A few years later Mehemet Ali became the Turkish viceroy. This man was a bold and unscrupulous schemer. He was born in Macedonia, and became colonel of the troops of the Turkish sultan and was stationed in Egypt. In 1805 he was appointed governor. Two years later England tried to get possession of the country; but he foiled the British. The Mamelukes, the former rulers of Egypt, had been conquered by Napoleon and were forced to acknowledge Mehemet Ali as master of Egypt. But they were still powerful, and their plots hindered the plans of the ambitious viceroy. So one day in 1811 Mehemet gave a great feast in the citadel in Cairo, to which the Mamelukes were all invited. Four hundred and fifty of them accepted and rode, a magnificent cavalcade, up to the citadel through a deep, steep passageway leading from the lower town. The lower gates of the street were suddenly closed. Behind the walls were the armed men of Mehemet Ali. Point-blank they fired into the crowd of horsemen. The slaughter was kept up until all were dead. Tradition says that one man escaped by leaping his horse over a wall. Thus Mehemet became ruler indeed of Egypt. Under his rule Cairo grew up. He is supposed to have watched over the welfare of his people; but, according to one historian, "they could not suffer more and live." Ismail Pasha, the first of the khedives (keh-deeves') modernized Cairo. Coming from Paris filled with progressive but reckless ideas of civilization, he resolved to transform the ancient city by the Nile into an African metropolis. The festivities he organized on the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 are said to have cost twenty million dollars. He built the opera house of Cairo, and had Verdi, the famous composer, write the opera "Aïda" especially to be produced there in 1871. His extravagances plunged Egypt into debt, but in 1882 Cairo was occupied by the British, and under their rule Egypt came gradually from under this heavy burden of indebtedness. PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 42, SERIAL No. 42 COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. * * * * * [Illustration: PYRAMIDS, EGYPT] ==================================================================== _EGYPT, THE LAND OF MYSTERY_ _The Pyramids_ ------------------------------- TWO ------------------------------