(From a "Daily Telegraph" Correspondent)

It is my belief that whenever the history of Egypt daring the British occupation is written by an impartial historian, the commencement of an era of material prosperity, hitherto un­known in the Valley of the Nile, will be dated from the year 1898. In that year an agree- was come to between the Egyptian Govern­ment and a British syndicate, by which the latter engaged to construct the Assouan Dam. Even if this great work had proved a signal failure instead, as the result has shown, of a brilliant success, the bare fact that British capitalists had made up their minds to risk an immense sum of money on an enterprise calculated to render the water supply of the Nile regular instead of intermittent was regarded throughout Egypt as conclusive evi­dence that England intended to make her occupation permanent instead of temporary. No doubt shrewd observers had long before this date arrived at a like conclusion. Bat the Egyptians, though shrewd enough about their own affairs and interests, are utterly incapable of understanding the complex con­siderations which govern the action and the policy of any British Government, no matter what may be the party in office.

It was not therefore till the construction of the Assouan Dam was undertaken by British capitalists, with the avowed approval of Great Britain, and with the warm support of the British authorities in Egypt, that the Egyptian public realised that whatever might have been her professions or her promises, England had "come to stay." How far this discovery was welcome in itself may be open to discussion, but there can he no question that it gave the agricultural population of Egypt a sense of security which they had never possessed so long as they imagined the British occupation might prove as evanescent as it had been unex­pected. Whatever the like or dislike of the natives may have been to the system of admi­nistration we had introduced into Egypt, they knew that under our rule they need have no fear about disclosing any means they might possess. The enormous majority of the Egyptian population are either landowners or live in one form or another upon the lands they till. From the pashas and large landowners down to the humblest fellah, who toils from dawn to night in raising water by hand-drawn backet to irrigate his little patch of land, every native felt instinctively that if the authority of Great Britain was to be permanent he need entertain no fear of showing himself richer than he was thought to be by his neighbors. All over the country hoards of money, which had been con­cealed for years, if not for generations, were suddenly brought to light, while the rul­ing passion of every Egyptian, from the highest to the lowest, was to add to the number of his fields. This being so, the prices of land began suddenly to rise. For instance, within a few weeks of the dam being commenced land in Upper Egypt rose in price from £10 the feddan, or acre, to £40 ; and though this rise was naturally greater in the localities where the supply of water had hitherto been deficient, a gradual, though less rapid, rise took place in every province, from Assouan to the Delta. The general extent of this rise may be best estimated by this fact, that while as late as 1888 it was calculated by official experts on the value of land that the Daira Sanieh Estates, which had been surrendered by Ismail Pacha and his children in order to raise the Daira Sanieh loan of £8,000,000, would barely suffiae to pay off the loan under the most favourable conditions, yet the final sale of those estates in 1905 not only repaid the bondholders in fall, bat left a net surplus of from £6,000,000 to £7,000,000.

The sadden accession to the liquid assets of Egypt gave birth to two movements, which have materially contributed to the develop­ment of the country. The fellaheen did not alter their mode of life to any material extent in consequence of their newly-displayed wealth. They are certainly better fed and somewhat less poorly dressed, but they continue the same laborious, frugal lives they have led for centuries. Their only extravagance has been in the purchase of larger and better lands. For the first time the fellaheen have become open buyers of land whenever an estate came into open market, and* it is their competition which has run up the price of land, as it fetches much more if sold in small lots than when sold in large blocks. It is astonishing how high the fellaheen will down bid, and in consequence the number of petty landowners who cultivate their own lands by their own labour is increasing rapidly. In itself this movement is matter for congratulation, especially as Egypt, of all countries with which I am acquainted, is the one where the system of petite culture can be tried with much chance of success. I am assured by all the land­owners I know that the fellaheen makes a greater profit out of his lands by manual labour than the most grasping of landlords— even if he should be a Copt - can ever make by hired labour. Indeed, I should regard this dispersion of large estates in Egypt amidst small holders as an unmixed benefit if the fellah purchased his new lends out of his own pocket. In ninety oases, however, out of a hundred he raises the major amount of the purchase money by loans contracted by the Greek village moneylender, at exorbitant rates of interest.

Even the Agricultural Bank of Egypt, which was specially established under the patronage of the Khedivial Government in order to free the fellaheen from extortion, charges 9 per cent, as its minimum rate of interest, yet, though this rate is infinitely lower than those charged by the local banks and by the land mortgage companies, the fellaheen, as a body, still prefer the village usurer, who, in con­sideration of the large interest he charges, will give the borrower time to pay, and does not sell him up at once if he happens to get into default I cannot see myself how the fellaheen can possibly make a sufficient profit, even out of good land, to enable him to get a living for himself and to pay interest upon two- thirds or three fourths of the purchase money at from 10 per cent, to 20 per cent. If he has done so hitherto, this has only been due to the very high price of the cotton crop; and if there should be any serious fell in this price the fellaheen, 1 am convinced, will, as a body, make default in pay­ment, the banks and financial institutions will forthwith call in their overdrafts, and there will be a "very bad quarter of an hour" for the borrowers. I am assured, however, by persons who speak with authority on these subjects that any serious fall in the price of cotton is very improbable, and that even if it should occur, and if the banks should call in their loans in consequence, the Government would be com­pelled to take steps to hinder any wholesale eviction of the small fellaheen landowners. I. am not myself fully satisfied with these assur­ances; but I am bound to say that local autho­rities do not anticipate any sudden fall in the present prices of land in Egypt. Moreover, there is this to be borne in mind. Even if a sudden "slump" should arise in the value of agricultural land its immediate effect would be to ruin a very large number of small holders who have borrowed money they could not afford to repay, and would thus become dispos­sessed of their lands ; but the intrinsic value of these lauds would remain the same, and pay the same land-tax as at present, so that the country as a whole would not he affected by any changes in the proprietorship.

A similar statement cannot be made, if my view is correct, with regard to the second cause of the present inflated prosperity—the sadden and extraordinary rise in the value of town building lots throughout Egypt. Owing to the general increase of wealth and to a conviction that this wealth may nowadays he displayed with impunity, the well-to do classes, unlike the fellaheen, are changing their modes of life. Instead of concealing their command of money they indulge in hitherto unaccustomed luxu­ries and become large purchasers of foreign wares, a fact which accounts for the extraordi­nary increase in the imports daring the last few years. The imports have gradually risen in value, till they almost surpass the exports. This change may possibly prove detrimental here­after to the financial position of Egypt, but its immediate effect has been to cause an extraor­dinary rise in the value of building sites. Within the last few years the class of landowners, whose income is not derived from manual labour, have adopted the custom of having houses in the town as well as in the country. The necessary result has been a sudden demand for town pro­perties, and a rapid rise in the values of such properties. The first thing which strikes any traveller who, like myself, knew Egypt well in the days before the British occupation, is the transformation which has taken place in what we should call the roadside towns, hut which •—as there are still no roads in Egypt—must, I suppose, be described as the railway and river-side towns. Everywhere one sees new and handsome stone houses replacing the old lath and plaster tenements, and even the mud-built hats of my early recollections. If you enter these towns you will find fairly good hotels, rows of flourishing shops, which have displaced the old windowless mud hovels, where the mer­chant sold his wares in the open-air ; and com- fortable carriages plying for hire in the streets. To some extent this is accounted for by the development of the railway system, and the great increase in the number of tourists, but it is mainly due to the constant immigration of well-to-do natives from the countryside into the towns.

I am told on all sides that the main cause of this immigration is usual in domestic matters all over the world—the influence of women. The ladies of the harem are determined to have residences in the towns, and as usual, their lordsand masters have succumbed to their predominant partners. To me, as an outsider, it is not very intelligible why ladies who, in town or country, reside, or are supposed to reside, within the harem, should attach much import­ance as to whether the harem is situated in the former rather than in the latter. In the East, however, as in the West, it is useless for a mere man to investigate the workings of the female intellect. If it is difficult to argue with one wife, it is still more difficult to argue with four legal wives, supposing they all happen to be of one mind, and a wise husband, in Africa as in Europe, gives way for the sake of peace to the wishes of the harem, whether monogamous or poly­gamous.

The inmates of the harem naturally prefer the capital to any provincial town, and I have no doubt the wealthy landowners, if they have any choice in the matter, however much they may dislike quitting their country homes, where they could look after their lands, are less reluctant to take up their abodes in the metropolis. For them, at any rate, Cairo has many attractions of a personal, political, or social character, far greater than those offered by the large provincial cities, such as Tantab, Zagazig, Mansourab,or D&manhonr, not to mention a score of others. Be this at it may, the exodus from the country has been mainly, though no be any means exclusively, directed to the capital. This exodus, commenced at least a dozen years ago, has gone on increas­ing year by year, and up to date has shown no sign of diminution At the outset the new houses required by the newcomers, Levantines as well as Mussulmans, were built to order, the builders having first satisfied them­selves as to the requisite funds being duly forth­coming. In so far as I can learn, what I may call speculative building only commenced about two or three years ago. New quarters of the town sprang up in the direction of the Abas- sieh and of Ghezireh. The price of land rose by leaps and bounds, and landowners, builders, contractors, upholsterers, and architects amassed large fortunes without incurring any serious risk of loss. The process of housebuilding con­tinued with such unchecked rapidity that the day seemed near at hand when no building ground could be found within the existing confines of the city. It was then that the era of speculative building commenced in earnest.

Cairo proper is practically confined between the Nile on the west and the Mokattam range of hills on the east. The site lying between these two boundaries is already covered by dwellings. The principal spaces left untouched for building purposes were roughly the desert land lying along the plain, across which the old railway ran from Cairo to Suez, in the days of the overland mail, and the partially culti­vated land about Ghizeb, on the western banks of the Nile. When I returned to Cairo last November, after two years' absence, I found Cairo in the course of reconstruction. The Ismailieh and Kasr el-Doubara quarters were built over up to the hilt. Everywhere whole streets of houses, which were quite new in 1903, were being pulled down in order to make room for new houses with additional storeys. To an old visitor like myself, who remembers the time when the desert commenced at the back of the then New Hotel, and when the Esbekieh gardens, now the Continental Hotel, were a sort of no man's land, haunted by pariah dogs, the city has lost much of its Oriental character. I coaid say a great deal more about the disfiguration of Cairo and especially about the enormity of building huge flats of many- storeyed buildings, shutting out the light and air from the streets in which they stand; but I am writing about Cairo, not from an artistic, but from a business point of view; and I must admit that if l had owned landed pro­perty in the city the certainty of being able to sell it at a fabulous profit would have conso­led me to a large extent for the desecration of a city which is to me almost a second home.

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