16 General History of the Present-day Mission.

could be done even more conveniently in Egypt. Then came the usurpation of Arabi, the campaign of Lord Wolseley, the victory of Tel-el-Kebir, and the British occupation of the Nile Valley ; and thankofferings were at once sent in to the Society in the shape of contributions for an Hgypt Mission.* Mr. Klein reached Cairo on December 16, 1882, and was shortly joined by Ahmed Tewfik, a Turkish ‘Alim (sheikh), a professor and lecturer in leading mosques, who had expounded the Koran before the Sultan. In 1879 this man was assisting Dr. Koelle, one of the Society’s missionaries, in translating the Prayer-book into Turkish at Constantinople, when both he and the missionary were arrested; the latter was speedily released, but the ‘Alim was thrown into an unhealthy dungeon, and eventually exiled to the island of Scio. Contriving to escape thence and to reach London he at length made up his mind to confess openly his faith in Christ, and was baptized at St. Paul’s, Onslow Square, in 1881. He did not, however, prove of much assistance to Mr. Klein, for soon after reaching Cairo Ahmed Tewfik was got hold of by the Moslems, behaved very strangely (was he drugged ?), and ultimately went back to Scio and gave himself up to the Turkish authorities there as a prisoner who ought not to have escaped.f Curiosity concerning Christianity.

Cairo, as Mr. Klein found it, was a very different place from what it had been in the days of the old C.M.S. Mission. Then it was altogether a genuine Arab city. Now, alongside the old city, with its narrow, winding streets, its tall, over-hanging houses, and its hundreds of mosques, there had been added a reproduction of modern Paris, with boulevards, hotels and cafés, and with a population of some 50,000 Europeans—not, for the most part, of the more moral classes. Mr. Klein at once began public Arabic services, Miss Whately lending the hall of her school for the purpose; and quickly he made wide acquaintance with the people, especially through the attractions of an open reading-room, to which the Moslems flocked. He found the demand for Pfander’s Mizan-ul-Hagqq, and for the Apology of Al Kindy, greater than the supply ; and in addition to argumentative works like these, an Arabic translation of the Autobiography of the Rev. Imad-ud-din excited much interest. But it was an interest more akin to the Athenian curiosity of St. Paul’s days * History of the C.M.S., vol. iii., p. 514. % Lbid., p. 122,