeeming Egypt as a form of missionary work, and there are others quite as naive who put the whole thing in a word by saying, "What would we do with our younger sons if it was not for Egypt?"

Three-fourths of the officers in the army of the Khedive are English boys, who rank as second lieutenants at home and as majors in Egypt. They are paid just twice what they are paid in the English army, and it is the Khedive who pays them and not the English. In this way England obtains three things: she is saved the cost of supporting that number of officers; she gets the benefit of their experience in Egypt, which is an excellent training-school, at the expense of the Egyptians; and she at the same time controls the Egyptian army by these same officers, and guards her own interests at Egypt's cost. And as if this were not enough, she plants an Army of Occupation upon the country, and with it menaces the native authority. The irrigation of Egypt has of late been carried on by Englishmen entirely and paid for by Egypt; her railroads are built by the English; her big contracts are given out to English firms and to English manufacturers; and the railroad which will be built to Kosseir on the Red Sea may have been designed in Egypt's interest to carry wheat, or it may have been planned to carry troops to the Red Sea in the event of the seizure of the Suez Canal or of any other impediment to the shortest route to India. We may not believe that the Egyptians are capable of governing themselves, we may believe that it is written that others than themselves shall always rule them and their country, but we must prefer that whoever do this should declare themselves openly, and act as conquerors who come and remain as conquerors, and not as "advisers" and restorers of order. Napoleon came to Cairo with flags flying and drums beating openly as an enemy; he did not come in the disguise of a missionary or an irrigation expert.

And there is always the question whether if left alone the Egyptians of the present day could not govern themselves. Those of the Egyptians I met who were in authority are not men who are likely to return to the debauchery and misrule of Ismail. They would be big men in any country; they are cultivated, educated gentlemen, who have served in different courts or on many important diplomatic missions, and whose tastes and ambitions are as creditable and as broad as are those of their English contemporaries.