202 Military Talk [1895 



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 Haifa 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 Eng- 

 lish 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 difficul'ty. They seem to feel their position rather 

 a precarious one, and would all leave the Khedive's service if the British 

 occupation ceased. 



"nth 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 bat- 

 talion is wholly Egyptian, a really capital set of fellah officers com- 

 manded 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 engi- 

 neers, their demeanour was quite different from what I had noticed at 

 Haifa, and they seemed to be most pleasant in their relations with 'the 

 English officers. At Haifa 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 wi'th whom I talked 



