For the past two days the entire populace of this city has lived in a state of frenzied excitement, to which the seething clamour of the days immediately following the memorable 15th September 1882 is only faintly comparable. Then it was, with the arrival before the gate of the citadel of Sir Drury Lowe and his cavalry brigade fresh from Tel-el-Kebir, that England’s peaceful occupation of Cairo began. There were no Europeans in Cairo at the time, and even the better classes of Egyptians had either fled to distant parts of the country or lay hidden in their spacious houses, closely barred against intrusion by friend or foe. Demonstration of popular feeling was confined to the astounded and panic-ridden natives of the lower orders, whose bewildered minds swung for a week between fearful anticipation of the horrors they had been taught to expect at the hands of the English, and trembling delight that the reign of terror under Arabi and Toulba had at length come to an end. They needed time, these stricken, starving people, to discover the state of their feelings; to decide whether they were pleased that foreign aid had come to them, or were only glad to know that Arabi had fled, and would soon be in prison; and in their indecision, for two whole days and nights dense crowds of wandering Arabs, Fellaheen, street merchants, clerks, donkey-boys, and small officials, thronged the European quarters of the town, ceaselessly jostling each other through the streets, and murmuring repeatedly, ‘The English have come. The Effendina is coming.’ That was ten years ago. During those ten years the English soldiers and the Cairenes, both natives and foreigners, have learned so well to know and appreciate each other, that when it leaked out (who shall say how) on Sunday evening that orders had been received for the immediate embarkation of all the British troops in garrison here, the announcement clanged like a tocsin through the startled town. Once again the Frank quarter was filled with an anxious wondering mob, formed not of Arabs only, but of all the varied nationalities that make up Cairo’s thriving population, who roamed the broad streets round the Esbekeeyeh Gardens, silent, orderly, and sad, or gathered in tight-packed masses in front of Shepheard’s and the New Hotel, and the Sporting Club, and lingered for hours in slowly changing thousands in the great square facing the Abdeen barracks.