the government of that country. Egypt was
a part of the Turkish empire, but so long as it paid a certain amount
of money to Constantinople, the Turks did not care very much how it
was governed. But now a wild chief of the desert had announced himself
as the prophet Mohammed come to earth again, and a great many of the
desert tribesmen had joined him. They cut to pieces one or two English
armies in Egypt, and killed General Gordon, a famous English soldier.
It was 1898 before the English were able to defeat this horde. Lord
Kitchener finally beat them and extended the English power to the city
of Khartoom on the Nile.

[Illustration: An Arab Sheik and His Staff]

In the meantime, the English millionaire, Cecil Rhodes, had formed a
plan for a railroad which should run the entire length of Africa from
the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo. It was England's ambition to control
all the territory through which this road should run. But the French,
too, were spreading out over Africa. Their expeditions through the
Sahara Desert had joined their colonies of Algeria and Tunis to those
on the west coast of Africa and others along the Gulf of Guinea. In
this same year, 1898, while Lord Kitchener was still fighting the
Arabs, a French expedition under Major Marchand struggled across the
Sahara and reached the Nile at Fashoda, several miles above Khartoom.
Marchand planted the French flag and announced that he took possession
of this territory for the republic of France.

The English were very indignant when they heard of what Marchand had
done. If France held Fashoda, their "Cape to Cairo" railroad was cut
right in the middle, and they could advance their territory no farther
up the valley of the Nile. They notified France that this was English
land. Marchand retorted that no Englishman had ever set foot there,
and that the French flag would never be hauled down after it had once
been planted on the Nile. Excitement ran high. The French people had
no love for England, and they encouraged Marchand to remain where he
was. The English newspapers demanded that he be withdrawn. Germany,
which had already begun its campaign to wrest from England the leading
place on the ocean, was delighted at the prospect of a war between
France and the British. The German diplomats patted France on the
back, and practically assured her of German help in case it came to a
war with England.

Germany now felt that she had nothing more to fear from France. T