and that, with the occupations indispensable in my position, I shall not so soon be master of my time. Hence I know not when I may be able to resume my pen.

LETTER XLVII.

CAIRO-DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY-ABDALLAH PACHA.

Cairo, January 25th, 1833.

I return to you, my dear friend, sooner than I hoped at the moment when I was finishing my last letter. Business, and the first perplexities with which I found myself beset, made me fear that I should be obliged to defer the pleasure of writing to you much longer. Luckily, I have been able to dispose of all indispensable matters in a few days; and, this task performed, I began as usual to run about, to see, to observe, to question, to pick up the observations of others, and now I hasten to transmit to you at least part of the result.

The capital of Egypt is not called by the Arabs El Kahira, the Victorious, the name given to it by its founder. They commonly call it Masr, which some take to be derived from the first syllable of Misraim (Egypt), and which, according to others, signifies the Beautiful Place. The Arabs likewise name it Omm el Dounya, mother of the world, great among the great, delight of the imagination, smile of the Prophet. It is situated on the right bank of the Nile, with which it communicates by means of a canal. It is composed of three totally distinct parts, about half a league asunder-Boulak to the south, Old Cairo to the east, and Cairo, properly so called, or Grand Cairo, to the north of Boulak.

Boulak, considered as a suburb of Cairo, is its principal port: it forms a separate town. It was built in the first century of the Hegira. Its population, small before the usurpation of Mehemet Ali, has since risen to more than eighteen thousand souls, and is fast increasing every day. It contains some very handsome new buildings, mostly in the European style they have been erected by the command and at the expence of the viceroy. Among them are the custom-house, the Arabic printing-office, a college, baths, manufactories, and a superb cannon-foundry.

Old Cairo, according to some historians, dates from a period anterior to Cambyses, that is to say, earlier than the fifth century before Christ. It is, according to them, the ancient Egyptian Babylon. The discussion of this opinion would be foreign to the subject of these letters: if it be true, we must conclude that Amrou, Omar's general, to whom other writers attribute the foundation of Old Cairo by the name of Fostat, only rebuilt the city. It forms a second port.

Cairo, properly so called, or Grand Cairo, stands in a sandy plain. According to the plan of it, drawn about the middle of last century by Niebuhr, this city, with the other two parts, which are commonly comprehended in one general name, is at least three leagues in circumference. But the ground comprised within that compass is by no means like that of our great European cities, entirely covered with buildings, streets, and public places. Besides numerous and extensive gardens, you remark many vacant spaces, and a great quantity of ruins. These, owing to the animation imparted to the

city, are disappearing at several points, to make room for the buildings and embellishments which the activity of the viceroy delights in creating.

In coming from Boulak-where, as I told you, we landed-Cairo, which, when seen from any other side, exhibits a cheerful and pleasing aspect, appeared to be but a confused mass of brick walls and houses, among which we could not even distinguish any public buildings civil or religious, which, on the approach to great cities, in general strike the eye at a distance, either by their form or their elevation. This was to us a subject of no small surprise. But what astonished me much more was, that almost countless multitude of unpaved, narrow, irregular, crooked streets, which seem to have no outlet, such as I have not remarked elsewhere since I have been in the East. There are some through which a man on horseback can scarcely pass. The broadest are those where persons of a certain rank reside, and those of the markets; these it is necessary to cover over-head, to screen them from the sun, whose heat is insupportable. Some are almost deserted, others extremely populous, and the latter are most numerous. The crowd in them is immense, pushing, pressing, rushing, like the waves of the sea. It is difficult to get through it. When I go out, a janissary precedes me with uplifted cane; and it requires all his threats and the utmost efforts of his lungs to clear a passage for me. Harems, under the care of eunuchs, files of camels heavily laden, piquets of soldiers going to relieve guard, high personages on horseback or on mules, persons of all conditions on asses, are incessantly meeting, crossing, gliding past each other, and,

most extraordinary! all threading their way, with more or less speed, without collision, without accident, even in places which appear to be completely blocked up by the multitude. Persons who are not on foot are always attended by saïs, a sort of grooms, whose duty it is to make way for their employer, and to hold the animal that he rides when he alights, and stops any where. With the incessant cries kept up by these saïs of " Room there!" which ring on every side, are mingled those of children, whom their mothers are carrying in their arms or on their shoulders, those of dealers offering their wares, those of the many blind people who jostle you, the braying of asses, the barking of dogs, producing together a din to which any ear that is not Egyptian can scarcely get accustomed.

The streets of Cairo are divided into fifty-five quarters, which are shut in by gates. Several of these quarters are designated only by the name of those by whom they are inhabited, as the quarter of the Franks, that of the Greeks, the Copts, the Jews. This last is the worst built and the filthiest. In each of them you meet with numerous water-troughs for animals, and several cisterns for the supply of the population; but the water is in general bad, and has a disagreeable taste; so that it is only the poor, or passengers pressed by thirst, that fetch or drink of it. People in general prefer drinking the Nile water, which is fetched from the river in skins.

According to Father Sicard, a celebrated Jesuit, who died at Cairo about the beginning of the last century, there was at that time in the city but one large square, that of Roumelyeh: there are now four, remarkable for

238

HOUSES AND MOSQUES.

their extent, exclusively of a much greater number of small ones.

The houses differ from those which I have seen in other cities of the East, in being most of them two, and even three, stories high. As they have very low doors, and no windows next the street, nothing is to be seen but high naked walls, which give them a duller appearance than that of a prison. Most of them are of brick. Ill built and worse arranged, they are generally inconvenient, with the exception, however, of those of wealthy people, and the palaces of persons holding offices and dignities; but even these exhibit no external indications of grandeur and magnificence. Luxury and decorations are reserved exclusively for the interior, and for the courts, several of which are paved with marble, and adorned with basins, from the centre of which rise fountains, that, while they adorn, keep them at the same time refreshingly cool.

The mosques, in general, are distinguished from the other public buildings by the regularity and elegance of their construction. They are very numerous. According to the accounts of older travellers, they amounted, a century ago, to seven hundred and twenty. I know not whether there is any mistake in the number; the moderns reckon no more than four hundred, including large and small.

I should be tedious were I to attempt to describe the baths, the bazaars, the warehouses for merchandize, and were I to add an account of all that has been done of late; suffice it, therefore, to observe, that those who have not seen the capital of Egypt for the last twenty years would