THE GATEWAY TO EGYPT

other and with the Sultan of Turkey, he was made Viceroy of Egypt, with nominal allegiance to the Turkish ruler. When he selected Alexandria as his capital, it was a village having no connection with the Nile. He dug a canal fifty miles long to that great waterway, through which a stream of vessels is now ever passing, carrying goods to the towns of the valley and bringing out cotton, sugar, grain, and other products, for export to Europe. The canal was constructed by forced labour. The peasants, or fellaheen, to the number of a quarter of a million, scooped the sand out with their hands and carried it away in baskets on their backs. It took them a year to dig that fifty-mile ditch, and they were so overworked that thirty thousand of them died on the job.

Ismail Pasha, grandson of Mehemet Ali, made other im¬ provements on the canal and harbour, and after the

British took control of Egypt they bettered Alexandria in every possible way.

It has now one of the best of modern harbours. The port is protected by a breakwater two miles in length, and the biggest ocean steamers come to the quays. There are twenty-five hundred acres of safe anchorage inside its haven, while the arrangements for coaling and for han¬ dling goods are unsurpassed.

These conditions are typical of the New Egypt. Old Mother Nile, with her great dams and new irrigation works, has renewed her youth and is growing in wealth like a jimson weed in an asparagus bed. When I first saw the Nile, its valley was a country of the dead, with obelisks and pyramids as its chief landmarks. Then its most interesting characters were the mummified kings of more than twenty centuries ago and the principal visitors were

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