ll shortly appear numbers of
these modern horrors, in mud and metal--factories or large hotels--which
multiply in this poor land with a stupefying rapidity. Then comes a mile
or so of uncultivated ground, mixed with stretches of sand, and already
a little desertlike. And then the walls of Old Cairo; after which begins
the peace of the deserted houses, of little gardens and orchards among
the ruins. The wind and the dust beset us the whole way, the almost
eternal wind and the eternal dust of this land, by which, since the
beginning of the ages, so many human eyes have been burnt beyond
recovery. They keep us now in blinding whirlwinds, which swarm with
flies. The "season" indeed is already over, and the foreign invaders
have fled until next autumn. Egypt is now more Egyptian, beneath a more
burning sky. The sun of this Easter Sunday is as hot as ours of July,
and the ground seems as if it would perish of drought. But it is always
thus in the springtime of this rainless country; the trees, which have
kept their leaves throughout the winter, shed them in April as ours
do in November. There is no shade anywhere and everything suffers.
Everything grows yellow on the yellow sands. But there is no cause for
uneasiness: the inundation is at hand, which has never failed since
the commencement of our geological period. In another few weeks the
prodigious river will spread along its banks, just as in the times
of the God Amen, a precocious and impetuous life. And meanwhile the
orange-trees, the jasmine and the honeysuckle, which men have taken care
to water with water from the Nile, are full of riotous bloom. As we pass
the gardens of Old Cairo, which alternate with the tumbling houses, this
continual cloud of white dust that envelops us comes suddenly laden with
their sweet fragrance; so that, despite the drought and the bareness of
the trees, the scents of a sudden and feverish springtime are already in
the air.

When we arrive at the walls of what used to be the Roman citadel we
have to descend from our carriage, and passing through a low doorway
penetrate on foot into the labyrinth of a Coptic quarter which is dying
of dust and old age. Deserted houses that have become the refuges of
outcasts; mushrabiyas, worm-eaten and decayed; little mousetrap alleys
that lead us under arches of the Middle Ages, and sometimes close over
our heads by reason of the fantastic bending of the ruins. Even by such
a route as this are we conducted