Delmar.] Zd4: [Oct. 2, 



present excuse for the tremendous exactions he imposes upon the people, 

 is rendered clearly responsible for their condition and welfare, Egypt 

 may for once in almost countless years breathe the air of freedom. But 

 until then it is impossible. 



Napoleon reminded his soldiers that forty centuries of historic time 

 looked down upon them from the pyramids. Let us, of England and 

 America, whose heritage for over 600 years has been the largest freedom, 

 and whose boasted mission it has been to place this priceless boon within 

 the reach of all the men of earth, remember that from the appealing eyes 

 of this unhappy people forty centuries of suffering look up to us. 



After the departure of the French from Egypt, the Turks and Marme- 

 lukes were embroiled in civil war. This ended with the accession of Me- 

 hemet Ali, as Pasha, in 1805. In 1811 this usurper treacherously slew 500 

 of the Marmelukes and since that time Egypt has been in peace. In 1848, 

 at the age of 80, Mehemet Ali became imbecile, and his eldest son Ibrahim 

 reigned in his stead. Ibrahim died in two months and was succeeded by 

 his brother Abbas, a profligate. Mehemet Ali died in 1849 and Abbas in 

 1854. To these succeeded the fourth son of Mehemet Ali, Said Pasha, 

 who reigned until his death in 1863, when his nephew Ismail, the present 

 ruler, ascended the throne. Ismail Pasha, granted the title of Khedive 

 by an imperial firman dated 1867, is the son of Ibrahim Pasha. He was 

 born in 1816 ; educated at the Paris Polytechnic School : speaks French 

 and a little English ; owns or manages everything in Egypt, among the 

 rest, it is said, 27 palaces for his personal use ; lives precisely the same 

 despotic and luxurious life that his predecessors, the Pharaohs, did, thou- 

 sands of years ago ; like them he surrounds himself wit a foreign adven- 

 turers ; like the Pharaohs, too, he builds the most astonishing and useless 

 works of art ; and like them crushes his unhappy people — the great bulk 

 of whom are of the once warlike and progressive, but now despised Arab 

 race — crushes them to earth with a disdainful and merciless scorn that 

 finds its only fit expression in the bastinado and death. 



Natural Resources. 



Egypt has but a single natural resource — the Nile. There is no other 

 river in the country ; nor has this one a branch or affluent between its 

 mouth and the Nubian desert. Beside the almost shelterless date-palms, 

 there are no trees ; the few wooded parks planted by order of Mehemet 

 Ali, the ornamental trees of the cities, of which it is said Cairo and its 

 suburbs contain 40,000, and the mulberry trees raised for silk worms — 

 scarcely deserving to be mentioned in this connection. There is little or 

 no rain ; the agricultui-e of the country depending almost entirely upon 

 the irrigating canals connected with the Nile. 



Number of rainy days at Cairo from A. D. 1798 to 1800, about 15 a 

 year ; from 1835 to 1839 about 12 ; in 1871, 9. Quantity of rain in 1835, 



