The pulse of Egypt to-day is not shown in the mere rising or falling of a body of water. It is less primitive in its construction, and no one knows which way it is going to jump. In the next chapter I shall try to tell something of the men who have their fingers on Egypt's pulse, and who are agreed in only one thing—that there are too many fingers for Egypt's good.
V
THE ENGLISHMEN IN EGYPT
When the visitor to Cairo first grasps the extent of his own ignorance of Egypt, and appreciates that if he is to understand its monuments and the signs of past times about him he must study the history of the whole world for forty centuries, he is apt to retreat precipitately. Later, as a compromise, he proposes skipping thirty-nine centuries and limiting his researches to the study of the political and social conditions of Egypt during the last ten years. And when he begins jauntily on this he finds that all that has gone before, from Rameses II. to Mehemet Ali, is as simple as the line of Popes in comparison with the anomalies and intricacies of government that have arisen within the last decade. Yet the very intricacies of the subject give to this study a fascination entirely apart from its rare picturesqueness, and no matter what manner of man he may be, he cannot but find some side of the situation which appeals to him. If his mind be constituted like that of a ready reckoner he can revel in unravelling the intricacies of the Caisse and the Laws of Liquidation; if it is judicial, he can perhaps elucidate the powers of the Mixed Tribunal; if romantic, he has the career of Ismail, the most magnificent of patriots and profligate of monarchs; and if it turns towards adventure and the clash of arms, he can read of the heroic fanaticism of Fuzzy Wuzzy, the son of the Mahdi, of the futile mission of Gordon, of Stewart's march across the desert, and of the desperate valor of the fight at Aboo-Klea.
But it is the paradoxical nature of Egypt's present situation which gives it its chief interest, and lends to it the peculiar fascination of a puzzle, or one of Whistler's witticisms. For, while Egypt is not free, as is Morocco, nor under a protectorate, as is Tunis, she is still free and still protected. She is free to coin money, to maintain an army, and to make treaties; and yet she pays six million dollars a year tribute to Turkey as a part of the Ottoman Empire, and her army that she is allowed to maintain is officered by English soldiers, whom she is also allowed to maintain. She may not pay out the money she is allowed to coin without the consent of foreigners; she cannot punish the man who steals this money, be he Greek, English, or American, without the approval of these foreigners; and her official language is that of one foreign power, her ostensible protector is another, and her real protector is still another, whose commands are given under the irritating disguise of "advice."
EGYPTIAN INFANTRY IN THEIR DIFFERENT UNIFORMS