THE ORIGIN OF THE KHEDIVIAL DYNASTY. 9

The only proof I could ever find of the celebrated leap from the citadel of the one Mameluke, who is reported to have escaped from the massacre, is the fact that I, in common with all tourists, have seen

the spot from which the leap is alleged to have been taken* I may also add that it seemed to me absolutely incredible that such a leap could have been taken by a mounted horseman without either horse or rider

being killed by the fall. A very short residence in

Egypt will convince any man of ordinary intelligence of the utter impossibility of believing anything which one has got to accept on hearsay. All that anybody can state with confidence is that Mahomet Ali effected

the well-nigh wholesale destruction of the Mamelukes ; that the native population of Egypt regarded their destruction with genuine satisfaction ; and that the

massacre, whether just or unjust, whether effected as an act of State necessity or of personal ambition,

relieved Egypt from perhaps the most cruel, unen-

lightened, and oppressive rule the country has ever [ been subjected to in the course of her long and varied

experience of all descriptions of tyranny. It is not too much to say that the seeds of the present prosperity

of Egypt were sown in the shambles of the citadel. One curious result of the massacre of the Mamelukes

was that it led to the invasion, and ultimately to the annexation, of thq Soudanrr. A number of the Mame-

lukes had taken refuge in Nubia. The year after the massacre Mahomet Ali resolved to break up

this Mameluke settlement, and sent an army into