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 200,0007. 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 ap proaching 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 beneath 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 Graven with emblems of the time. 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 a 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. tion for which they were originally hewn out of the granite quarries of Syene. They terminated avenues of columns or of statues, or stood in pairs before the entrance of the Propylea, and bore in hieroglyphic inscriptions the destination of the temples to which they belonged. People talk of the ruins of the temple of the Sun as being discoverable here: and there are reports about a sphinx, but we could discover neither. Here is the garden of Metarien, where grew the celebrated balm of Gilead, presented by the queen of Sheba to Solomon, and brought to Egypt by Cleopatra. On our return towards Cairo, we were shown the fountain which refreshed and the tree which shaded the Holy Family in their flight to Egypt. Another day we went to Shoobra, the palace and garden of Mehemet Ali. We rode along under a noble avenue of sycamores, just wide enough to preserve their shade, and, at the end of three miles, came to a low and unpretending gateway, picturesque, however, and covered with parasites. Without were tents and troops, and muskets piled, and horses ready saddled; but within, all was peace and silence. A venerable gardener, with a long white beard, received us at the entrance, and conducted us through the fairy-like garden, of which he might have passed for the guardian genius. There were very few flowers; but shade and greenery are everything in this glaring climate; and it was passing pleasant to stroll along these paths all shadowy with orange-trees, whose fruit, "like lamps in a night of green," hung temptingly over our heads. The fragrance of large beds of roses mingled with that of the orange flower, and seemed to repose on the quiet airs of that calm evening. In the midst of the garden we came to a vast pavilion, glittering like porcelain, and supported on light pillars, which formed cloisters surrounding an immense marble basin, in the centre of which sparkling waters gushed from a picturesque fountain. Gaily painted little boats for the ladies of the hareem floated on the surface of this lake, through whose clear depths gleamed shoals of gold and silver fish. In each corner of the building, there were gilded apartments, with di |