12 Egyptian Situation [1888 



so saved his life. (See "Secret History of English Occupation of 

 Egypt.") He had been the first to come to me now, and finding him 

 out of employment I had put my garden under his charge, a fortunate 

 inspiration, for he was a man of integrity and energy and speedily 

 acquired great influence in the neighbourhood and so restored to work- 

 ing order 'the lands entrusted to him. To these Arabist visitors from 

 Cairo were gradually added other sources of native information, the 

 most important of whom were my old friends Aarif Bey and Mohammed 

 Moelhi, nephew of my other friend Ibrahim Moelhi, both of whom 

 were now much in the confidence of the Ottoman High Commissioner 

 at Cairo, Mukhtar Pasha Gazi. We saw, too, something of Osman 

 Pasha and his sister, Princess Nazli, both of them persons of the high- 

 est intelligence and knowledge of affairs, while from the Greeks we 

 obtained much secondhand information of their view of things through 

 Frank Noel, who had came on to Egypt with us. Nor were we wholly 

 cut off from the English official world. We did not think it necessary 

 to call on Baring, but I found my connection, Colonel Charles Wynd- 

 ham, in command of a regiment of the army of occupation, and Anne 

 her cousin Hugh Locke King. From all these sources, though I 

 hardly stirred from the solitude of my country retreat during the 

 winter, I was able to gather a sufficient knowledge of the situation to 

 be able to piece it together now for the purposes of the present narra- 

 tive. The political situation in Egypt at the time, as I came to under 

 stand it during the four months that I was at Sheykh Obeyd in the 

 winter of '88-'8c), was briefly as follows : 



The failure of the Drummond Wolff Convention at the last moment, 

 after it had been already agreed to by its negotiators, through the re- 

 fusal of the Sultan under French and Russian pressure to ratify their 

 signatures, had left affairs in Egypt diplomatically " in the air." Not 

 only had further negotiations for evacuating the English garrison been 

 brought to a standstill, but every section of native opinion had been 

 checked and disorganized. Instead of a new beginning having been 

 frankly attempted on lines preparatory to Egypt's restoration to self- 

 government, all had been left in precisely the same confusion from 

 which the Convention had sought to rescue it. The Khedive Tewfik 

 was still occupant of the Vice-regal throne, but commanding no respect 

 in the country, and dependent for his maintenance on English support 

 which might at any moment be withdrawn, leaving him to deal as he 

 could with the Soudanese menace threatening his frontier at Wadi 

 Haifa. Weak and discredited he was, without personal authority, 

 and he enjoyed less consideration than Mukhtar the Sultan's Commis- 

 sioner. Baring, in whom all real power was vested at Cairo, was for 

 the moment without settled policy beyond that of waiting events, a kind 

 of marking time with no definite instruction as to the future of Eng- 



