Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/651

Rh The following is a summary of the consolidated debt:—

Not included in the foregoing statement is a loan of the Kehdive of 7,142,860l. contracted in Paris and London, May 1870, on the mortgage of his private domains, known as the 'Daira Sanieh.' The loan, bearing interest at 7 per cent., was issued at the price of 78½ per 100, and was announced to be repayable by half-yearly drawings at par, in 20 years.

The army is raised by conscription. It consisted, in January 1869, of four regiments of infantry, of 3,000 men each; of a battalion of chasseurs, of 1,000 men; of 3,500 cavalry; 1,500 artillery; and two battalions of engineers, of 1,500 each. There is, besides, a regiment of black troops, of Sudan, numbering 3,000 men.

The Egyptian navy comprised, in 1869, seven ships of the line, six frigates, nine corvettes, seven brigs, eighteen gunboats and smaller vessels, and twenty-seven transports.

Population and Trade.

The territories under the rule of the Khedive, including those on the Upper Nile, are vaguely estimated to embrace an area of 31,000 geogr. square miles, and to be inhabited by a population of 7,000,000, of whom about two-thirds in Egypt proper. The latter is divided from of old into three great districts, namely, 'Masr-el-Bakri,' or Lower Egypt; 'El -Dustani,' or Middle Egypt; and 'Es-Said.' or Upper Egypt — designations drawn from the course of the river Nile, on which dppends the existence of the country. These three geographical districts are subdivided into eleven administrative provinces, which, according to a superficial enumeration made by the government, had the following rural population in 1862.—