80 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

Isthmus, he was not only in virtue of his connection with the new highway of commerce, but of his own repute and prestige, one of the leading personages in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Emperors, kings, princes, statesmen were proud to be his guests, to be reckoned amongst his friends. The inauguration of the Canal was popularly regarded as ' only the commencement of a glorious reign. The air was full of his projects and his ambitions. He was going, so men said, to convert Cairo into a city whose magnificence should surpass that of the great capitals of Europe. He was sending Baker Pasha, better known as Sir Samuel Baker, at an enormous salary, to establish his hold on the Soudan, and to extend his dominions to the Equatorial lakes. *He was going \ to enlist European, and especially British, sympathies </ in behalf of his schemes of conquest by suppressing I the slave trade throughout his kingdom. He was ] making railways to the Soudan by the help of English Cngineers He was regarded as destined, at no distant date, to be the founder of a new African Empire; and vague rumours were current that when he had consolidated his position in Africa, he intended to play a leading part in the settlement of the Eastern Question. ' Looking back on the past with the knowledge of to-day, it does not seem that the then prevalent belief in the star of Ismail was quite as irrational as it may appear to-day.

CMost, if not all, his ambitions might have been S realized, if the capitalists who had competed for the