Among the guests at Assouan there might have been seen a quiet-looking old gentleman, with a gray beard and bushy whiskers, beaming benevolently through gold-rimmed spectacles. His figure was that of a man, once sturdy and square-set, over whose head had passed years of ease and good living. At the first glance, in his frock-coat and tarbush, he looked like any other comfortable Turkish gentleman. Yet there was no one present with a more interesting past than he. For this was Mukhtar Pasha, who bears the proud title of Ghazi, ‘the victorious,’ the hero of the Caucasus in the Russo-Turkish War. He came to Egypt in 1887 as special Turkish Commissioner, to arrange for the British evacuation under the Drummond-Wolff Convention. It is well known how France and Russia at the last moment intervened to prevent Turkey from ratifying the agreement. A special Providence guards the British Empire against the efforts of its rulers. But Mukhtar remains as Turkish Commissioner in Egypt without duties, and probably without pay, a reminder of past eccentricities of British policy. We have travelled far from the days when it was seriously proposed by Conservative statesmen to make Turkey responsible for civilization and good government in Egypt. To-day no one in his senses could wish to put an end to British rule. Let a man start from Assouan and survey the great series of irrigation works—the Reservoir, the Assiout Barrage, the Regulator of the Ibrahimiyah Canal, the Koshesha Regulator, the Barrages and Weirs at the point of the Delta and at Zifta; let him examine the intricate system of canals, siphons, wheels, drains, dykes, and sluices, by which the water is distributed over the cultivated lands, and let him reflect on what would happen if all this were left in Egyptian hands. Inevitably, sooner or later, the whole thing would come to ruin, and the greater the height of prosperity to which the country has attained under the system of perennial irrigation, the greater would be its fall. Egypt has been called the classic land of baksheesh, and it will not lose its character in a generation or two. Imagine a Government in need of money; what better thumbscrew could an Oriental despot wish for than the command of the water-supply? When a land-owner knew that he could be ruined by the shutting of a sluice-gate, he would pay anything without a struggle. The golden goose would be killed in every direction. Even under a well-intentioned Government it would only be regarded as natural for a local official to make free use of such unrivalled opportunities to supplement his pay. Corruption is not a vice in Oriental eyes; it is the habit of centuries. That is why, with every extension of scientific irrigation, the need for European supervision becomes greater, and since we can allow no Power but ourselves to hold Egypt, European means British.