Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/73

Rh slope outside. They still point you out the corner of the enclosure at which this desperate leap for life was taken, and from it, if the stately edifice which surrounds the body of Mohammed Ali were removed, you could pitch a pebble on to his tomb. So near to the death-place of the great company of his murdered victims did the slayer of the Mamelukes choose his last resting-place, nothing doubting, I daresay, of his own place in Paradise.

They had none of our weak Western misgivings on the subject of necessary, or what they deemed unnecessary, bloodshed, those Oriental princes of the old school, and none assuredly troubled the repose of Mohammed Ali. At the opening of the overland route to the East and South, a few years before the close of the Pasha's long life, a now aged Englishman passed through Egypt, among the first batch of travellers returning from one of our Australasian colonies. He and his companions were royally entertained at