other people.'" He then talked about the various military routes to Cairo, Bonaparte's, by the left bank of the Nile, and especially the desert way between the Suez Canal and the Delta, so that I felt pretty sure that if troops were landed it would be on that side. But I was careful to give him no information which could be of the least use to him, and I only laughed when he half seriously asked me whether I would go with him and show him the way if it came to a campaign. My impression of Wolseley was of "a good smart soldier, an Irishman, with a rough touch of brogue, good humoured, and I should fancy enterprising. But he does not impress me as a man of genius—what Napoleon used to call a 'général à dix mille hommes.'" It is worth noting that in writing to Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, through my secretary, Sabunji, soon after this conversation, I alluded to the danger there might be, in case of intervention, of their being attacked from the Ismaïlia side, and I believe it was in consequence of this hint that the lines of Tel-el Kebir were begun to be traced by Arabi's order.
The same day I saw Lyall, whom I found just starting for India, where he had been named Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces. I found him much less sceptical about the National Party in Egypt than was the case then with most Anglo-Indians. In the evening I dined with Hamilton and Godley, Gladstone's two private secretaries, and