would not permit him to obey the summons of
his highness, and to have the ineffable pleasure
of showing how ready he was on all occasions
to bow the knee (slave that he was) before a
representative of his imperial lord. At this
very moment he was plotting with the beys,
and sending large sums of money to Constantinople,
to secure friends on both sides of the
Mediterranean. At length the sultan, finding
that Ali could not be deposed, and perceiving
himself on the eve of a war with Russia,
forwarded secret orders to the capitan to make
the best terms he could with the usurper, and
to leave him in possession of the viceroyalty.
A short time after this occurrence the regular
diploma confirming him in his office was
transmitted by the Porte.

Mohammed accepted with profound gratitude
the power so generously confided to him. He
did not care to see that the Porte had only
given what they could not refuse. The two
great enemies of the new viceroy — Elfy Bey and
Bardissy — conveniently dying about this time,
Mohammed became at last the master of Egypt.
Thinking nought done "while aught remained
to do," he was about to march into Upper
Egypt and annihilate the residue of the
Mamelukes, when news reached him that war had
broken out between Great Britain and the
Ottoman empire.

The Mamelukes, too, have a history worth
repeating. They almost exactly resembled the
sultan's Janissaries, three thousand of whom
were killed in 1826, during the revolt at
Constantinople, which ended in their suppression.
The latter were also released slaves or prisoners
of war from Albania and the Danubian
provinces, Circassia and Georgia. The sheik's
horse-tail standard was to the Mamelukes what
the sacred regimental soup-kettle was to the
Janissaries. Both were held together by the
freemasonry of regimental tradition and the
common desire of oppression and plunder.
Both grew in power till they became
dangerous to the sultan. Egypt, after the Arab
caliphs passed away, fell into the power of the
Turks, and under their rule the Mamelukes
first became known. By degrees their fourteen
beys ruled the fourteen provinces of Egypt, the
military republic being presided over in divan
by a shaick-el-belled, or chief of the country.
Sultan Selim subdued them for a time, but the
beys soon regained their power, and turned the
viceroys into mere puppets of their own.

For years Egypt was torn asunder by the
factions of these ambitious chieftains,
alternately victorious, deposed, and slain. No village
was safe from these marauders. The peasants,
finding industry wasted, no opportunity left
for honest gain, and no security for property,
became robbers and murderers, idle, hopeless,
lying, and dissolute. Wherever these savage
horsemen fought, wherever their sabres flashed
or their horses were spurred, the poor man's
plot of millet was sure to be first trampled down
and burned. Greedy as crocodiles and
rapacious as vultures, these men were the last and
worst of the plagues of Egypt. Now comes the
gist of the old story we are now telling.

At the end of February, 1811, Mohammed Ali
invited Saim Bey, the chief of the Mamelukes,
then in Cairo, to an audience to discuss the
approaching campaign against the Wahabees.
The pasha wished to have his new friends under
his standard, and to share with them the honour
and plunder of the holy war. He was frank
and familiar with the bey, told him his own
views, and invited him to disclose his. Saim
was a man of craft and penetration, but he
yielded to this frankness and laid open his
heart. He discussed the transport of troops
past the dangerous coasts of the Red Sea,
planned how to seize the defile of Jedeed
Bogaz, and arranged how to drive the Wahabees
from their hill-breastworks at Cara Lembi. The
bey was flattered; his pride thawed; he forgot
his hatred for the usurper, the slayer of his
comrades and his kinsmen. He began to boast
of the number of saddles he could fill, of the
sabres at his disposal, of the bim-bashis under
his influence. He spoke in a high and confident
tone, with an inflation not unnoticed by
those keen stealthy eyes sometimes, but seldom,
turned full upon him. He spoke of the union
and attachment of his Arnaouts and Circassian
horsemen with an unction and evident belief not
unnoticed and not forgotten by Mohammed. The
interview concluded by Mohammed, with many
courteous nods of his turban of green banded
with gold tissue, inviting the Mameluke chief
and all his adherents capable of bearing arms
to the citadel on the following Friday, to make
final arrangements for the part the Mamelukes
were to take in the ensuing campaign against
the Arab schismatics. On his return from this
gracious audience, Saim communicated the
news to his chieftains, and showed with what
art he had concealed their plots, and how
completely the crafty Albanian usurper had fallen,
into their snare.

One old greybeard alone was restless and
dissatisfied. Old men, it was thought, often
mistake their present suspicions for their past
wisdom. He cried out at once:

"We are betrayed!"

But the rest laughed at him. Saim bent
his brows, and said:

"So much the worse if it be so; if there be
danger, we shall not want courage to meet it."

Saim then called together his captains,
lieutenants, sergeants, and standard-bearers, and
ordered them to accompany him to the lion's
den, up on the citadel, in the forenoon of the
next Friday.

In the mean time, all Cairo was like a hive at
swarming-time. The seller of limes stayed his
quaint cry of "God make them easy to sell!" to
chat to the crier of "Odours of Paradise flowers
of the Henna." The man with the black
swollen goat's-skin of water on his back
discoursed on all the unwonted bustle with
the seller of sherbet; the itinerant pipe-
cleaner with the dancing dervish; the red-
eyed lupin-vendor with the blind beggar at the