Some years after that a course was laid out near Cairo. The men who made that course and played the first golf were none other than Mr. J. E. Laidlay, twice Amateur Champion, and Sir Edgar Vincent, who won the Parliamentary handicap in 1905. This was in 1888, and Sir Edgar had only had one taste of golf previously, that being in the previous summer, but he thought it would be as well to take his clubs with him to Egypt. Mr. Laidlay, going to Egypt also, thought the same thing; but when they got there they found there was no golf at all. They did not know each other; but Sir Edgar knew Mr. Laidlay by reputation, sought him out, and they conferred together on the miserable character of the situation. Mr. Laidlay was famishing for some golf, and stirred up a great enthusiasm in the other, so they agreed that they would go out into the desert together and make a course. “We made a survey of the outskirts,” said Sir Edgar, “and found the material to be of the most unpromising description--seven parts sand and one part scrub everywhere. There was one comforting fact, and that was that our bunkers were ready made, for there were bunkers everywhere. Mr. Laidlay’s enthusiasm overcame everything, and by dint of hard labour and perseverance we soon had a nine-hole course laid out. In this way we were certainly the pioneers of golf in Egypt, and, as I believe, in Africa.” When Mr. Laidlay went home again he entered for the Amateur Championship and won it for the first time. One of the first converts to golf in Egypt was Lord Cromer. There are now nine clubs and courses in Egypt. At Cairo the round usually consists of twelve holes, although there are two more which are very seldom played. It is desert golf, and the “greens” are brown patches of puddled earth, over which sand is sprinkled daily to true them up and slow them down a bit. Some say that the golf at Helouan is the best in Egypt, and others prefer the Assouan course, in the making of which Mr. John Low had much say and which he has visited since. Here the greens are made of rolled Nile mud. But most prefer the Mena House course, which is laid out on a bit of the very small area of grass there is in Egypt, which is so precious that players are requested to play only in rubber-soled shoes for fear of breaking it. For part of each year the course is under water. Not only is there grass here, but the course is laid out alongside the Great Pyramid, the shadow of which is thrown across it. This Great Pyramid--2,000,000 cubic feet of stone--gives golfers a queer feeling if they catch sight of it when swinging for their drive. When Napoleon was beginning the battle of the Pyramids hereabouts, he said to his men, “Soldiers! from the summit of yonder Pyramid forty ages behold you.” That is so, and the golfers may wish they did not. They may think it is no game for spectators of this kind. X