of donkeys, or a patrol of soldiers staggering along their slippery paths. If you make a purchase of any value, your merchant will probably offer you a pipe, and make room for you to seat yourself on his counter. If you are sufficiently citoyen du monde to accept the hospitality, you will be repaid by a very pleased look on the part of your host, and a pipe of such tobacco as only these squatters of the East can procure. The curious and varied drama of oriental life is acted before you, as you tranquilly puff away, and add to the almost imperceptible yet fragrant cloud that fills the bazaar. Now, by your host's order, a little slave presents you with a tiny cup of rich coffee, and you raise your hand to your head as you accept it; your entertainer repeats the gesture, and mutters a prayer for your health. Let us purchase an embroidered vest, or a silk scarf, from the venerable Abou Habib, for the sake of his snow-white beard and turban. He makes a movement, as if to rise, of which there is as little chance as of the sun at midnight; he points to the carpet on which "he hopes to Allah that your beneficent shadow may fall." You ascend his counter, and sit down in the place and attitude of a tailor with perfect gravity. Your dragoman lounges at the door to explain the sights that pass in the streets, or the sounds that issue from the lips of your entertainer. Conversation is not considered a necessary part of a visit, or of agreeability; and if you will only stay quiet, and look pleased, you may pass for a very entertaining person. You have, therefore, full leisure for observation, while you are enjoying society à l'orientale. In the absence of any claim on our ears, let us use our eyes and look about us. A house is being re-built nearly opposite, masons in turbans, and long blue chemises, and red slippers down at the heel, are engaged, as if in pantomime, with much gesticulation, but little effect. A score of children are carrying bricks and mortar in little handfuls, chanting a measured song, as if to delude themselves into the idea that they are at play. Now, a durweesh, naked except for a napkin, or a bit of sheepskin round his loins, presents himself, claiming, rather than asking alms: the wild, fierce eyes, in which the gleaming of insanity conveys their title to your forbearance, and to the Moslems' reverence; their long matted, filthy hair, falling over their naked sun-scorched shoulders, their savage gluttony, proclaim them something between a friar, and a saint of Islam. Here is a watercarrier with his jar of cool sherbet, adorned with fresh flowers: he tinkles little brazen saucers to announce his progress, and receives half a farthing for each draught. There is a beggar devouring his crust, but religiously leaving a portion of it in some clean spot for the wild dogs. Now an old man stoops to pick up a piece of paper, and to put it by, "lest," says he, "the name of God be written on it, and it be defiled." Here is a lady of some hareem, mounted à la Turque on her donkey, and attended by her own slave, and her husband's eunuch; she is a mere bundle of linen, though a pair of brilliant eyes relieve her somewhat ghastly appearance, which would figure excellently well in a tableau as a Banshee. All these, and a thousand other quaint personages, are perpetually passing and repassing, with hand upon the heart as they meet an acquaintance, or on the head if they meet a superior. But it is time to return Abou Habid's richly-mounted pipe, to lay our hands upon our heart, and to pursue our researches through the city. Mean-looking and crowded as is the greater part of Cairo, there are some extensive squares and stately houses. Among the former is the Esbekeyeh, by which you enter the city, a place perhaps four times as large as Lincoln's Inn Fields, occupied by a large plantation, divided by straight avenues, and surrounded by a dirty canal. A wide road, shaded by palm and sycamore trees, runs round this canal, and forms a street of tall mud-colored houses of very various architecture, some of which, the verandahs particularly, are very delicately and elaborately worked. The best buildings in the Esbekeyeh are the palaces of Ibrahim and Abbas Pasha, and the new hotel D'Orient, in which we had pleasant apartments-they looked over a cemetery, it is true, which was haunted by tribes of ghoul-like dogs; but, beyond this, were gardens, and kiosks, and palm-groves, and a glimpse of the Nile, and, above all, the Pyramids, far in the distance, yet by their magnitude curiously confounding the per spective. The Roumeleyeh is another wide space, where fairs and markets are held, and criminals are executed, and other popular amusements take place. The most interesting building in Cairo is undoubtedly the citadel, which, as I have before observed, overlooks the town. Mehemet Ali resides in it when he is in town. Here are the remains of Saladin's palace, and the commencement of a magnificent mosque, from the terraced roof of which there is perhaps the finest view in the world. All Lower Egypt lies spread out, as in a map, before you—one great emerald set in the golden desert, bossed with the mountains that surround it. There is in this citadel a place of great interest to antiquarian cockneys, because it is called Joseph's Well, although owing its origin to the Saracen*-not the patriarch; and also a respectable armory of native workmanship, a printing-press, and a mint, which coins annually about 200,000l. sterling in gold. This citadel was built by Saladin, and was very strong from its position, before gunpowder gave the command of it to a height further up on the Mokattam mountain. To me, the most interesting spot within these crime-stained precincts was that where the last of the Mamelukes escaped from the bloody treachery of Mehemet Ali. Soon after the Pasha was confirmed by the Porte in the viceroyalty of Egypt, he summoned the Mameluke beys to a consultation on the approaching war against the Wahabees in Arabia. As his son Toussoun had been invested with the dignity of pasha of the second order, the occasion was one of festivity as well as business. The beys came mounted on their finest horses, in magnificent uniforms, forming the most superb cavalry in the world. After a very flattering reception from the Pasha, they were requested to parade in the court of the citadel. They entered the fortification unsuspectingly, and the portcullis fell behind the last of the proud procession. A moment's glance revealed to them their doom. They dashed forward-in vain !—before, and around them, nothing was visible but blank, pitiless walls and barred windows, and the only opening was towards the *Saladin's, name was Youssoof, Arabic for Joseph. bright blue sky; even that was soon darkened by their funeral pall of smoke, as volley after volley flashed from a thousand muskets within the ramparts upon their defenceless and devoted band. Startling and fearfully sudden as was the death, they met it as became their fearless character-some with arms crossed upon their mailed bosoms, and their turbaned heads devoutly bowed in prayer; some with flashing swords and fierce curses, alike unavailing against their dastard and ruthless foe. All that chivalrous and splendid throng, save one, sank rapidly be. neath the deadly fire into a red and writhing mass-that one was Emim Bey. He spurred his charger over a heap of his slaughtered comrades, and sprang upon the battlements. It was a dizzy height, but the next moment he was in the air-another, and he was disengaging himself from his crushed and dying horse amid a shower of bullets. He escaped, and found safety in the sanctuary of a mosque, and ultimately in the deserts of the Thebaid. CHAPTER IX. HELIOPOLIS-GARDEN OF SHOOBRA-SLAVE-MARKET. Egypt's tall obelisk, still defying Time, JAMES MONTGOMERY Thence through a garden I was drawn, And deep myrrh thickets blowing round Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks ALFRED TENNYSON. THE objects of interest in the neighborhood of Cairo are very numerous. Leaving for the present the Pyramids, let us 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 4000 years ago. Here Joseph was married to the fair Asenath. Here Plato and Herodotus pursued philosophy and history; and here the darkness which veiled the Great Sacrifice on Calvary was observed by a heathen astronomer.* We found nothing, however, on the site of this ancient city, except å small garden of orange trees, with a magnificent obelisk in the centre. These obelisks seem never to have been isolated in the posi 5 * Dionysius, the Areopagite. |