have spoken the
language and have become the' sentinels and safeguards necessary for the
maintenance of useful institutions which the Turks either refused or did
not understand.

During the administration of Mehemet Ali, public hygiene was not
neglected, and a sanitary council watched over the health of the
country. Measures were taken to increase the cleanliness and sanitation
of the towns; military hospitals were built, and a lazarette was
established at Alexandria, whilst vaccine was widely used. In the
country the planting of many trees helped the atmosphere, and Egypt,
which Europeans had hitherto regarded as the seat of a permanent
plague epidemic, became more and more a healthy and pleasurable
resort. Mehemet, whose aims were always for the furthering of Egyptian
prosperity, profited by the leisure of peace to look after the
industrial works. Two great projects that occupied his attention were
the Nile dams and the construction of a railway from Suez to Cairo.

The actual condition of the canalisation of Egypt, while vastly improved
by the viceroy, was still far from complete. Canals, partial dams, and
embankments were attempted; fifty thousand draw-wells carried the
water up to a considerable height, but the system of irrigation was
insufficient.

The railway from Cairo to Suez was an easier, though not less important,
work. The road crossed neither mountain, river, nor forest, while a
series of little plains afforded a firm foundation, requiring very
few earthworks. Its two iron arms stretched out into the desert, and
steam-engines could traverse the distance from the Nile to the Red Sea
in three hours.

Suez would thus become a suburb of Cairo, and thus, being brought closer
to Egypt, would regain her trade. This enterprise, just as the former
one, gave promise of bringing to Egypt the two sources of national
wealth and prosperity: agriculture and trade.

[Illustration: 179.jpg HARBOR OF THE BULAK]

The agricultural unity which Mehemet Ali constituted enabled him to
bring about improvements which with private proprietorship would have
been impossible. The fellah, careless of to-morrow, did not sow for
future reaping, and made no progress, but when Mehemet Ali undertook
the control of agricultural labour in Egypt, the general aspect of
the country changed, though, in truth, the individual condition of the
fellah was not improved. Besides the work of irrigation by means of
canals, dykes, and banks, and