THE EGYPT OF TO-DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 22 April 1907, Page 4

THE EGYPT OF TO-DAY.

Ten years ago Egypt was a country of the dead. Its interests lay in the graves of another age. Its landmarks were qbelisks and pyramids, the monuments of the buried past. Its most renowned inhabitants were mummies. Its most valued visitors were archaeologists, excavators of tombs, translators of hieroglyphics, prospectors after prehistoric papyri. To-day Egypt is a living land. Its interests lie in its bourses and in its markets, in its crops and its products, lis landmarks are cities and villages, railways, and electric-power stations. Its most celebrated inhabitants are men of affairs, practical citizens of a practical world devoted to (lie development of the land. Its most important immigrants arc instigators of commerce, engineers, contractors, capitalists, and reclaimers of waste land-. Ten years ago Egypt imported goods to the "value of £S,i)OO.O(Xh To-day it imports goods to the value of £21,000,000. Ten years ago Egypt gazed backward with regret to a glorious past. To-day it looks forward with confidenea to a prosperous future. Ten years ago Cairo was a cilv of th< Orient. Its European population screened it-elf in cool Arab houses whose faces were turned away from the passers by. To-day Cairo is a metropolis of manystoreyed office buildings, of bold-vis-aged houses, of gigantic hotels. The natives, who lay hid in the gloomy interstices of the Muski, now occupy modern flats replete with Western conveniences in the broad garden-lands along the Nile. The offices are banks and insurance bureaus, lawyer's chambers and the business names of commercial agents. The hotels are the caravansaries of the globe-trotters. Everywhere is sign of wealth and prosperity. Egypt is booming, and the evidences of riches are to be seen in the equipages of the townsfolk. in the costumes of the women, in the jewellers' windows of the Ezliekiych. The figure of its well-being arc to be read in the pages of the almanac, and the reference-books .—Douglas Story, in the Tribune.