Poor Cairo had spent a seedy autumn. The Russo-Turkish campaign,
which had been unjustifiably allowed, by foreign Powers, to drain
Egypt of her gold and life-blood--some 25,000 men since the
beginning of the Servian prelude--not only caused "abundant
sorrow" to the capital, but also frightened off the stranger-host,
which habitually supplies the poorer population with sovereigns
and napoleons. The horse-pest, a bad typhus, after raging in 1876
and early 1877, had died out: unfortunately, so had the horses;
and the well-bred, fine-tempered, and high-spirited little
Egyptians were replaced by a mongrel lot, hastily congregated
from every breeding ground in Europe. The Fellahs, who had
expected great things from the mission of MM. Goschen and
Joubert, asked wonderingly if those financiers had died; while a
scanty Nile, ten to twelve feet lower, they say, than any known
during the last thousand years, added to the troubles of the
poor, by throwing some 600,000 feddans (acres) out of gear, and
by compelling an exodus from the droughty right to the left bank.
Finally, when the river of Egypt did rise, it rose too late, and
brought with it a feverish and unwholesome autumn. Briefly, we
hardly escaped the horrors of Europe--

"Herbstesahnung! Triste Spuren
In den Waldern, auf den Fluren!
Regentage, boses Wetter," etc.

Meanwhile, in the Land of the Pharaohs, whose scanty interest
about the war was disguised by affected rejoicings at Ottoman
successes, the Prophet gallantly took the field, as in the days
of Yusuf bin Ishak. This time the vehicle of revelation was the
learned Shayhk (ma? ) Alaysh, who was ordered in a dream by the