settled." Then, alluding to the excitement there was at Alexandria, he added, "You will telegraph at once to Omar Pasha Lutfi [the Governor of Alexandria] and the commander of the garrison at Alexandria to say you have resigned your charge on me, and that you are acting as my agent, and on Monday there will be a meeting of the Consuls and the Khedive, and we will give you your discharge." Arabi, however, refused to do this, declaring that until he had received his written discharge he should retain his post and his responsibility. And so, without a definite understanding having been come to between them, he and Mahmud Sami
Such is the account, I believe a true one, told by Ninet and confirmed by others who should know of this important interview. It took place about noon on Saturday, the 10th of June, and is of importance in many ways and especially for its bearing on what followed the next day, as is notorious, a riot, originating in a quarrel between an Egyptian donkey boy and a Maltese, broke out there about one o'clock in the forenoon and continued till five, with the result that over two hundred persons lost their lives, including a petty officer of H. M. S. "Superb," and some two hundred more Europeans.
Also Cookson, the English Consul, was seriously hurt, and the Italian and Greek Consuls received minor injuries, the disturbance being only quelled by the arrival of the regular troops. It was the first act of popular violence which, during the whole history of the year's revolution in Egypt, had been committed, and the news of it, spread throughout Europe by telegraph, produced, especially in England, a great sensation.
As the responsibility for this affair, so unfortunate for the National cause in Egypt, was afterwards laid upon the person it had most injured, Arabi, and as the incident was made use of by our Foreign Office and Admiralty, with other excuses not less unjust, to bring about the