CAIRO TO KISUMU

lation of Greeks, Italians, and other Europeans, among them some of the sharpest business men of the Mediter¬ ranean lands. Alexandria has become commercial, money making, and fortune hunting. The rise and fall of stocks, the boom in real estate, and the modern methods of getting something for nothing are its chief subjects of conversa¬ tion, and the whole population is after the elusive piastre and the Egyptian pound as earnestly as the American is chasing the nickel and the dollar.

The city grows because it is at the sea-gate to Egypt and the Sudan. It waxes fat on the trade of the Nile valley and takes toll of every cent’s worth of goods that comes in and goes out. More than four thousand vessels enter the port every year and in the harbour there are steamers from every part of the world. I came to Egypt from Tripoli via Malta, where I took passage on a steamer bound for India and Australia, and any week I can get a ship which within fifteen days will carry me back to New York.

One of the things to which Alexandria owes its greatness is the canal that Mehemet Ali, founder of the present ruling dynasty of Egypt, had dug from this place to the Nile. This remarkable man was born the son of a poor Albanian farmer and lived for a number of years in his little native port as a petty official and tobacco trader.

He first came into prominence when he led a band of volunteers against Napoleon in Egypt. Later still he joined the Sultan of Turkey in fighting the Mamelukes for the control of the country. The massacre of the Mame¬ lukes in 1811 left the shrewd Albanian supreme in the land, and, after stirring up an Egyptian question that set the Powers of Europe more or less by the ears with each

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