the water is gradually diminishing and that the Damietta branch bids fair to be silted up.

STATISTICAL NOTE.

The old idea that Alexandria, the second city in the NileValley, with her damp heat, and her fever-breathing neighbour, Mareotis, has an essentially unwholesome climate, and an annual death-rate of 40 per 1000, was not founded on error. The copious statistical tables, published by the Minister of the Interior,* would prove, however, that whilst upon a registered total of 212,034 souls at Alexandria, one death occurs annually in 24°40, about equal to that of St. Petersburg and Madrid; Cairo, with 449,883, has 1 in 21.40. This is a very high figure, far exceeding that of Trieste. (varying from 30 to 42 per 1000), which ranks second in Europe, in fact after Rotterdam. The whole country, with 5,250,000 souls, has 1 in 37.88; somewhat less than that of the Netherlands. The proportion of male deaths, formerly so abnormal, tends, however, to diminish; while that of male births maintains itself, showing an improved condition of the labouring population, while the reduced number of infants born dead compares satisfactorily with that of other countries. It is especially difficult to account for the mortality of Cairo, favoured, as she is, with an exceptional climate, with a pure sky, with constant ventilation, and an atmosphere whose dryness and salubrity attract visitors from every part of Europe. It must be referred to local considerations; the rough treatment of infants; the diseases of the Súdán negroes, who suffer from the comparatively sharp winter; and the deaths of Egyptians who, like the Romans, flock to their capital to breathe their last.

Meanwhile it is believed that, between 1872 and 1877, the sanitary improvements, such as the abolition of rookeries, and the opening of wide boulevards, both at Alexandria and in Cairo, have changed matters for the better. The death-rate of Europeans is

Statistique de l'Egypte; Année 1873-1290 de l'Hegira Le Caire Mourès, 1873: the figures are the work of H. E. Ede. Régny-Bey, Chèf du Bureau Central de Statistique. The Neue Freie Presse, which gives a hebdomidal table of mortality, and sums up at the end of every half year, assigns for June 30, 1877, to London, 19°2; Vienna, 27'4; Trieste, 30'6; and to Alexandria, 40'9. It neglects Cairo, probably because there are no statistics.

certainly low at the great Port; and it is generally held that about one-third of the enormous total shown in the tables is represented by babes and children of tender years. On the other hand, this Spartan treatment of the young accounts for the vigorous manhood of those who attain puberty; and it is a serious question how far the scientific preservation of weaklings will, in course of time, injure the peoples of civilised lands.

An idea demanding correction is the popular fancy that the frequency and quantity of rain in Egypt have increased of late years by the planting of trees. Clot-Bey and M. Jomard declared that, despite the vigorous measures of Mohammed Ali Pasha, who alone laid down three millions of mulberries, the fall measured what it did forty years before, and had probably remained the same for many centuries. The Meteorological Tables, for the three years of French occupation, drawn up by M. Coutelle, compared with the recent observations of Mr. Destoviches, show no sensible variation. Between A.D. 1798 and 1800, the rainy days averaged fifteen to sixteen; while, during the five years between 1835 and 1839, it diminished to twelve-thirteen. The Abbasíyyeh Observatory registered (1871) nine rainy days at Cairo, with a total of 9:08 hours; and thus it gave a rainfall inferior to that witnessed by the beginning of the century.

ment.

Finally, a few figures upon the material progress of the NileValley. The passing stranger, who casts an incurious look upon the land, and who is apt to compare it with his own type and model of perfection, unduly underrates the amount of developNot so we Mediæval Egyptians, who date, we will say, from 1850, and who can place actual Egypt by the side of her former self. Our conviction is that the amount of general improvement is highly satisfactory. For instance: the total of cultivation in 1870 amounted to 3,218,715 feddáns; in 1872 it had risen to 4,624,221; and in 1877 we may readily rate it at 5,000,000 (=21,000 square kilomètres) out of a total of 7,000,000 (= 29,400 sq. kil.) The latter figure, the amount of land cultivated in the palmiest days of Egypt, is about equal to that of Belgium, the smallest State in Europe (=29,455). Applying to the 29,400 square kilomètres of Egypt the usual figure which the population claims, 5,250,000 souls,* we have thus 178 per square kilomètre ;

* Mr. J. C. M'Coan, in his valuable work, "Egypt As It Is" (London: Cassell, 1877), assumes the population at 5,500,000.

to 173 in Belgium; 101 in England; 58 in Austria, and 33 in Spain.

As the country is entirely self-supporting, and as, instead of favouring emigration, it attracts immigrants, the population of the Nile-Valley doubles itself in seventy-four years, and may presently do so in sixty. During the decennial period between 1862-1871, the births were 1,811,627 to 1,342,655 deaths, thus showing an annual average increase of 46,902, despite an abnormal attack of typhus, and the choleraic epidemic of 1865, which cost 61,189 victims. This is a sufficient answer to the many who look upon the Egyptians as a decrepit people. In 1800 they numbered only two millions; in 1830 about two millions and a half; and before the middle of the next century, the census may show the total of the Pharaohnic days-seven to eight millions.*

The principal productions, cotton, sugar, and cereals, will ever find a market. The mining industry, hitherto confined to the natron of the Buhayral province, to the nitre and nitrate of potash in the Fayyúm and Upper Egypt, and to the Salinas of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, will presently, I am convinced, assume gigantic proportions, or these pages will have been written in vain. In fact, Egypt, despite the "croakings" of philanthropists and the head-shakings of "humanitarians," who in justice should place her side by side with our wretched pauper province, Sind or the "Unhappy Valley," must be considered, as the regular increase of her population fully proves, one of the most successful of modern kingdoms. She has extended her frontiers beyond the limits known to the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, and, as the "Greater Egypt," she is destined to spread commerce and civilisation throughout the heart of Africa. It is hard, indeed, to see any limit to her career when, numbering ten millions, she shall extend to the Equator, embracing the Northern Congo Valley and waters of the (Victoria) Nyanza Lake, and controlling the commerce of that African Amazons River and Caspian Sea.

* This figure will of course not cover the population of the new conquests : the southern basin of the Nile, and the wide western regions about Dár-For (the land of the For tribe), both unknown to the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies. Diodorus Siculus (1. 31) tells us that, in the days of the latter, Egypt numbered seven millions of souls, which Josephus increases to seven and a half millions. Champollion calculated that the Nile-Valley of his time could support six to seven millions. Lane proposes eight, and I confidently look

forward to ten,

CHAPTER II.

THE CHANGES AT CAIRO.

My short stay at the capital began in the saddest way. Visiting it with the intention of reading a Paper before the Société Khédiviale de Géographie, I ordered a carriage and bade the dragoman drive to the quarters of the Marquis Alphonse-Victor de Compiègne, whose last letter lay unanswered in my pocket. "Mais, vous ne savez pas qu'il est mort?" was the reply, followed by an account of the needless untimely death in a duel on February 28th. It is vain now to dwell upon the singular combination of malign chance, the fatal mismanagement of "friends" who should never have allowed the affair to become serious, the declining health which made a shoulderwound mortal, and the failure of the right man to find himself in the right place. It is only fair to notice that they were in error who attempted to apply a political complexion to the event, simply because it happened between a Frenchman and a German. Those best informed can find no fault

with the conduct of Herr Meyer, who was subsequently condemned to three months' imprisonment in Prussia, and who manfully returned home with us in the Austrian Lloyd's S.S. Flora, to expiate his offence. Yet the perfect loyalty of the two concerned offers scanty consolation for the unhappy close of that young and promising life, which began so gloriously with exploration, and which, at the age of thirty, ended as it were by mistake,* the exit being the only act which did not become it.

Mr. Frederick Smart, one of the "Ancient Egyptians," whose ranks are now so sadly shrunk, kindly announced my arrival to His Highness, and I was honoured with an invitation to the Ábadin Palace next day. My reception by the Viceroy was peculiarly gracious; and the first audience taught me that this Prince is a master of detail, whilst in promoting the prosperity of the country he has been taught by experience to exercise the utmost vigilance and discretion. The Khediv, indeed, has hardly received from Europe the ample recognition which his high moral courage deserves. It requires no little strength of mind suddenly to give up all the traditions of absolute rule, or rather to exchange them for the trammels of constitutionalism, and,

* A most able Notice Nécrologique of M. de Compiègne has been published by Mr. C. Guillemine, Bibliothécaire-Archiviste de la Société Khédiviale. Le Caire: Dalbos-Demouret, 1877.