The outcome was that the English and French established themselves in a joint control--it was called a Dual Control--over Egypt, in 1879. Three years later, again, Egypt revolted against this control. England asked France to join her in forcibly putting down the revolt. France declined. England then invited the aid of Italy, for Italy had an interest both in Egyptian affairs generally, and in the Suez Canal especially, because she had established a coaling station, where her ships might replenish their coal supplies, in Eritrea, a district far down on the {220} west shore of the Red Sea. But Italy also declined. Therefore Great Britain went in alone to restore order. The revolt was effectually quelled; but Great Britain dared not leave the country to the mercies of a native or of a Turkish ruler. She had to stay, in the very interests of Egypt herself. At the moment of writing, Egypt has been given a large share of self-government, of which she still has to prove herself altogether worthy. And this burden of Egypt, thus undertaken, led on to the shouldering of yet another, of the country southward, the Sudan. Really it is a burden inseparable from the burden of Egypt, because the Nile, which is Egypt's very life-blood, passes through it, and because it is, or it was, the home of wandering slave-making Arab tribes always liable to inflict raids on Egypt itself. Hence arose expeditions and again expeditions, in some of which Great Britain's arms suffered heavy reverse, against one or other of the fanatical Arab leaders who arose and assumed the title of Mahdi. The loss which stands out most tragically in England's memory is that of General Gordon, at Khartoum, in 1885. It was not until 1898, and the decisive defeat of the Mahdi by Lord Kitchener, that the problem of the Sudan could be regarded as tolerably solved. We may note that the manner of fighting of the Arabs was to charge in cavalry masses. It is mode of attack which gives a target terribly exposed to the fire of modern machine guns; and that gun has greatly diminished the danger of civilised troops charged by those desert warriors. In the south of Africa the burden of the white man had at first lain chiefly on the shoulders of the Dutch, and the story of South Africa in the nineteenth century is mainly the story of the shifting of that burden to the {221} British. It was in the year of the battle of Waterloo that the Dutch possessions, from the Cape of Good Hope northward, were ceded to Great Britain by the King of the Netherlands. [Sidenote: The Boers]