 England. There he eventually became a
cadet at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst; and, dying of pneumonia
in 1880, was buried, by royal command, just outside the Royal Chapel of
St. George at Windsor.

With further researches and interest in Africa, and the greater
enterprise resulting from them, came the desire for more possessions
which would afford valuable outlets for our trade.

The finding of the sources of the Nile, the discovery of the Great
Lakes, the possibility of valuable gold-fields, the comparative
healthiness of the African uplands in the interior, all emphasised
again the future value of the great water way which drained those
inland seas, and terminated in the Egyptian Delta. It is to some
extent now, and might be one day fully made, the natural highway to
the heart of the Dark Continent. Directly or indirectly, politically
or instinctively, possibly both, the value of Egypt as the doorway
to Ethiopia became prominent. Probably no statesman really saw it at
first. But “there is a Providence that shapes our ends, rough hew them
how we will,” and the road to Central Africa from this side seems to be
only opened by the sword.

So dismissing the Eastern littoral and Zanzibar, where the question of
the penetration of the interior is far more a question of railways,
so as to get over the fever belt, than one of soldiers, the land of
Egypt became a serious factor in the awakening of Africa; as it was a
serious factor in Mediterranean politics when Pharaoh was king. But
the employment of the British army in Egypt in 1884 rose from what
most people would call a mere accident. It is possible that nothing is
seriously “accidental.” But while British interference in Egypt in the
first years of the century was due entirely to our war with France, our
present interference seems to have come from an instinctive feeling as
to the importance of securing, and teaching Egypt to improve, the one
natural highway to the uplands of the centre of Africa.

Theoretical as this may be, the practical fact of ou