DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4996#0207
174 SINGULAR APPEARANCE OF CAIRO.
has had a tendency to abate, among the higher classes, the exclusive
influence of religious fanaticism, so characteristic of the Egyptians,
though the stream still runs strong and deep among the common
people. The cries in the market, the salutations of friends, the
supplications of beggars, the haggling of traders, the song of the
boatmen, and even the anacreontic of the rake, have all the same
curious infusion of pious sentiment. The invitation to prayer,
sounding from the galleries of the innumerable minarets, seems ever
to meet the ear, in rambling through the city, like a strain of
solemn music, chanted by viewless spirits in the air. Santons
and Dervishes, the objects of popular veneration, still abound
in the capital of Egypt, though the filthy fanatics described by
previous travellers, who went about the streets in a state of nudity,
are no longer to be seen ; neither is public decorum shocked by the
seductive exhibitions of the Ghawazee, or dancing-girls, once so com-
mon in Cairo, but now not to be had for love or money ; though the
traveller, while missing this characteristic amusement in the capital,
may console himself with the expectation of witnessing it up the
country, unless he is curious to see the not only more indecent,
but revolting, exhibition, when performed by those of the opposite
sex, which is allowed to be substituted by the Moollahs for the
genuine spectacle—a true instance, indeed, of " straining at a gnat,
and swallowing a camel."
During my first day I was completely absorbed and fascinated
with the strange novelty of everything I encountered. You step out
of your hotel * door, and are surrounded with a host of donkey-boys,
who start up from the corners of the streets, rushing at you from all
points, thrusting their animals upon your toes, and commending them
to you, as at Alexandria, in a Babel chorus of broken English and
Italian. I selected for my familiar a slender lad of thirteen, with one
of those roguish and nierry faces that Murillo alone could do justice
to—a precocious imp who, in my various rides, served well enough as
a cicerone, and whose odd and original observations, quaintly ex-
pressed in broken English, amused me much. Some Englishmen
* I must echo the praises justly bestowed upon Shepherd's.
has had a tendency to abate, among the higher classes, the exclusive
influence of religious fanaticism, so characteristic of the Egyptians,
though the stream still runs strong and deep among the common
people. The cries in the market, the salutations of friends, the
supplications of beggars, the haggling of traders, the song of the
boatmen, and even the anacreontic of the rake, have all the same
curious infusion of pious sentiment. The invitation to prayer,
sounding from the galleries of the innumerable minarets, seems ever
to meet the ear, in rambling through the city, like a strain of
solemn music, chanted by viewless spirits in the air. Santons
and Dervishes, the objects of popular veneration, still abound
in the capital of Egypt, though the filthy fanatics described by
previous travellers, who went about the streets in a state of nudity,
are no longer to be seen ; neither is public decorum shocked by the
seductive exhibitions of the Ghawazee, or dancing-girls, once so com-
mon in Cairo, but now not to be had for love or money ; though the
traveller, while missing this characteristic amusement in the capital,
may console himself with the expectation of witnessing it up the
country, unless he is curious to see the not only more indecent,
but revolting, exhibition, when performed by those of the opposite
sex, which is allowed to be substituted by the Moollahs for the
genuine spectacle—a true instance, indeed, of " straining at a gnat,
and swallowing a camel."
During my first day I was completely absorbed and fascinated
with the strange novelty of everything I encountered. You step out
of your hotel * door, and are surrounded with a host of donkey-boys,
who start up from the corners of the streets, rushing at you from all
points, thrusting their animals upon your toes, and commending them
to you, as at Alexandria, in a Babel chorus of broken English and
Italian. I selected for my familiar a slender lad of thirteen, with one
of those roguish and nierry faces that Murillo alone could do justice
to—a precocious imp who, in my various rides, served well enough as
a cicerone, and whose odd and original observations, quaintly ex-
pressed in broken English, amused me much. Some Englishmen
* I must echo the praises justly bestowed upon Shepherd's.