330 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

Sir Richard Burton, should be enthusiastic about the merits of the Bedouins. But I am convinced he would have been the first to admit that, as neighbours, they were utterly untrustworthy and unscrupulous.

A signal illustration of Bedouin character had just been furnished by the murder of Professor Palmer and his companions. The professor was a distinguished Arabic scholar, who had travelled much in the Sinai desert, who had formed friendships with the leading Bedouin chiefs, and who, in common with all European travellers in the desert, enormously overestimated his personal influence with these wild tribesmen. He had volunteered, on the eve of the Tel-el- Kebir campaign, to secure the support of a number of important Bedouin tribes located east of the Suez Canal, and had been provided for this purpose with a large sum of gold coin by the British Government. He was, or believed himself to be, the bosom friend of the Bedouins. But as soon as they learnt that he was in possession of many bags of gold, they robbed him and his English companions, and murdered them under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. On the morrow of this occurrence, which was not even known in Cairo till after the suppression of the mutiny, and in the face of the Dervish insurrection in the Soudan, it was impossible to contend that Egypt could remain in safety, unless she had a permanent army sufficiently strong to repel any raid against her open and defenceless frontiers.

If the British troops were to be withdrawn at the