78 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

their bare backs and shoulders ; and if the work did not proceed fast enough in the opinion of the overseers, they in turn called up the foremen, and subjected them to the same treatment as they had applied to their workmen. If the work had not been finished in due course, the overseers themselves, provided they were natives, would doubtless have been bastinadoed.

The spectacle was not a pleasant one to witness, or even to remember, but it gave me an insight into the manner how Egypt was ruled, and had been ruled for ages, which tended to lessen the glamour impressed upon myself, in common with all my fellow-visitors, by the lavish hospitality with which we were treated, and by the magnificence of the entertainment to which we had been bidden from afar. The inaugural fHes are now well-nigh forgotten ; the palace, built by Ismail on the banks of the Lake Timsah in order to provide a fitting locality for a ball to be given to the Empress Eugenie, has, after standing empty for years, been converted into offices; the sheds wherein for three full days open tables were kept for ten thousand people, and whereat champagne flowed like water from dawn to long after midnight ; the city of tents in which the visitors were lodged ; the illuminations ; the fireworks ; the gorgeous procession of Bedouin Sheiks; — all these things, like Hans Breitman's "barty," are in die EwigkeiL To my mind, the recital of an entertainment one has not assisted at one's self is as uninteresting as the menu of a dinner one has not eaten. Indeed, I should