ith picturesque towers and ramparts, occasionally
revealed through vistas of the wood of sycamores and fig-trees that
surround it. It has been said that "God the first garden made, and the
first city Cain," but here they seem commingled with the happiest
effect.

The objects of interest in the neighbourhood of Cairo are very numerous.
Let us first canter off to Heliopolis, the On of Scripture. It is only
five miles of a pathway, shaded by sycamore and plane-trees, from which
we emerge occasionally into green savannahs or luxuriant cornfields,
over which the beautiful white ibis are hovering in flocks.

In Heliopolis, the Oxford of Old Egypt, stood the great Temple of the
Sun. Here the beautiful and the wise studied love and logic 4,000 years
ago. Here Joseph was married to the fair Asenath. Here Plato and
Herodotus studied and here the darkness which veiled the Great Sacrifice
was observed by a heathen astronomer, Dionysius the Areopagite. We found
nothing, however, on the site of this ancient city, except a small
garden of orange-trees, with a magnificent obelisk in the centre.

_IV.--The Market of Sorrow_

One day while in Cairo I went to visit the slave-markets, one of which
is held without the city, in the courtyard of a deserted mosque. I was
received by a mild-looking Nubian, who led me in silence to inspect his
stock. I found about thirty girls scattered in groups about an inner
court. The gate was open, but there seemed no thought of escape. Where
could they go, poor things? Some were grinding millet between two
stones; some were kneading flour into bread; some were chatting in the
sunshine; some sleeping in the shade.

One or two looked sad and lonely enough, until their gloomy countenances
were lit up with hope--the hope of being bought! Their faces for the
most part were woefully blank, and many wore an awfully animal
expression. Yet there were several figures of exquisite symmetry among
them, which, had they been indeed the bronze statues they resembled,
would have attracted the admiration of thousands, and would have been
valued at twenty times the price that was set on these immortal beings.
Their proprietor showed them off as a horse-dealer does his cattle,
examining their teeth, removing their body-clothes, and exhibiting their
paces.

It is like the change from night to morning, to pass from these dingy
crowds to the white slaves from Georgia and Circassia. The commodities
of this department of