al capitals. The belief
in time dawning upon the judgment of Britain that the canal would be
finished and would succeed, her statesmen turned their energies to
checkmating and minimizing the influence of De Lesseps and his dupe
Ismail. The screws were consequently put on the Sultan of Turkey--whose
vassal Ismail was--resulting in that Merry Monarch of the Nile being
deposed and sent into exile, and the national cash-box at Cairo was at
the same time turned over to a commission of European
administrators--and is yet in their keeping.

But the miserable people of Egypt, the burdened fellaheen, resented the
interference of Christian money-lenders, demanding more than their pound
of flesh. The Arabi rebellion resulted, when British regiments and
warships were sent to quell the uprising and restore the authority of
the Khedive. That was nearly a quarter of a century ago; but since the
revolution the soldiers and civil servants of England have remained in
Egypt, and to all intents and purposes the country has become a colony
of England. The defaulted debts of the canal-building period were
responsible for these happenings, be it said.

Verily, the fulfilment of Necho's oracle came with terrible force, and
generations of Nile husbandmen must toil early and late to pay the
interest on the public debt incurred through Ismail's prodigality. This
degraded man in his exile persistently maintained that he believed he
was doing right when borrowing for the canal, for it was to elevate
Egypt to a position of honor and prominence in the list of nations. And
it is the irony of fate, surely, that Ismail's personal holding in the
canal company was sacrificed to the British government for half its
actual value, on the eve of his dethronement, and that every tittle of
interest in the enterprise held by the Egyptian government--including
the right to fifteen per cent, of the receipts--was lost or abrogated.
Owning not a share of stock in the undertaking, and having no merchant
shipping to be benefited, Egypt derives no more advantage from the great
Suez Canal than an imaginary kingdom existing in an Anthony Hope novel.

The canal has prospered beyond the dreams of its author; but this means
no more to the country through which it runs than the success of the
canals of Mars. De Lesseps died in a madhouse and practically a pauper,
while Ismail spent his last years a prisoner in a gilded palace on the
Bosporus, and was permitted to return to