osques rising and
glittering over the sea of houses. Here and there, green gardens are
islanded within that ocean, and the whole is girt round with
picturesque towers, and ramparts occasionally revealed through vistas
of the wood of sycamores and fig-trees that surround it. From Boulac I
was conveyed to the British Hotel at Cairo, the Englishman's home in
Egypt, conducted by Mr Shepherd, the Englishman's friend in the East.
The approach to Grand Cairo is charming and cheering, and altogether
as fanciful as if I had been carried with Aladin's lamp in my hand
through a fairy region to one of the palaces mentioned in the _Arabian
Nights of Entertainment_. I passed along a broad level path, full of
life and fancy, amid groves and gardens, and villas all glittering in
grandeur. At every turn, something more Oriental and magnificent than
anything I had yet seen presented itself. Along the level, broad
highway, a masquerading-looking crowd was swarming towards Cairo.
Ladies, wrapped closely in white veils, were carrying water on their
heads. Long rows of dromedaries loaded with luggage were moving
stately forward. Donkeys at full canter, one white man riding, and two
black men driving and thumping the poor brutes most unmercifully with
short thick sticks, were winding their way through the throng. Ladies
enveloped in flowing robes of black silk, and veiled up to the eyes,
were sitting stride-leg on richly-caparisoned asses, shewing off with
pomp a pair of yellow morocco slippers, which appeared on their feet
from under their flowing robes. And before these, clearing the way,
there were eunuch slaves crying: "Darak ya Khowaga-riglak! shemalak!"
which probably may mean: "Stand back, and let her ladyship pass!"
There were walkers and water-carriers, with goat-skins full on their
back; and fruit-sellers and orange-girls; and ourselves and others
driving at full gallop, regardless of all the Copts, Abyssinians,
Greeks, Turks, Parsees, Nubians, and Jews, which crowded the path. But
curiosity of this sort is soon satisfied, and these novelties are
passed, when I find myself in the midst of the city, more full of mud
and misery, dark, dirty twisting lanes, arched almost over by
verandas, and wretchedly paved or not paved at all, full of smells and
disgusting sights--such as lean, mangy dogs, and ragged beggars
quivering with lice, and poverty-stricken people; all this more than
the whole world can produce anywhere else, not excepting e