The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-07-07
EGYPT AS SHE NOW IS
Shylocks of Europe Bleeding the
People of History.
ATELEPHeYE LINE TO THE SPHINX
Farming Taxes Nine Dollars Per Acre-Real
Estate in the Land of Moses
Ehe Changes in Egypt.

CAIRO, Egypt, June 3, 1SS9.-lSpeclal
Correspondence of THE HERALD. Modern
civilization is making rapid strides in the
land of Egypt. The young giant of the
west whose itching palm is reaching out
towards Japan, China, Korea and the lands
of South Asia, has already a strong grip
on this birthplace of history, and the Egypt
of the past has days that are numbered.
Alexandria has long since arisen from the
ashes of the bombardment of seven years
ago, and it is now the size of Cleveland or
Washington. Its buildings are European
rather than Arabic, and its streets have
French names. Cairo, the city of the
Arabian nights, is fast becoming city
of Partisan nights, and the Mohammedan
call to prayer is mingled with the bacchan-
liam songs of the cafe chantants. Modern
science is
PULLING THE MUMMIEs FROM THE PYRAMIDS.
A telephone line runs almost to the very
ear of the Sphynx, and the old lady is be-
ing pulled from the sand by modern iron
cars made in Europe. There is hotel at
the base of the Pyramid of Cheops, in
which English men and women drink
brandy and soda, and the spirit of the nine
teenth century with some of it's virtues
and all of its vices is breathing new life
into the land of the Pharoahs. Egypt had
more than two thousand American visitors
this winter, and the amount left here by
Cooks tourists alone is now, 1 am told,
about two and one-half million dollars a
year. Cairo is becoming a winter residence
city, and it has hundreds of mansions
which would do credit to New York or
Paris. Real estate mas rapidly risen in
value, and the land upon which the baby
big price per square foot. When l visited
Cairo about eight years ago, the donkey
was the chief hackney cab Of the foreigner
and men, women and children went sight
seeing on long-eared beasts with donkey
boys in blue gowns following behind and
punching up the animals by polIing sharp
sticks into patches of bare flesh as big as a
dollar. each of which had been denuded of
skin for the purpose.
The hotels had Egyptian servants in tur
bans and gowns, and you called your boy
to your room by clapping your hands.
Now the Ishmaelitish hack driver has taken
the town and though he wears fez cap,
his dress is European and his cheek is as
hard as that Of an American cabby. The
donkey boys, though they are as bright as
ever, have lost their monopoly, and their
customers are confined to foreign men and
to the natives. Inside the walls of Shep-
heard's hotel where l am stopping, YOU
are as far from old Egypt as you would be
in the Grand hotel at Paris. The servants
are French, speaking Swiss, in black
swallow tail coats. The chambers have
electric bells, and the 81 a day which you
pay for your board does not include either
candles or soap.
The house is packed full and
THERE ARE COUNTS BY THE SCORE
and lords by the dozen At dinner you SEE
half of the men in steel pen coats and the
women in trains, low nccks and short
sleeves. There Is a babel of English
French and German, and the only evidence
that you are in theland of Pharoahs is the
tall palm trees which look wonderingly in
at the windows.
The dahibeye, or sail boat, which was
formerly the only means of going up the
Nile has been superseded by steamers as
comfortable as those which cross the
Atlantic, and the journey from Cairo to
the interior of Nubia is one of the easiest
and pleasantest in the world There are
now more than thousand miles of railroad
track in Egypt, and 1 travelled to Cairo
from Suez in an express train which made
as good speed as that of our trunk lines.
The steam engine screeched as we passed
through the land of Goshen, and at one of
the stations while telegraphing to Cairo, /
asked the price Of land in this country
which Joseph gave to his father, and was
told that it was worth at least $3.50 an acre.
crossed the path over which Moses lead the
Israelites, and in which Pharaoh was
drowned, and drove out this afternoon in
an American buggy to the site Of Heliopo
lis, where Plato studied, and near which
stands the old tree in whose hollow trunk
the Virgin Mary hid herself with the child
Jesus during the fight to Egypt. In pass
ing
THROUGH THE STREETS OF CAIRO,
l saw the troops of the Khedive clad in &
uniform like that of the soldiers of Europe
and among them were English officers and
the red coats of the English army of occupa
ton. The great governments of Europe
now control Egypt. England dictates the
actions of the hhedIve, and foreign lnttu-
ence permeates every part of the govern
ment The European bond holders practi-
cally own the country and the lands of the
Nile, if sold out at auction, would hardly
bring the value of the mortgages which the
Rothschilds and others hold upon them.
The people are ground down by taxation
now as they have been under the most ex-
travagant of their rulers in the past, and
the Egyptian improvements above men
toned, which are mainly for the benefit of
the foreigners, have come out of the peas
ants. Whatever Egypt may be in the
future il is terribly oppressed TO-DAY, and
the story of ireland is nothing IN COMPARE
son with the present condition of Egypt.
The Egyptians should be the richest in
stead of the poorest people of the world.
What wonderful country they have! 1t
is a valley of guano in the midst of des-
ert The land is as black as your hat, and
it now fe rms with crops as green as Kan
sas in June. 1t produces from two to three
crops every year, and its soil gives out
through the ages bounteous crops with no
other fertilizer than this water of the Nile.
Egypt is the gift of the Nile, and a wonder
full gift it is. The country under the
Khedive to-day is the narrowest kingdom
of the world. Extending between eight
and nine hundred miles above Cairo its
cultivable soil is no where more than nine
miles wide. and below here it spreads out
in a great, green fan, the ribs of which are
each little more than one hundred miles
long and the top of which does not measure
much more than the ribs. This fan is the
famed delta of the Nile, and with this long
narrow valley above it il makes the Egypt
of to-day. On the sides of this valley are
great tracts of desert of sand of glaring
yellow silver, more sterile than the plains
of Colorado or the alkaili plains of the
Rockies.
THE EGYPTIAN DESERT
is absolutely bare The rich fields d
Egypt come to its edge on either side, and
YOU can step from the greenest of grass on
to the dryest of sand, and standing on the
green with your face toward the desert, for
as far as the eye can reach, see nothing but
bleak, bare sand.
The whole of the soil Of Egypt has been
3o,,-,, from tho nOuntainc of