The story of the tax on sakiehs (water-wheels) affords a good illustration of Egyptian methods. One of Said’s reforms was to fix this tax at 200 piastres per annum. In less than nine years it had risen to 500 piastres. Jaaffar Pasha, who finally raised it to this extent, declared openly that he fixed it at that rate in order to see how much the peasants would really pay, and he hoped after a three years’ trial to be able to arrive at a just assessment. It was not a very scientific plan of taxation in any case, but, unfortunately, Jaaffar was removed before the scheme had time to work out, and his successors, absolutely indifferent to his motives, retained the tax, and even further increased it. It was calculated that on average land the tax often far exceeded the net returns for one sakieh. Even a ruined wheel was liable to the full amount, and if an owner returned to it after an interval he was saddled with the whole of the arrears. On the same principle taxes continued to be charged on land and trees that had long since been carried away by the floods. The natural results followed. Many cultivators were ruined and reduced to beggary, others fled the country, and much land went out of cultivation. In 1881 more than 2,000 sakiehs were lying derelict in Berber and Dongola. By the time Ismail Pasha came to the throne in 1863 it had become abundantly clear that the Egyptians were unfit to govern the Soudan. It looked as though in a few years the whole country would have become a wilderness, totally uninhabited save for a few wanderers, whose sole occupation would be selling each other into slavery. And yet the next few years witnessed an enormous extension of the Egyptian Empire, and Ismail himself enjoyed, until the bubble burst, a great reputation as a genuine and whole-hearted reformer. Nor was that reputation wholly undeserved. Strange compound that he was of vast ambitions but changeable resolution, of far-reaching sagacity but reckless carelessness, a Westerner in the conception of his ideals but an Oriental in every sense in his pursuit of them, he proved himself in his treatment of the Soudan, as in other spheres, to possess many of the elements of greatness. If he failed, it was partly because the evil was beyond cure: the impending catastrophe was too great to be averted. His employment of Baker and Gordon and other Europeans showed that he realized the incapacity of Egypt to perform the task by herself. That was in itself a great step forward; undoubtedly it staved off for a little the day of retribution. His eager support of the project of a railway to Khartoum, first mooted by his predecessor, Said, showed a sound appreciation of the position, though his ineffective attempts to carry it out showed his weakness as clearly. But the whole hierarchy of Egyptian officialdom was rotten to the core. The best of rulers without good ministers is predestined to failure.