Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/259

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A KHEDIVIAL PROGRESS
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all this flashing light and movement there was something positively uncanny in the accompanying silence. The roar of an English crowd as large as this would have been heard a mile off; yet this multitude, which for hours past had been deafening us with their incessant din, now stood before the Prince whose coming they had so long and patiently awaited, without uttering a single cry of welcome! True types of that mute and unresisting people who have known so many masters, and through and over whom, from the earliest ages of recorded history, conqueror after conqueror has swept as swift and dreamlike as Abbas Pasha and his train.