Abbass was succeeded by Mahomed Ali's youngest son, Said. Brave, frank, friendly to all, tolerant and enlightened, the new ruler steered a middle course between that of his father and that of his nephew. Many improvements were introduced by him in the administration of the country. The land was returned to the people, trade and commerce were facilitated, and many of the worst abuses of the past abolished or restrained. Unfortunately for Egypt, the Pacha did not stop here. The introduction of railways and other public works that he undertook created a demand for funds that his lenient collection of the revenue was insufficient to meet, and he was induced to raise the first of the State loans that were so soon to reduce the country to practical bankruptcy. But the commencement of the Suez Canal, the laying of the railway between Alexandria and Cairo, the introduction of steamers on the Nile, the demand for Egyptian grain during the Crimean, and for Egyptian cotton during the American War, combined with the internal peace and the justice and benevolence that Said made the keynotes of his government, all combined to render his reign a period of prosperity and happiness for the people. The fellaheen enjoyed incomes such as they had never dreamed of, and their prosperity reacted upon the townsmen and commercial and other classes, and in Cairo and the country at large contentment was almost universal and complete.
Said died in 1863, and was succeeded by his nephew, the famous Ismail Pacha. Abbass at his death had left a surplus in the treasury. Said had not only exhausted this but built up a debt of several millions. Starting with this debt, Ismail, though possessed of a keener judgment than his predecessor, instead of seeking retrenchment, gave way to his natural disposition, and commenced an era of lavish expenditure that was the direct cause of all the troubles that were so soon to follow. As long as the American War lasted all went well, but when once more the cotton fields of the Southern States were open to the world, Egypt, like India, had to face the disastrous failure of the tide that had borne it such prosperity. From the possession of wealth that they had squandered in extravagant living and profuse gifts to their wives and families, the fellaheen quickly fell back to a condition of poverty. Trade and commerce suffered equally heavily, and the Pacha and Government having to bear their share of the general depression, he sought to relieve his necessities by borrowing from the European markets. Had the money thus obtained been wisely employed, all might have gone well; but it was wasted in lavish and unprofitable expenditure, led to the appointment of the dual control by which France and England undertook to supervise the financial affairs of the country, and finally brought about the deposition of Ismail in favour of his son Tewfick, under whom the rebellion headed by Arabi broke out, bringing the English occupation that has lasted to the present day.
It was during the French occupation that the Egyptian ceased to be that which he had been for long centuries before. In the account I have given of that occupation, I have endeavoured to show what manner of man the Egyptian then was. From that day to the present he has been slowly, but surely, changing; but it was not until the evacuation of Fachoda, the last of the six great landmarks in the history of the modern Egyptian, had taken place that the development of the Egyptian character has taken the definite and clearly marked form it now possesses. That event we have now to consider, and having done so we shall be in a position to understand that which the Egyptian of to-day is and how he has become that which he is.
CHAPTER XVII
FACHODA AND AFTER
"Marchand is at Fachoda."
Day and night, night and day since the great fight at Omdurman the telegraph had been busy sending and receiving messages of all kinds: a wondrous medley of tidings, congratulations, lamentations, inquiries, hopes, fears, rejoicings; almost all the emotions that stir the hearts of men, going to and fro over the wires mingled with dry, official reports, prosaic details of army and commissariat work, and now and then the flowing periods of some war correspondent still at the front. But of all the telegrams that went down to the city of the Khedives in those days, there was none other that had a message to move, not only the people of the town and country, but those of the whole civilised world, such as that which went, not in simple English words, but wrapped in the mystery of an official code, as the confirmation of the rumour for the verification or contradiction of which all the news-reading, news-hearing world was anxiously waiting.
"Marchand is at Fachoda."