Thompson, Joseph P.: Photographic views of Egypt, past and present (Boston, 1854)

CHAPTER IX.

" CAIRO THE MAGNIFICENT."

Nine days of sailing and pulling brought us from Alex-
andria to Grand Cairo — the " Cairo of the Caliphs, the
superb town, the Holy City, the delight of the imagination,
greatest among the great, whose splendor and opulence
made the Prophet smile." Friends who followed us a week
after in the steamer, had reached the capital in twenty-four
hours, but they had seen nothing of the Nile. We were
satisfied. Mounting donkeys at Boulak, the port of the
city, we rode through a broad avenue of sycamores and
acacias, for a mile and a half, and passing a guarded gate-
way, halted before an English hotel, facing the grand public
square and gardens of the capital. A grand square indeed
it is, that same Uzbekeeh — an area of forty or fifty acres,
adorned with palms, acacias, and gorgeous flowers, and
intersected by fine broad paths, — all open to the public
without restriction.-' There is no fence about it, but a neat
stone trench, about four feet wide and six in depth, sur-
rounds it upon all sides, and conveys the water of the Nile,
not only to refresh the gardens, but to cool the air of the
city. Here the gorgeousness of the East first bursts upon
you. The " Arabian Nights' Entertainments " now begin.
That which was shadowed forth as you sauntered under the
acacias and palms without the gates of Alexandria towards
Pompey's Pillar, opens with all its storied magnificence in
the Uzbekeeh of Grand Cairo.