How fair the prospects in Egypt still were in the first week of April, notwithstanding the many rumours of disturbance there which were being spread through Europe, may be judged from the following two letters written to me at that time by Arabi, and still more by a third which I received at the same time from Sheykh Mohammed Abdu. Sheykh Mohammed Abdu's high character throughout his life for the strictest veracity and the exalted position he now holds as Grand Mufti of Egypt, give to his testimony a historical value which can hardly be exaggerated, and may well be placed in accepted contradiction of the multiform falsehoods of the Blue Books. His functions that spring as Director of the Official Journal and Censor of the Press at Cairo put him, moreover, in a position of knowledge as to what was passing in the counsels of the National Ministry, which neither Malet nor Colvin nor any European in Egypt could at all pretend to. I draw the special attention, therefore, of historians to these convincing documents:
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CHAPTER XI THE CIRCASSIAN PLOT
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