Lord Wolseley, with Admiral Markham and their Staffs, have returned to Constantinople, doubtless in order to be in communication with Ministers at home, the Ambassador, the Sultan, and other sources of information. It is only fair to a gallant enemy to say that the startling success which has attended our arms is, apart from the gallantry of our soldiers and the skill of the General who led them, to be attributed to the enormous advantage which is possessed by the Power that commands the sea.
From the moment that our fleet cut off the communications of the Russian Army, the Russian General was in a position, such as in our time can rarely happen, of being completely deprived of all means of knowing what his enemy was doing, while, on the other hand, our own Commander was able to obtain information far more accurate than is common in war of everything that his opponent did. No other Power in Europe could have reached and destroyed with the same ease and certainty that dangerous Russian force, susceptible of indefinite increase, as long as Russia held the sea. Meantime, speculation is rife as to the direction in which our army is next going to strike.
ENTHUSIASM IN CAIRO.
DEPARTURE OF THE ENGLISH TROOPS.
(From our Special Correspondent, Mr. Francis Scudamore.)
Cairo, May 8.
For the past two days the entire populace of this city has lived in a state of frenzied excitement, to which the seething clamour of the days immediately following the memorable 15th September 1882 is only faintly comparable. Then it was, with the arrival before the gate of the citadel of Sir Drury Lowe and his cavalry brigade fresh from Tel-el-Kebir, that England’s peaceful occupation of Cairo began. There were no Europeans in Cairo at the time, and even the better classes of Egyptians had either fled to distant parts of the country or lay hidden in their spacious houses, closely barred against intrusion by friend or foe. Demonstration of popular feeling was confined to the astounded and panic-ridden natives of the lower orders, whose bewildered minds swung for a week between fearful anticipation of the horrors they had been taught to expect at the hands of the English, and trembling delight that the reign of terror under Arabi and Toulba had at length come to an end. They needed time, these stricken, starving people, to discover the state of their feelings; to decide whether they were pleased that foreign aid had come to them, or were only glad to know that Arabi had fled, and would soon be in prison; and in their indecision, for two whole days and nights dense crowds of wandering Arabs, Fellaheen, street merchants, clerks, donkey-boys, and small officials, thronged the European quarters of the town, ceaselessly jostling each other through the streets, and murmuring repeatedly, ‘The English have come. The Effendina is coming.’
That was ten years ago. During those ten years the English soldiers and the Cairenes, both natives and foreigners, have learned so well to know and appreciate each other, that when it leaked out (who shall say how) on Sunday evening that orders had been received for the immediate embarkation of all the British troops in garrison here, the announcement clanged like a tocsin through the startled town.
Once again the Frank quarter was filled with an anxious wondering mob, formed not of Arabs only, but of all the varied nationalities that make up Cairo’s thriving population, who roamed the broad streets round the Esbekeeyeh Gardens, silent, orderly, and sad, or gathered in tight-packed masses in front of Shepheard’s and the New Hotel, and the Sporting Club, and lingered for hours in slowly changing thousands in the great square facing the Abdeen barracks.
It was near midnight, and the moon was high, when the news became generally known. The band of the Alexandria Regiment had for some time ceased playing in the Esbekeeyeh Gardens, and nearly all English soldiers were back in barracks. Some few men, however, who had twelve o’clock leave, were still abroad, and as, on their way home, they shouldered through the throng—wondering, no doubt, what could be the matter—they were instantly seized upon by scores of eager well-wishers, delighted to find an outlet for some portion of the cordial enthusiasm pent up within them. Of one of these spontaneous outbursts of affection towards ‘Thomas Atkins’ I was myself a witness. I was standing with other Englishmen and ladies on Shepheard’s balcony watching the shifting masses of the crowd below, when suddenly there arose, some way up the street—beyond the British Consulate—a wild confused noise of cheering. It was a queer kind of cheer, such as could probably be heard nowhere else in the world—a strange blending of the Zughareet of Arab women—the guttural Fellah Hàgh, the Italian Viva, and the Greek Huzzah, with a leavening of Levantine squeal; but the outcome of the mixture was sufficiently startling to make us turn—for a moment anxiously—in the direction of the sound. Then the crowd before us took up the cry, and quickly pressing back on either side of the way, left room for the passage of the most extraordinary procession it has yet fallen to my lot to behold.