self-government among his own Turkish subjects. To it the Liberal party at Constantinople owes more than to anything else its ruthless persecution, and it is even not too much to say that whatever woes have been inflicted on the Armenians have been caused by the false hopes raised at Berlin of their emancipation by England's moral help, a help her own immorality has made her powerless to give. The immediate effect in Egypt of the compromise come to with M. Waddington was the despatch of a telegram from Berlin to Wilson at Alexandria ordering him, much to his chagrin and surprise, to see that in all the financial appointments made in connection with his official inquiry, France should receive an absolutely equal share. It was, indeed, though unknown to Wilson at the time, the determining cause, a year later, of the Anglo-French condominium.1
Public affairs were in this position when in the autumn of that same year, 1878, I found myself once more upon my road eastwards. My journey of the winter before to Bagdad, and especially the success I had had in a matter much more interesting to me than any politics, the purchase and bringing safely home of the Arab mares which were to form the nucleus of my now well-known stud at Crabbet, had roused considerable interest and curiosity in England, and I had spent the summer preparing my wife's journal for publication, and it was now in the Press. We were not content, however, with this, and had made up our minds to a new expedition still more adventurous than any we had yet attempted, and were on our way back to Damascus, from which starting point we designed to penetrate into central Arabia and visit Nejd, the original home and birthplace of the Arabian horse. Our sea-voyage from Marseilles would touch at Alexandria, and it so happened that I found on board the Messageries steamer at Marseilles my friend Sir Rivers Wilson who had just been appointed Finance Minister in Egypt, and in his company we made the voyage. During the six days' passage I had ample opportunity to learn from him all that had happened during the past two years at Cairo, and the tale he told me of the condition of the