DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11448#0069
CHAP. VIII.]
CAIRO.
43
of innumerable mosques rising, like enormous bubbles, over the
sea of houses. Here and there, richly green gardens are
islanded within that sea, and the whole is girt round with pic-
turesque towers and ramparts, occasionally revealed through
vistas of the wood of sycamores and fig-trees that surround it.
It has been said that " God the first garden made, and the first
city, Cain," but here they seem commingled with the happiest
effect.
The approach to Cairo is a spacious avenue lined with the
olive or the sycamore; here and there the white marble of a
fountain gleams through the foliage, or a palm-tree waves its
plumy head above the santon's tomb. Along this highway a
masquerading-looking crowd is swarming towards the city; ladies
wrapped closely in white veils, women of the lower class carrying
water on their heads, and covered only with a long blue garment,
that reveals, too plainly, an exquisite symmetry in the young,
and a hideous deformity in the elders ; there are camels perched
upon by black slaves, magpied with white napkins round their
head and loins ; there are portly merchants, with turbans and
long pipes, gravely smoking on their knowing-looking donkeys :
here an Arab dashes through the crowd at full gallop, or a Eu-
ropean, still more haughtily, shoves aside the pompous-looking,
bearded throng. Water-carriers, calenders, Armenians, barbers,
all the dramatis personce of the Arabian Nights, are there.
And now we reach the city wall, with its towers, as strong as
mud can make them. It must not be supposed that this mud
architecture is of the same nature as one associates with the
word in Europe. No ! overshadowed by palm-trees, and a
crimson banner with its star and crescent waving from the battle-
ments, and camels couched beneath its shade, and swarthy
Egyptians, in gorgeous apparel, leaning against it, make a mud
wall appear a very respectable fortification in this land of
illusion.
And now we are within the city ! Protean powers ! what a
change ! A labyrinth of dark, filthy, intricate lanes and alleys,
in which every smell and sight, from which the nose and eye
revolt, meet one at every turn, and one is always turning. The
stateliest streets are not aboye twelve feet wide ; and as the upper
CAIRO.
43
of innumerable mosques rising, like enormous bubbles, over the
sea of houses. Here and there, richly green gardens are
islanded within that sea, and the whole is girt round with pic-
turesque towers and ramparts, occasionally revealed through
vistas of the wood of sycamores and fig-trees that surround it.
It has been said that " God the first garden made, and the first
city, Cain," but here they seem commingled with the happiest
effect.
The approach to Cairo is a spacious avenue lined with the
olive or the sycamore; here and there the white marble of a
fountain gleams through the foliage, or a palm-tree waves its
plumy head above the santon's tomb. Along this highway a
masquerading-looking crowd is swarming towards the city; ladies
wrapped closely in white veils, women of the lower class carrying
water on their heads, and covered only with a long blue garment,
that reveals, too plainly, an exquisite symmetry in the young,
and a hideous deformity in the elders ; there are camels perched
upon by black slaves, magpied with white napkins round their
head and loins ; there are portly merchants, with turbans and
long pipes, gravely smoking on their knowing-looking donkeys :
here an Arab dashes through the crowd at full gallop, or a Eu-
ropean, still more haughtily, shoves aside the pompous-looking,
bearded throng. Water-carriers, calenders, Armenians, barbers,
all the dramatis personce of the Arabian Nights, are there.
And now we reach the city wall, with its towers, as strong as
mud can make them. It must not be supposed that this mud
architecture is of the same nature as one associates with the
word in Europe. No ! overshadowed by palm-trees, and a
crimson banner with its star and crescent waving from the battle-
ments, and camels couched beneath its shade, and swarthy
Egyptians, in gorgeous apparel, leaning against it, make a mud
wall appear a very respectable fortification in this land of
illusion.
And now we are within the city ! Protean powers ! what a
change ! A labyrinth of dark, filthy, intricate lanes and alleys,
in which every smell and sight, from which the nose and eye
revolt, meet one at every turn, and one is always turning. The
stateliest streets are not aboye twelve feet wide ; and as the upper