Edwards, Amelia B.: A thousand miles up the Nile (New York, [1888])

CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE. 27

begin; but the Europeans had had enough of it, and few
remained for the second performance.

Going out we paused beside the poor fellow on the floor,
and asked if nothing could be done for him.

" He is struck by Mohammed," said gravely an Egyptian
official who was standing by.

At that moment the leader came over, knelt down beside
him, touched him lightly on the head and breast, and
whispered something in his ear. The man was then quite
rigid and white as death. We waited, however, and after
a few more minutes saw him struggle back into a dazed,
half-conscious state, when he was helped to his feet and
led away by his friends.
_ The court-yard as we came out was full of dervishes sit-
ting on cane benches in the shade and sipping coffee.
The green leaves rustled overhead with glimpses of in-
tensely blue sky between ; and brilliant patches of sun-
shine flickered down upon groups of wild-looking, half-
savage tigures in party-colored garments. it was one of
those ready-made subjects that the sketcher passes by with
a sigh, but which live in his memory forever.

From hence, being within a few minutes' drive of old
Cairo, we went on as far as the Mosque of Amr—an unin-
teresting ruin stands alone among the rubbish-mounds of
the first Mohammedan capital of Egypt. It is constructed
on the plan of a single quadrangle two hundred and
twenty-five feet square, surrounded by a covered col-
onnade one range of pillars in depth on the west
(which is the side of the entrance); four on the north;
three on the south; and six on the east, which is the
place of prayer, and contains three holy niches and
the pulpit. The columns, two hundred and forty-five
in number, have been brought from earlier Roman
and Byzantine buildings. They are of various mar-
bles _ and have all kinds of capitals. Some being
originally too short, have been stilted on dispropor-
tionately high bases; and in one instance the neces-
sary height has been obtained by adding a second capital on '
the top of the first. We observed one column of that rare
black and white speckled marble of which there is a speci-
men in the pulpit of St. Mark's in Venice; and one of the
holy niches contains some fragments of Byzantine mosaics.
But the whole building seems to have been put together in