9® THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

/Treasury, or, in other words, the wants of the (Khedive. When the money was not forthcoming, the fellaheen were compelled to borrow from the Greek village money-lenders at usurious rates, and when they were unable to borrow more, and when even the application of the bastinado had failed to extract money from them, their landsr were confiscated and sold for nominal prices. Out of all these transactions the Mufettish appropriated a profit for himself, and in the course of a very few years amassed so large a fortune that at the time of his death, of which I shall have to speak later, he was supposed to have been worth a couple of millions sterling. The fellaheen, in common with all servile nations, were adepts at deception ; lying and pilfering were the only weapons which they could use for their own protection against the rapacity of the Government, the tax-gatherer, the Pasha, and the Sheik. But in respect of all dodges and devices for evading payment, the Mufettish was himself a past-master of the craft. He could tell, as it were by instinct, how much any fellah was worth, how much he could be compelled to part with under threat of punishment, and how much punishment he required in order to induce him to hand over his hard-earned and dearly cherished savings. If the application of the kurbash failed to extort payment from the fellah, imprisonment on some trumped-up charge, compulsory enlistment in the Egyptian armies of the Soudan, or the cutting off of the water from his lands, were the means employed