1895] Philip Carrie on Egypt 185 



mora, landed on Bulwer's island, circumnavigated Prinkipo, and then 

 crossed to San Stefano, and home about sunset, the walls of Stam- 

 boul, the Golden Horn, and the Asiatic shore from Scutari upwards 

 being lit up with the evening glow, a glorious apparition. 



" We had much political talk, first about Egypt, which Philip con- 

 siders to be a danger to us, but which he says can never be evacuated 

 — never in the political sense of counting votes at an English election — 

 though we may be driven out of it. He says that the exclusion of 

 France after the war of Tel-el-Kebir, from her position in the Joint 

 Control, was entirely unexpected by him. He was away from the 

 Foreign Office at the time, and nothing surprised him more than to hear 

 it had been decided on. It was contrary to all our declarations and all 

 our policy up to that point. He considers that if the French had de- 

 clared from the outset their willingness to help in all arrangements and 

 share expenses incurred, it would have been impossible to refuse them a 

 renewal of their position. Lord Salisbury had done what he could to 

 fulfill the promise of evacuation, but the Sultan's refusal to ratify the 

 Drummond Wolff Convention had ' fortunately ' prevented its accom- 

 plishment. The French policy had throughout been childish. He was 

 inclined to agree with me that it was a pity the attempt of Constitutional 

 Government in Egypt had not been encouraged, as the lack of some- 

 thing of the sort here was what was ruining Turkey. 



" Bulwer's island is a barren and not very attractive little rock, of a 

 few acres in extent, with some rubbishy buildings, now ruined, which 

 Bulwer had spent much money on. He had built it for Princess 

 Ypsilanti, a Greek lady whom he loved, and one of the rooms is still 

 decorated with a mirror let into the ceiling, in which she could survey 

 her charms. The Sultan had made him a present of it, and he had 

 eventually sold it at a fancy price, £10,000, to the Khedive Ismail. It 

 is occupied by a caretaker who keeps a few lean cows, its only in- 

 habitants. The inner court of the house, overgrown with a yellow rose 

 tree, run wild, and a clematis, would be pretty if the ruined buildings 

 were less mean. 



" At San Stefano we inspected the new Russian church, a memorial, 

 not yet finished, of the extreme advance of the Russian army in 1877. 



" 30^/i Sept. — To-day Philip told me the history of the Armenian 

 trouble, and expressed his opinion distinctly that the Sultan not only 

 knew of the massacres, but had himself given the order for them and 

 approved of them. I think this extremely probable — indeed it is al- 

 most inconceivable that, under so strong a despotism as is the present 

 regime, any provincial governor or commandant should have dared act 

 thus on his own responsibility. The Sultan's orders probably were to 

 stamp out the rebellion. The mistake Philip seems to me to have made, 

 is that he took the French and Russian Ambassadors into his counsels. 



