ves
brought up at the court of their predecessors, and arriving at the
supreme rule of Egypt by election or intrigue. Toman Bey, the last of
the Mameluke kings, was defeated by Selim, Emperor of the Turks, and
hanged at Cairo, at the Bab Zooaley. But the aristocracy of the
Mamelukes, as it may be called, still remained; and various beys became
governors of Egypt under the Turkish sway, till they were all destroyed
at one blow by Mohammed Ali Pasha, the now all but independent sovereign
of Egypt.

CHAPTER III.

National Topics of Conversation--The Rising of the Nile; evil
effects of its rising too high; still worse consequences of a
deficiency of its waters--The Nilometer--Universal Alarm in August,
1833--The Nile at length rises to the desired Height--Ceremony of
cutting the Embankment--The Canal of the Khalidj--Immense
Assemblage of People--The State Tent--Arrival of Habeeb
Effendi--Splendid Dresses of the Officers--Exertions of the Arab
Workmen--Their Scramble for Paras--Admission of the Water--Its
sudden Irruption--Excitement of the Ladies--Picturesque Effect of
large Assemblies in the East.

In England every one talks about the weather, and all conversation is
opened by exclamations against the heat or the cold, the rain or the
drought; but in Egypt, during one part of the year at least, the rise of
the Nile forms the general topic of conversation. Sometimes the ascent
of the water is unusually rapid, and then nothing is talked of but
inundations; for if the river overflows too much, whole villages are
washed away; and as they are for the most part built of sunburned bricks
and mud, they are completely annihilated; and when the waters subside,
all the boundary marks are obliterated, the course of canals is altered,
and mounds and embankments are washed away. On these occasions the
smaller landholders have great difficulty in recovering their property;
for few of them know how far their fields extend in one direction or
the other, unless a tree, a stone, or something else remains to mark
the separation of one man's flat piece of mud from that of his
neighbour.

But the more frequent and the far more dreaded calamity is the
deficiency of water. This was the case in 1833, and we heard nothing
else talked of. "Has it risen much to-day?" inquires one.--"Yes, it has
risen half a pic since the morning." "What! no more? In the name of the
Prophet! what will bec