Hall of Private
Audience, Is One of
the Most Richly
Decorated Buildings In
India. The Ceiling
Was Originally Silver.
Over the Two Outer
Arches Is the Persian
Inscription:
"If Heaven can be on
the face of the earth,
It is this, oh! it is this,
oh! it is this"]

[Illustration: PLATE LV

Street View In Delhi,
With the Juma
Mashid. This Shows
the Variety of Life
In Delhi Streets. The
Juma Mashid Is One of
the Finest of the
Mohammedan
Mosques]

[Illustration: PLATE LVI

A Parsee Tower of
Silence at Bombay. This
Shows One of the
Unique Burial Places
at Malabar Head,
Where Dead Bodies
Are Exposed. Vultures
Strip the Flesh From
the Bones In a
Few Minutes]

EGYPT, THE HOME
OF HIEROGLYPHS, TOMBS
AND MUMMIES

PICTURESQUE ORIENTAL LIFE AS SEEN IN CAIRO

The first impression of Cairo is bewildering. None of the Oriental
cities east of Port Said is at all like it in appearance or in street
life. The color, the life, the picturesqueness, the noises, all these
are distinctive. Kyoto, Manila, Hongkong, Singapore, Rangoon, Calcutta,
Bombay and Colombo--each has marked traits that differentiate it from
all other cities, but several have marked likenesses. Cairo differs from
all these in having no traits in common with any of them. It stands
alone as the most kaleidoscopic of cities, the most bizarre in its
mingling of the Orient and the Occident.

Ismail Pasha, who loved to ape the customs of the foreigner, made a
deliberate attempt to convert Cairo into a second Paris, by cutting
great avenues through the narrow, squalid streets of the old city, but
Ismail simply transformed a certain quarter of the place and spoiled its
native character. What he could not do, fortunately, was to rob the
Egyptian of his picturesqueness or make the chief city of Egypt other
than a great collection of Oriental bazars and outdoor coffee shops, as
full of the spirit of the East as the camel or the Bedouin of the
desert.

The ride from Port Said to Cairo on the train, which consumes four
hours, is interesting mainly as a revelation of what the Nile means to
these people, who without its life-giving water would be unable to grow
enough to live on. With abundant irrigation this Nile delta is one of
the garden spots of the earth.

The villages that we pass remind