THE ORIGIN OF THE SUEZ CANAL. 7 



I asked him what was the matter, and he said that his 

 generals had just put the same question to him. ' I 

 told them,' he went on to say, ' that the music had 

 affected my nerves ; but I will confide to you that I 

 am weeping over this unfortunate country, which my 

 family has made so wretched ; and when I think that 

 there is no remedy for all this it afflicts me sorely.' 

 I endeavoured to console him by pointing out to him 

 that, on the contrary, there were remedies which he, 

 with his spirit of justice, would be able to discover 

 and apply. 



" The next day we started for Shendy, the very 

 place where his brother Ismail had been burnt to 

 death. The Viceroy had appointed this as the place 

 where all who had presented petitions to him in the 

 course of his journey were to meet ; and upwards of 

 one hundred and fifty thousand natives were assembled 

 there. In the presence of this vast multitude the 

 prince was informed that, despite his formal injunc- 

 tions, an aged Turkish chief had detained a female 

 slave chained up in a cave. He gave orders for master 

 and slave to be brought before him, had the chains 

 transferred from the one to the other, and thus excited 

 extraordinary enthusiasm. Carried away by the 

 popular applause, he told the people to remove the 

 cannon from the citadel and cast them into the 

 Nile ; but on my whispering to him that perhaps 

 this was trusting them too far, he said to me, * The 

 guns are too old; they were placed there in my 



