Egypt as We Knew It. By E. L. Butcher. (Mills
and Boon. 6s. net.)—The " we " of the title is, it may be explained, Mrs. Butcher, who writes the book, and her husband, the late Dean Butcher. They knew Egypt as it was under the Khedive Ismail ; they knew it for many years as it was under the British occupation. Little more than thirty years have passed since Ismail departed with bag and baggage—his harem when he went filled thirty-three carriages, while nine hundred women were left behind—and the difference between the two Egypts is greater than centuries before had brought about. A curious instance is given in the labourers' songs of the two periods. When the Suez Canal was in making, a traveller heard the labourers chant:—
Strophe: " We are all in rags, we are all in rags."
Antistrophe : "That the Sheik may be dressed in black." When Lord Cromer's house was being built, it ran :— Strophe: "The howaga is good."
Antistrophe : "The howaga is good."
(Howaga means "foreigner.")
We hear about all sorts of things and persons, grave and gay : of christenings and marriages—an Egyptian marriage, if it is a "mixed," is a very complicated affair—about buying and selling, and, we are sorry to say, about robbing, and that in a most audacious way. Altogether this is a most entertaining book, and not a little instructive, too.
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