ment that he had previously accepted as binding. In his reply to the French position, communicated by M. Waddington, he simply declined to discuss the question of evacuation in connection with the Egyptian conversion scheme, at the same time pointing to the advance of the dervishes, which occurred opportunely, as a proof that the presence of English troops was necessary for the security of Egypt. In responding to a speech of Lord Carnarvon in the House of Peers, who urged the Government openly to declare Egypt to be a British dependency, he revealed in veiled diplomatic terms the intention to continue the tutelage until circumstances would admit of annexation.

I have not been able to agree with the suggestion of my noble friend that the guardianship of this country over Egypt has been otherwise than beneficial, or that we have not obtained such a measure of success as we have a right to expect. I need not go further and say that the withdrawal of this country from Egypt would be attended with evil to Egypt. When my noble friend goes beyond the criticism of the past or the examination of the present condition of Egypt and the effect of the measures which this country has sanctioned or encouraged and asks us to penetrate into the future and say what the future relations of this country and Egypt are to be, I must respectfully ask the house to allow me to decline. We have again and again explained what in our judgment are the obligations which bind us to Egypt, and which we have intended to fulfill, and when my noble friend says there has been vacillation or the semblance of vacillation, I again can not admit that the charge is sustained by any evidence or any particulars. If my noble friend will do me the honor to refer to the account which I gave four years ago of the policy which the then incoming Government thought it their duty to pursue with respect to Egypt, and the circumstances in which Egypt found herself, I think he will find we have not deviated by a hair's breadth from the line which we then laid down. I need not repeat what I have already expressed-namely, the obligation which we feel bound in honor to fulfill before we withdraw from the guardianship of Egypt. But when my noble friend asks us to go beyond that and to convert ourselves from guardians into proprietors, and to say that, in despite of all that we have said and that our predecessors have said, we will, under the circumstances and conditions as they are now, declare our stay in Egypt permanent and our relations to Egypt that of a conquering country to a conquered, I must say I think my noble friend pays an insufficient regard to the sanctity of the obligations which the Government has undertaken and by which they are bound to abide. In such a matter we have not to consider what is the most convenient or what is the most profitable course; we have to consider the course to which we are bound by our own obligations and by European law. We shall try to observe that rule faithfully. Undoubtedly we have no intention of abandoning our task until it is fulfilled; but we have no authority or right to give it the extension my noble

friend desires.

Sir Edgar Vincent was led to suppose that the French Government regretted assuming an attitude that obstructed financial reform, and in July the Egyptian Government applied to it again, receiving in reply an assurance that the French ministry shared the view of Riaz Pasha, that the conversion is of vital importance to Egypt, but, as the political situation remained unchanged, France was compelled to withhold her consent.

Commerce. The imports of merchandise in 1887 had a total value of 8,137,054 Egyptian

pounds, and the exports amounted to 10,876,417 pounds. The imports of specie were 3,066,740 pounds, and the exports 1,898,062 pounds. The principal imports were cotton goods, of the value of 1,547,571 pounds; other textile manufactures, 668,604 pounds; machinery, 504,075 pounds; coal, 407,342 pounds; hosiery and clothing, 362,805 pounds; wine, beer, and spirits, 323,630 pounds; oils, 309,057 pounds; timber, 289,597 pounds; tobacco, 268,003 pounds; coffee, 239,589 pounds: iron and steel manufactures, 227,145 pounds; indigo, 222,773 pounds. The value of the exports of raw cotton in 1887 was 7,524,567 pounds; cotton seed, 1,277,050 pounds; beans, 524,380 pounds; sugar, 489,893 pounds; wheat, 169,803 pounds; rice, 133,800 pounds. Of the total export and import trade in 1887, the share of Great Britain was 542 per cent.; of France, 9.5 per cent.; of Turkey, 9.5 per cent.; of Austria-Hungary, 73 per cent.; of Russia, 7 per cent.; of Italy, 5-6 per cent. of India, 2-5 56 per cent.; of all other countries 3-28 per cent. per cent.; of Greece, 66 per cent.; of America, The conclusion of commercial treaties in 1884 with Greece, Italy, England, the United States, Portugal, and other countries promoted commercial exchanges, especially by the impetus that it gave to tobacco imports. The Government receipts from tobacco rose from 124,410 pounds

in 1884 to 387,000 in 1888.

In

Agriculture.—The grain crops are sown in November and harvested in May or June. In March the principal summer crops are sown, consisting of cotton, sugar, and rice, which are ripe in October or November. Rice, sorghum, and vegetables are planted in July, and are ready to gather in September or October. In 1887 there were 1,288,361 acres under wheat, 977,064 under clover, 898,485 under cotton, 784,651 under beans, 709,867 under maize, 540,166 under barley, 458,100 under Egyptian maize, 155,833 under lentils, 155,418 under rice, 135,650 under helbe or fenugreek, 82,080 under potatoes, 73,914 under sugar-cane, 32,737 under vetch, 21,555 under melons, 13,885 under lupins, 12,101 under tobacco, 11,368 under peas, 5,147 under sesame, and 57,515 under vines, orchards, and other crops, making a total of 6,367,960 acres, of which 1,217,565 acres bore double crops. Lower Egypt, where the land is watered by means of canals, four crops are grown in three years. In Upper Egypt irrigation is effected by flooding the land at high Nile, and seven crops are obtained in every six years. The number of feddans cultivated in Lower Egypt in 1887 was 2,743,990: in Upper Egypt, 2,217,472. The cattle and farm animals, including horses and camels, was 1,668,860. There were 3,452,674 bearing date trees in 1887. The Nile rose in 1887 to the highest level recorded in 150 years. In 1888, on the contrary, there was, with the exception of 1877, the lowest Nile of the century. It was suspected that the Mahdists had deflected the course of the White Nile. The deficiency had a disastrous effect especially on the agriculture of Upper Egypt, where 300,000 acres were thrown out of cultivation. The resulting loss of revenue was estimated at £300,000. The number of men employed in forced labor by the Irrigation Department was 58,788. They cleared from the canals 8,893,300 cubic metres. The work

again before Suakin, intrenched himself in its environs, attacked the Egyptian garrison, and succeeded in capturing a redoubt. The black troops were, however, fully competent to deal with the dervishes. On May 5 Col. Holled Smith, the Governor of Suakin, captured the port of Halaib, driving out the dervishes by shells from his vessels, in order to protect the trade fostered by the British.

Successive armies were sent from Omdurman against Emin Pasha on the Bahr-el-Gazelle. In November, 1888, on the intelligence that the previous force had been annihilated, a fresh corps of 6,000 men was dispatched. The troops of the first expedition were reported to have been surprised in August, 1888, while cutting a passage for their steamer through the grass-dam that obstructed the White Nile, only a few of them escaping, leaving the steamers and barges with their stores and arms in the possession of Emin's men. In October there was a report of the surrender of one of Emin's garrisons south of Lado. One of the Khalifa's generals, Abou Hanga, was engaged in 1888 in an unsuccessful campaign against King Johannes of Abyssinia. He raided Gondar, killing and taking captive large numbers of both sexes, but was beaten in a pitched battle, returning with only a few hundred of his men to Omdurman. When King Johannes threatened to advance as far as Khartoum, if necessary, in order to chastise the assassins, another army of 6,000 men was collected with difficulty in the neighborhood of Khartoum, which was victorious in the battle near Galabat, where the Negus lost his life.

Advance of the Dervishes.-The Khalifa and his emirs began in 1888 to collect a force for a descent on Upper Egypt. Adventurous bands from Dongola and Berber have harrassed the garrison at Wady Halfa every year. The Khalifa decided to make this time a more determined attack than usual, in order to restore his diminishing prestige and rekindle the belief in his religious mission, since the Kabbabish and many other tribes began to place their faith rather in his rival, Senoussi, who was advancing in the western Soudan. The Soudan is an overpopulated country, becoming more so since the stoppage of the slave trade, and has been impoverished by intestine wars and the cessation of external commerce. Therefore it is not difficult to raise a force for any adventure that promises conquest or plunder, especially if the fanatical motive is added of wresting territory from the dominion of Christians. The retirement of the British troops from Suakin, regarded as a retreat by the Soudanese, encouraged them to engage in the enterprise. Wad el N'juma, the most trusted of the Khalifa's generals, collected a force of about 8,000 men at Dongola, and in April the vanguard moved forward from Sarras in the desert, encountering on April 30 the Egyptian picket at the village of Serra, where Major Judge held his ground with 50 men, and, when re-enforced by Major Cunningham with 100 more, attacked and drove back the enemy, said to have been 450 strong. The dervishes lost 40 killed and captured. The Egyptian cavalry scoured the desert, expecting to cut off the dervishes' retreat to Sarras, but they had made a camp far out in the desert. In June the main body of the

dervishes was ready to advance from Sarras. On receipt of the intelligence that a force of 2.000 men were on the march and intending to turn Wady Halfa and secure a position to the north of it, Gen. Grenfell, the sirdar or commander-inchief of the Egyptian army, ordered Col. Shakespear with his battalion to re-enforce the garrison at Assouan. As these events coincided in time with the French demand on the English Government to indicate a time for leaving Egypt, the English garrison was sent forward a few weeks later to take up a position of observation in the rear of the Egyptian troops, and at the same time British troops were ordered from Malta and Cyprus to take the place of the troops withdrawn from Alexandria and Cairo, in order to avert the dangers of an insurrection of the Egyptian people in sympathy with the Mahdist invasion. The Khalifa sent envoys to Egypt bearing letters for the Queen of England and the Khedive, exhorting them to embrace Mahdism, and threatening them with invasion and extermination in case of refusal. In proof of his power he inclosed the Queen's original letter that had been taken from the Negus Johannes of Abyssinia, whose defeat and death had been the consequence of his refusal to adopt the new religion. A body of 340 mounted dervishes made a raid on Gustol, 40 miles north of Wady Halfa, but were driven back into the desert by the fire from a gunboat. Near the end of June Wad el N'juma had established his camp at Matuka, 12 miles south of Wady Halfa. Accessions to the horde made the total number 12,000 or 14,000, with 800 camels, before the onward movement began, but of these not more than 5,000 were fighting men, the rest being villagers pressed into the service, camp followers, slaves, women, and children. The Soudanese had great difficulty in feeding so great a number of non-combatants, and found it impossible to supply them with water, as the Egyptians patrolled the river in gunboats, while their cavalry guarded the bank, to prevent the enemy from taking water from the Nile. Wad el N'juma made one determined effort to get a foothold on the river bank at Arguin, on July 2. His whole force, with his six guns, advanced in close order against the fire of the gunboats, three battalions of Egyptian infantry, the camel corps, and a field battery. They charged with desperation, but were easily repulsed by the artillery fire, and, leaving 500 dead on the field, they retreated to the hills, pursued by the cavalry and harrassed by the camel corps on their flank. There were 500 prisoners taken, and two of the enemy's guns. On the Egyptian side 70 men were killed or wounded, among the latter being two of the British officers. From that time daily numbers of the famished and emaciated camp followers deserted to the Egyptians. Parties of the enemy stole down to the river for water, and in nearly every instance were cut off, and killed or made prisoners. Those who returned to Serra and beyond found the river bank guarded everywhere. In the desert there were few wells, and these were seldom used by the invaders, who wished to retain the friendship of the Hadendowa nomads. Wad el N'juma, after his repulse at Arguin, deserted the camp at Matuka, and passed to the north of Wady Halfa. As they marched north

ward the Egyptian troops kept a parallel course in their steamers. Cavalry visiting their deserted camps found women and children dying from exhaustion. The sheiks of the Bimban district and the merchants of Assouan were in sympathy with the invaders, but were unable to aid them, as Gen. Grenfell had the entire west bank of the Nile, as far as Toski, cleared of crops and date trees, and the inhabitants all transported to the other shore of the river. On July 10 he issued a proclamation threatening with death any person who held communication with the enemy, At that date Wad el N'juma's army was camped three miles south of Abu Simbel, where it was bombarded by the gunboats on the 9th with destructive effect. The dervishes in smaller numbers attempted to advance on the east side of the river, but they encountered the enmity of the Bishareen Arabs, who held 400 of them besieged in their camp near Meissah. In some of the skirmishes with water parties the Egyptians killed as many as 60 and 90 dervishes at a time. Before the middle of July their losses in killed and wounded were estimated at 2,500, or half their fighting force. At that time the Emir of Dongola, who had supplied the Mahdist commander with his troops, sent 1,500 re-enforcements. The Egyptian forces, who were both before and behind the Mahdists, could easily have crushed them at any moment, but for political reasons it was given out that the Egyptians were not strong enough, and the British garrison in Egypt was re-enforced by two regiments. Wad el Njuma was one of the most fanatical of the lieutenants of the late Mahdi. He had taken an important part in the rout of Hicks Pasha, had served with the Mahdi against Gordon, and commanded the Soudanese forces that confronted Gen. Wolseley at Metemneh. On July 16 Sir Francis Grenfell sent a proclamation to the Mahdist camp, calling on Wad el N'juma and the three principal emirs to surrender, and promising that the lives of all should be spared. Wad el Njuma had the messenger beaten, and then read the proclamation to the people. In his answer, he said:

Your force is nothing to me, and my goal is not Bimban, as you think, but the world, which I am to convert. All who surrender to me I can protect. Your letters have been sent to the Khalifa to answer. I can not stop now. Take my advice and surrender. Remember Hicks and Gordon, and what little good their armies availed them.

The dervishes remained many days at Khor, where they could obtain water from the wells of Abu Simbel, before undertaking the march of four days through the desert to Toski. Their camp was shelled by the Egyptian artillery several times. Maku el Nur, in command of the re-enforcements from Dongola, who were diminished by battle and desertions to about seven hundred men, joined Wad el N'juma about July 25, and on July 28 the Mahdists struck their camp and resumed their march northward. On Aug. 1 they took a position near Toski. There Gen. Grenfell with the black Egyptian infantry, assisted by a detachment of British mounted troops under Col. Kitchener, attacked them on Aug. 3. In the early morning a reconnoitering force of Egyptian cavalry and camels drew out Wad el N'juma's entire force by a feint of re

treating to within four miles of Toski, where the infantry under Col. Wodehouse and the artillery under Maj. Rundle opened the attack, and a general action took place. After seven hours of severe fighting, the dervishes being driven from two positions in the hills at the point of the bayonet, the Egyptians won a complete victory, driving the enemy into the desert, after having killed Wad el N'juma, 12 of his principal emirs, and 1,500 of the fighting men, about half of the entire force. The Egyptian losses were very light. The Egyptian infantry fought with steadiness and courage, withstanding a succession of fierce onsets of the dervishes. The Egyptians pursued in gunboats the retreating remnant of the invading force, and occupied Sarras, but afterward evacuated it, and drew back to their old line at Wady Halfa. ELIXIR OF LIFE. The desire to arrest the natural decay of age, to prolong life, if not indefinitely yet for a space beyond the ordinary term of human existence, has prevailed in all times and among all peoples. When all men desired immortality, the world was loath to believe that its great heroes shared the common fate of humanity. King Arthur sleeps at Avalon, and Holger Danske dreams until the appointed hour for awakening. Barbarossa sits spell-bound in Thuringia until his red beard shall have wound itself thrice around the great stone table before him. Charlegmagne slumbers less quietly in the Odenberg, for he emerges once a year to bless the harvests. Brian Boroihme in Ireland, Boabdil the Unlucky and the great Cid in Spain, Kuez Lavai in Servia, and other celebrities, elsewhere, wait, crowned and armed, somewhere in the bosom of Mother Earth, until the time shall be ripe for their return. Merlin sleeps in an old tree spell-bound by Vivian. John the Divine lies at Ephesus, untouched by corruption, the ground heaving above him with every breath, waiting the summons to come forth and bear witness against Antichrist. Joseph of Arimathea sleeps a sleep that is not that of death in the holy city of Arras. The resting-places of all these heroes and saints have been discovered at sundry times by persons who have lost their way; and in most cases the intrusion has startled the slumberers so that they have opened their eyes only to find that the appointed time has not arrived. On the other hand, the curse of a deathless life has been passed on more than one unfortunate on the dancers of Kolbeck, because they sighed for an eternity of their mad revels; on the Wild Huntsman, because he wished to chase the wild deer forever; on Vanderdecken, captain of the "Flying Dutchman," because he Vowed he would double Cape Horn whether God willed it or not; on the Man in the Moon, because he gathered fagots on Sunday: on the Wandering Jew, because he refused to let the crossladen Saviour rest for a moment on his threshold. But the horrors of an enforced immortality were never more vividly painted than by Swift in the Struldbrugs of Luggnagg, who were doomed to an eternity of dotage, a burden to themselves, despised by the beings born to the happier heritage of death. Tennyson, in his monologue of Tithonus," has set forth the poetical and philosophical aspect of immortal life without immortal youth.