80 Khedive Abbas Quarrels with Abdu [ J 903 



with its turmoil of tramways, railroads, and other modernities, and yet 

 further still the Nile and the Nile Valley, seven miles across and 

 green as a spinach bowl, with the yellow desert, far away in Africa 

 with its Pyramids. The immediate foreground is dazzlingly white, a 

 huge stone quarry, where men in gangs are at work like ants, 

 quarrying the white limestone of which modern Cairo is being built. 

 The sudden contrast brought tears into my eyes as sudden wonders 

 are apt to do. 



"nth Dec. — More interesting talk with Abdu. The Khedive is 

 still very angry with him about the £20,000 of Wakf property, and 

 is revenging himself upon the Mufti by trying to get up a new quarrel 

 with him on religious grounds connected with the proposed savings' 

 bank, which gives offence to old-fashioned Moslems, as allowing de- 

 positors to receive interest on their money, a thing forbidden by their 

 religious law. Abdu, as Mufti, has issued a fetzva on the subject, 

 recommending a change in the wording of the decree which institutes 

 the Bank, but the Khedive has taken up a high religious line against 

 him, condemning the thing altogether, this, although the Khedive puts 

 his own money unscrupulously out at interest everywhere, and makes 

 no secret of it. Cromer, however, supports Abdu, so that he is in no 

 actual danger from the intrigue. In all this, as in much else, the 

 Khedive acts absurdly, allowing real evils to go on without protest, 

 and intervening only in trifles. 



" 20th Dec. — The Ramadan fast is over to-day, a thing for which 

 I am always thankful. How much more comfortable the world 

 would be without its feasts and fasts. As I lie here on the roof 

 watching the birds, who care for none of these things, I realize what 

 a long way humanity has wandered out of the region of common 

 sense. Three quarters of our man's miseries come from pretending 

 to be what we are not, a separate creation superior to that of the 

 beasts and birds, while in reality these are wiser than we are, and 

 infinitely happier. 



"° 20th Dec. — Herbert Spencer is dead, poor old man, at 'the 

 age of eighty-three, and another death announced is that of Henry 

 Stanley (Lord Stanley of Alderley) at seventy-six. About Stanley, 

 Blanche Hozier sends me an excellent account of his character, 

 written by her mother, who was his sister. ' I do not think,' she 

 writes, ' that he has been a sad man, for he has had joys of his 

 own, being at one with his God, from whom he takes all willingly 

 without repining, and in this submission there is great content, and 

 he loved nature and real sport, and Oriental learning, and order 

 and obedience, and he had a fair estate to rule over, and he enjoyed 

 improving it in his own way. No, I think he had been a happy 

 man. He is dying in his small, frugal room he had from a boy, 



