THE COVENT GARDEN OF CAIRO.

49

sympathetic donkey-boys. The rattle of the water-sellers' cups, the jingle of
the donkeys' bells, mingle with the cry of the seller of pistacchios, of rahatlakum,
of Helowa, of all the luxuries for Egyptian sweet-teeth. And here comes the
cafedjee, with coffee suitable for grave seigneurs-coffee which, for a copper,
we drink, not in vulgar draughts, but sip as nectar, more precious than golden
chartreuse or precious curaçoa; and the seller of cheap iced sherbets or
liquorice-water, that the faithful may imbibe without intoxication, if with colic.
Turning through a wide door to the right as we leave the Muski, we find
ourselves in a quaint old okella where congregate the cooks to buy rich stores
of fruit and vegetables-the Covent Garden of Cairo-in one corner of
which we find Parvis Magnus, maker of much furniture in beautiful antique,
both Pharaonic and Saracenic Egyptian style, as tempts the
æsthetic spendthrift to speedy ruin. And so we pass on, past
the place where stood the statue of Ibrahim, victor of Konieh,
but where it stands no more, since the iconoclastic Arabi rele-
gated it, as an impious representation of nature, to the Boolak
Museum-on to the Esbekieh, formerly a lake round which stood
the gay kiosks of the Memlooks, and now an artificial garden,
with sham lakes, sham rock-work, sham grass, fit emblem of the
sham civilisation of its creator, Ismail.

Cafedjee.

For the Cairo of to-day-the Cairo in which the average traveller spends nine-tenths of his time-is the creation of the last twenty years. Old Mohamed Ali was fain to be content with his Citadel for the first few years of his reign, for therein alone lay safety. Later, when his power was more secure, he built his B palace at Shubra, to the north on the banks of the river, not without taste of a barbaric oriental sort. Abbas, who deserved a better character than most historians have given him, half Bedouin as he was, loved the desert, and made his palaces in the Abbassieh and at Mex. Easygoing, voluptuous Said loved Alexandria, the sea, and the Canal. Ismail, the vaunted, over-praised civiliser of Egypt, had no higher ideal than that of making Cairo a miniature Paris, a city of boulevards and ballets, casinos and café-chantants. And so it is that the capital of Egypt has come to be the one city in the world near which you may trace the life of 7000 years.

The Scribbler, who was a nervous man, felt somewhat appalled at the idea of carrying the unsympathetic Turtle through a course of history at the rate of a day per ten centuries; but he had been rash enough to consent, and being withal conscientious, he determined to do it as thoroughly as possible.

M

B

50

SEQUENCE OF HISTORY.

"It was the misfortune of my life," he confided to the Sketcher, "to acquire
at an early age a considerable amount of desultory historical information, with-
out any chronological sequence. By the time I was eighteen, I was deeply
learned in various periods of history; my reading had ranged from Herodotus
to Macaulay, or I should speak more correctly if I said from
Macaulay to Herodotus, for I had the vaguest notion of what
I will call the sequence of history. The longer I have lived the
more convinced I am that half of even the educated world suffers
from the same defect. They are deep in periods, and yet are
ignorant of the most rudimentary knowledge of the connection
between them. I met once a man who had given much study to
the religions of the world; he was well versed in the niceties of
the early Christian sects; could discourse for hours on the Ego
and the Logos; was equally informed as to the life of Mahomet

B

and the rival pretensions of Ali and Othman; but
it happened one day at a dinner-table that a ques-
tion arose as to the right of Mahomet to the title
of "Prophet of God, " and the learned one denied
his right to the title because he had not predicted
the Messiah. Of course, in the next moment he
saw his mistake, but the confusion was there for a
second. Well, I feel that the soft and succulent
brain of our friend the Turtle has been committed to my keeping
for a week; that it is my duty in that time to make such impres-
sion as I can upon that yielding pulp; and as in the period
I can hardly pretend to give a history of 7000 years, I will try at
least to make the chronological framework or skeleton."

A Pistacchio Seller.

"Have you the remotest idea that he will ever be able to fill it in ?"

"Very little, I confess; but besides the chance of interesting the Doves, there is, I confess, the hope that I may interest you, or at all events myself."

"And how do you propose to begin?"

"With the Sphinx, of course, starting our little trip somewhere before the date of the creation, according to Archbishop Ussher; leading him, metaphoriIcally at all events, over the Pyramids to Boolak; hurrying him through the ancient empire and the Hyksos, and allowing him to linger over the mummies. The Ptolemaic period I tried to instil into him at Alexandria;

and, with a vault of some few thousands of years, we will carry him to Bablun, and then through mosques, beginning with the Gamr Amr, and finishing with the El Goriah. We will (metaphorically always) hang him at the Bab el Zuweilah with the last Borgite; massacre him at the Citadel with the Memlooks; let him realise Mohamed Ali at Shubra; and finally leave him panting and struggling on his back at one of Tewfik's receptions at Abdeen. Dost thou like the picture?"

"At first sight it seems, like 'Murray,' more instructive than amusing; but, I confess, it has its advantages-mainly that we shall be for 7000 years in the company of the lovely Enid and Iris, as I discover they are called."

The Scribbler looked grave. "Remember, my Gothic and inflammatory friend, that you have to do with the stern British père de famille, capable de tout, as Talleyrand said. The British paterfamilias is as stern a despot in his family circle as the Turkish Pasha; and if too attentive to the Doves, your headless trunk may be fiung into the river with as little ceremony as that of Goroun, or, at the best, you will be asked to state your intentions."

"Which," replied the other, "I should at once state as evanescent and unmercenary."

CHAPTER VII.

Pyramids of Ghizeh-Webbe's description, 1580 A.D.-Knolles, 1600 A.D.-SphinxPatronising Harriet and ingenious Verulam-Emerson and Stoddard—Recent excavation-Legend of Tutmes IV. and Sphinx-Tutmes and Wilson-Fellow pilferers-Chronological discussion-Archbishop Ussher-A compromise.

I

N accordance with the plan, our travellers started early the next morning for the Pyramids, and duly experienced all the totally contradictory associations of all travellers, from Herodotus to the latest of American Howadjis. These impressions may be studied with advantage from numerous guide-books, and are probably not much more accurate, and certainly less interesting, than the description given by that "simple man, void of learning," worthy Edward Webbe, who, in the time of good Queen Bess, was carried as a slave to the "Gran Caer," where he saw "Seauen Mountaines builded on the out side like vnto ye point of a diamond, which Mountaines were builded in King Pharoes time for to keepe Corne in, and they are Mountaines of great strength. It is also saide that they were builded about that time when Ioseph did lade home his Brethren's Asses with Corne, in the time of the great dearth mentioned in the Scripture; at which time all their Corne lay in those mountaines ;" or that other by Richard Knolles, author of "The Generall Historie of the Turkes," who wrote some twenty years later, presumably from hearsay :-" About fives miles distant from old Caire, on Affricke side, stand the Pyramides, monuments of the barbarous Ægyptian kings vanitie; whose proud names and titles Time hath worne out of those huge and wonderful buildings, of purpose made for the vaine eternising of their fame and endlesse wealth, so that of them it may now well be said,

Miramur perysse homines? monumenta fatiscunt

Interitus saxis nominibusque venit.

What wonder we that men doe die? the stately tombes do weare;
The verie stones consume to nought, with titles they bid beare.

Within them are the sepulchers of the old Ægyptian kings, divided into chappels, garnished with stone of great price curiously wrought. Yet are those