has been the fullest and the most brilliant season that Egypt has ever had. Some people say there have been 50,000 visitors, though that seems impossible; yet the hotels of Cairo will hold, I suppose, nearly 2000 visitors, and they change continually. Of the gaieties of the season I can tell you little; I was not there to enjoy myself. But every night there was a dance somewhere or other, and there were races on the palm - fringed course at Gezireh; I did so far forget myself as to attend these, and the wind cut for all the world like our native Newmarket's.

One thing is certain, and that is that Cook's facilities have resulted in a prodigious influx of every nation into Egypt for the winter time. They come from every country you would know, and from every other one besides: I have met Swedes, Portuguese, Siamese, and Brazilians in the course of the same day. British and American predominate, but perhaps what strikes you most is the swarm of Germans. Ten years ago you would have said

THE GERMAN ABROAD.

271

they had neither the money nor the enterprise to take them farther than Naples. To-day you meet them everywhere. We had a singsong on one of the tourist steamers coming up, and a German, being asked to play by some practical joker, gave us forty-five minutes of the "Nibelung's Ring." There was nothing, given your German, extraordinary in that: the striking point was that there were enough Germans round to give him a hand. The German in Egypt gets himself up exactly in the manner of the comic Englishman of the Continental circus. Men in huge helmets, with huge puggary, huge blue goggles, knickerbockers, and chess-board stockings; women in the same helmets and goggles, vast blue veils, sunshade, short skirts, and vast hands and feet; both sexes crested with Meyer or Baedeker rampant-they make a picture at which native Egypt gapes in undisguised delight.

Lastly, Mr Cook is a blessing to Egyptperhaps the only one of Egypt's recent bless

ings which nobody disputes. It is not only the vast amount of money he brings into the country, nor the vast number of people he directly employs. Besides that, you will find natives all up the Nile who practically live on him. Those donkeys are subsidised by Cook ; that little plot of lettuce is being grown for Cook, and so are the fowls; those boats tied up on the bank were built by the sheikh of the Cataracts for the tourist service with money advanced by Cook.

Therefore, when "the Governor" is pleased to travel up and down his Nile, you may see the natives coming up to him in long lines, salaaming and kissing his hand. When he appears they assemble and chant a song with refrain, "Goood-mees-ta-Cook." Once he took Lord Cromer up the Nile, and they went to visit a desert sheikh somewhere at the back of Luxor. The old man had no idea that the British had been possessing Egypt all these years barely knew that the late Khedive was dead.

"Haven't you ever heard of me?" asked

THE SHEIKH'S TESTIMONY.

Lord Cromer.

273

No; the sheikh had never

heard of Lord Cromer.

"Have you heard of Mr Cook?”

"Oh, yes; Cook Pasha-everybody knows

Cook Pasha."

S

274

XXV.

LOOKING BACK AND FORWARD.

THE ESSENTIAL EGYPT

THE APPROACH OF SUMMERBACKSHEESH-ENGLISH WORKERS IN EGYPT-THE PICK OF THE WORLD THE DANGER OF AN UNCONQUERED SUDAN-INTERNATIONAL BURDENS-NO CHANCE OF OUR LEAVING EGYPT.

February 21.-Now we have come to the very end of Egypt, and stepped over the threshold of the Sudan, it is natural to look back for a moment down the Nile. Day by day it is dropping down its banks, and each mail steamer comes up a little more delayed, by running ashore, than the last. Each morning a little more black mud is laid bare at the water's edge. In mid-stream three days ago there appeared a shadow; yesterday it had darkened to a black bank; to-day there are natives wading over it,