e tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings
in order to reproduce in a lifelike manner the costumes and scenery
appropriate for the occasion.

[Illustration: 185.jpg A FELLAH PLOWING]

The opening of this canal gave Ismail much prominence in the courts of
Europe. He was made a Grand Commander of the Bath, and the same year
visited Paris and London, where he was received by Queen Victoria and
welcomed by the lord mayor. In 1869 he again visited London. By his
great power of fascination and lavish expenditure he was ever able to
make a striking impression upon the foreign courts. During the opening
of the canal, when Ismail gave and received royal honours, treating
monarchs as equals, and being treated by them in like manner, the
jealousy of the sultan was aroused. Ismail, however, contrived
judiciously to appease the suspicions of his overlord, Abdul Aziz.

In the year 1876 the old system of consular jurisdiction for foreigners
was abolished, and the system of mixed courts was introduced, by which
European and native judges sat together to try all civil cases, without
respect to nationality.

In the year 1874 Darfur, a province in the Sudan west of Kordofan,
was annexed by Ismail. He also engaged in a disastrous war against the
Abyssinians, who had ever shown themselves capable of resisting the
inroads of Egyptians, Muhammedans, Arabs, and even of European invaders,
as was proven by the annihilation of a large Italian army of invasion,
and the abandonment of the campaign against Abyssinia by the Italians in
the closing years of the nineteenth century.

[Illustration: 187.jpg ARABS AT A DESERT SPRING]

It was true that Ismail had attempted to carry out the great schemes of
his grandfather for the regeneration of the Orient, and it is possible
that, if the jealousy of European Powers had not prevented the army of
Ibrahim Bej from controlling immense territories in Syria and Anatolia,
which they had won by conquest, that the regeneration of the Orient
might have been accomplished at least a century earlier. No people would
have benefited more by the success of Mehemet Ali's policy than the
Christian people who to-day are under the rule of the barbarous Turks.
With the regeneration of the Orient, the trade of European nations in
the East would have been very largely increased.

The policy of regeneration, wisely begun by Mehemet Ali, was resumed
within Egypt itself in a spendthrift manner by his grandson Ismail.
Every act