thoroughfares, which, though neither wide nor direct, answer the purposes of intercommunication between the different parts of the city. With these exceptions, the streets are all short and crooked, laid out without any system, and often terminating abruptly against walls and other structures. They are all narrow-few are ten feet wide. The average width may be six feet, while many do not exceed three. In the Jews' Quarter, here, as elsewhere, the worst part of the city, the streets are so narrow that it is difficult to walk in them. It is impossible to pass a loaded donkey without stepping into a door or some other recess. These dark lanes are crowded with the descendants of Jacob, who have the appearance of abject poverty and degradation. The few shops which I saw in this quarter were of the worst description, dark and dirty, with only the most beggarly supply of the meanest articles. I have learned, upon inquiry, that there is much real, and, according to the custom of the East, more apparent poverty among the Jews in this city. A few of them have property, and are in respectable business.

None of the streets are paved. There is, however, no mud, the dryness of the atmosphere absorbing all moisture. Dust is the greatest annoyance. It rises in clouds, and fills the air whenever the slightest wind blows. It enters the houses, and covers clothes, furniture, and food. I was advised to wear a veil as a protection to the eyes, but the minute particles of sand still found a way to my lungs in undiminished abundance.

Cairo cannot be called a clean city, yet I saw nothing to authorize the representations of travellers who speak of it as the dirtiest place in the world. It is less so than any of the towns in Greece-than Naples or Rome. I could mention cities in the north of Europe with which it might bear a favourable comparison in this respect. Its exemption from excessive filth is probably due more to the cli

HOUSES OF CAIRO.

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mate, which is too dry to admit of mud or putrefaction, than to any proper attention of the police. I did not see scavengers at work, as in other towns. The children and old women gathering manure, which they place in baskets carried on the head, are the only functionaries of this sort who came under my observation, and these were chiefly employed in the suburbs and entrances of the town.

The dung of camels, donkeys, &c., which is carefully gathered up in the streets and public ways by these poor people, is mixed with a little broken straw and water, and formed into thin cakes, which, after being dried in the sun, are used as fuel for cooking and warming apartments. The walls and roofs of many humble dwellings are covered with these unseemly ornaments.

The style of building here is peculiar-at least I have not observed it elsewhere. The first story of the better class of houses is for the most part constructed of hewn stone, with the alternate courses commonly painted red, and is sufficiently massive and solid. The second and third stories usually project two or three feet over the first, supported by beams of wood and sometimes by buttresses of stone, which stand out from the lower wall not unlike pilasters. It follows that, upon a street six feet wide upon the ground, the upper stories of the houses will meet, or nearly so. The light is thus obstructed or excluded, and the narrow streets made dark and gloomy at midday. The heat of the climate has probably given rise to this style of building, as it has to the awnings which extend quite across the wider streets, and wholly exclude the rays of the sun from all of the principal bazars. A bazar is something more than a market, as the word is used here. The name is applied to all the chief places of trade, comprising many whole streets.

Above the lower story the houses are, with very few exceptions, built of bricks or fragments of brick, laid in a mass of mud. Sometimes this wall is plastered and whitewash

ed; it is more frequently neither, when it has a very mean and dirty appearance. Half a dozen rainy days of an American climate would reduce them to a heap of rubbish. Here these frail structures may give shelter to successive generations of men. The roofs are flat, and covered with a coat of clay, or a composition of clay and gravel, which, like the mud walls, is sufficient for this benignant climate. The windows commonly project over the street. They consist generally of an oblong casement of lattice-work, variously constructed, and, in some instances, curiously carved or turned in wood. They are intended to admit a portion of light, and, at the same time, to prevent persons in the street from looking into the houses. The glass windows, when this material is used, are wholly or partially covered with this network of wood. The interior finishing of even the best houses is very coarse and rude, indicating very little skill in the mechanic arts.

It adds not a little to the gloomy aspect of Cairo, that all the larger thoroughfares, and a great many of the smaller streets and lanes, are shut up by low, narrow gates, which obstruct the moving crowd, and often quite prevent the passage of camels laden with bulky articles. These gates are closed soon after dark, when no person is allowed to walk in the streets without a lantern, on the penalty of being flogged upon the spot by the agents of the police, who perambulate every part of the town to preserve good order. The whole city is divided into wards, shut up at night by these barriers, each with its proper chief or sheik, who is clothed with ample and summary powers for the prevention of nocturnal disturbances and crime, an end which is said to be very effectually attained. The streets, which are not lighted, are perfectly still at night. One may walk over half Cairo without meeting a dozen persons, and these are commonly soldiers or Franks, with their servants carrying a lantern or torch before them.

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By far the finest structures in Cairo are the mosques, whether examined as single specimens of architecture, or considered only as beautiful objects, and in reference to their effect upon the appearance of the city. The eye of the traveller approaching the capital by the Nile, or looking upon it from some of the commanding elevations of Mount Mohattan, rests with delight and admiration upon the vast number of minarets, that rise far above all other edifices, and seem, at the distance of a few miles, to be clustered together like the masts of a fleet at anchor. The minaret of a Mohammedan mosque is a much more beautiful and striking object than the spires of our churches. It is circular in form, tall, slender, and graceful; perfectly white, and usually surmounted with a gilded crescent, which, in the clear sky of Egypt, seems to blaze in the rays of the sun. Two or three light galleries run around at different elevations, to which there is an ascent by a winding staircase within. Here the muezzin takes his lofty station when he chants the call to prayers. The body of the mosque usually consists of a gallery built around a square, open court. outer side of this structure, or that which looks upon the street, is merely a high wall formed of white stone, the alternate layers being painted red. The interior, or side next to the court, consists of a row of pillars, with the spaces between them left open. On the east side of this square, which is the part especially consecrated to worship, the gallery is of greater depth, and is supported by separate rows of columns, forming naves, which are occupied by the assembly of worshippers. There is usually no roof. The stone pavement is covered with mats or carpets, upon which the worshipper kneels to say his prayers. There are neither benches nor chairs. In the centre of the court is always a fountain, for the performance of those ablutions which precede all acts of Mohammedan devotion. There are four hundred mosques in Cairo, many of them in a very

The

dilapidated state, and no longer occupied for public worship. They are mostly the work of the Saracens. New ones are seldom built, as, indeed, there is no occasion for them, the number already in existence being far greater than is necessary for the wants of the inhabitants.

Cairo has at present a population of three hundred thousand, being a considerable increase within the last twenty or thirty years. The whole population of Egypt is known to have diminished considerably within that period. This is a phenomenon which can only appear under a despotic government viciously administered, where the people seek, in the metropolis and in the great central power, protection from the more grinding exactions of subordinate tyrants who are irresponsible, and, therefore, oppressive in proportion to their remoteness from the capital.

CHAPTER VI.

Artificial Mountains.-Great Nuisance.-Their Removal.-Environs of Cairo.-Plain of the Nile.--Fertility.-Villas.-Irrigation.-The Desert.— Necropolis.-Common Graves.-Cemetery of the Mamelukes.-Tombs of the Caliphs.-Sepulchral Mosques.-The Melancholy Fate of Egypt.-Question of Taste.-Excursion to Heliopolis.-Description of the Route. -Site of Heliopolis.-The Obelisk.-Other Remains.-Ruined Wall.--A Sacred Garden.-Tradition.-Miracles.-Venerable Tree.-Petrified Forest.-Palace at Shoubra.-Esbekieh.-Residence of Napoleon.-Noble Sycamores.-The Porter.-The Garden.-Kiosk.-Immense Bath.-Juvenile Artists.-The Palace.

THE stranger who, like me, enters Cairo in haste, blinded with dust, and distracted with a multitude of new objects, will be surprised, on his first visit to the environs, to discover that the city, though built upon a plain, is encompassed on all sides with a range of hills or low mountains, which almost equal in elevation its highest minarets.