now the suburb of Zeitoun stands, for which, at his suggestion, I offered fifteen piastres (three shillings) an acre. The same land is worth to-day, 1904, at least two hundred pounds an acre, ground value. But while I was in negotiation for it I chanced to hear that Sheykh Obeyd Garden was in the market, and I purchased it, so to say, "over the counter" from the Domains' Commission for £1,500. It was then the best fruit garden in Egypt, enclosed in a wall with a bountiful supply of water, and contained, on estimation, 70,000 fruit trees, all in splendid order.
The history of the garden is worth recording. It was a piece of good land standing on the desert edge, belonging in the early part of the nineteenth century to the Imam of Ibrahim Pasha's army during the campaign of Arabia but the Imam falling into indigent circumstances, the Pasha bought it of him, enclosed thirty-three acres with a wall, dug the sakiehs, and laid it out as it now is some time in the early thirties. The fruit trees with which it was planted were brought in part from Taif in the Hejaz, in part from Syria. Ibrahim had a passion to make it the best of its kind, and in his time and the time of his nephew, Mustafa, to whom it descended, the fruit from it brought in a yearly revenue of £800, the labour being all done by corvée of the fellahin of the neighbouring villages. The pomegranates of the garden were so large that it was a tradition with the gardeners there that thirty went to a camel load, and that they were sent yearly to Constantinople as a present to the Sultan. What is certain is that in the time of Ibrahim's grandson, Tewfik, when in his father's reign he was living in retirement at Koubba, the ladies of his household used to be carried there every Friday during the spring season to spend the day. In the ruin of Ismaïl's fortunes it came, in 1879, to the Domains Commissioners, and was one of the smaller properties scheduled by them for sale, and so it chanced into the market. On our way to Syria the year before we had camped one night outside its walls and had wondered at its beauty with the apricot trees in full flower. No sooner did I hear of it as a possible acquisition than I abandoned all other schemes of purchase; and in one of its shady walks I am writing my memoirs to-day.