vered.

No visit to Cairo is complete without a sight of Old Cairo, with its
bazars. This is a quarter of the city that remains as it was in the days
of the Caliphs. It is inhabited mainly by Copts and among the mean
houses, built of sun-dried bricks, may be traced part of the old Roman
wall that encircled this suburb, then known as Babylon. The houses are
mainly of two or three stories, but the streets are so narrow that two
people on opposite sides may easily join hands by leaning out of their
windows. Many or the antique doors of oak, studded with great
wrought-iron nails, still remain. Here is the old church of St. Sergius,
which is said to antedate the Moslem conquest. In the ancient crypt the
Virgin Mary and the Child are said to have sought shelter after their
flight into Egypt.

Near by is the island of Roda, which is noteworthy for the legend that
here the infant Moses was found by Pharaoh's daughter. The visitor
crosses a narrow arm of the Nile by a crude ferry and then walks through
a quaint old garden to a wall that overlooks the Nile and the Pyramids.
This wall marks the spot, according to local tradition, where Moses was
taken from the bulrushes. The bulrushes are no more because they have
been dredged out, but the place has the look of extreme age and the
garden contains many curious trees.

AMONG THE RUINS OF LUXOR AND KARNAK

Luxor, the ancient city of Upper Egypt, which may be reached by a night
train ride from Cairo, is the center of the most interesting ruins on
the Nile. The city itself has been built around the splendid temple of
Luxor, founded by Amenophis III, but altered and extensively rebuilt by
Rameses II. From the Nile the colonnade of this temple is a beautiful
spectacle, as the huge columns are in perfect preservation. Big tourist
hotels make up most of the other buildings. The town boasts a good water
front, which is generally lined in the winter season with tourist
steamers. The view across the Nile is fine, as it includes the lofty
Libyan range of mountains, in whose flanks were cut the tombs of the
Pharaohs. Here, in two or three days, one may study the ruins of Luxor,
Karnak and Thebes--names that the historian still conjures with.

All the Egyptian temples were built on one general plan, like the
mosques of North India, and Luxor does not differ from the others,
except that it surpasses them all in the beauty of its colonnaded
pillars. Seven double columns, about fifty-two fee