DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11448#0078
52
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS. [chap, ix
boquet, and a poetical gardener may make a flowery border do
duty as a sonnet: for,
" These are the lands where they talk m flowers,
And tell in a garland their loves and cares;
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers
On its leaf a mystic meaning bears "
A brilliant moon lighted our gallop back to Cairo : whose gates
were long since closed, but opened easily to a bribe.
In most cities we find a fringe of suburbs that prepares us for
the transition from busy streets to silent fields ; but at Damascus,
Jerusalem, and Cairo, the moment you issue from the gates you
are in the desert, and the hysena and the Arab prowl within
hearing of the citizen. In a lonely valley, about a mile from
Cairo, stand the tombs of the Mamelukes : these are mausolean
palaces of great beauty, and the richest Saracenic architecture ;
but they are now falling fast to decay, and only inhabited, or
rather haunted, by some outcast Arabs and troops of wild dogs.
They form a grand cemetery of their own, surrounded by the
desert.
The petrified forest is about five miles away. My friend R.
went there, and described it as a vast shelterless wilderness of
sand strewn with what seemed the chips of some gigantic car-
penter's shop. There are no roots—much less any appearance
of a standing tree. I have seen fragments of this petrified wood
in other parts of the desert, which seem to belong to the syca-
more and palm tree. They are found in the driest and most
shelterless places, and when living must have had a hard time
of it, exposed, like Niobe, to all the arrows of Apollo. Why,
however, they should have turned, like her, to stone, not even
the naturalists—those mythologists of phenomena—have satis-
factorily explained.
One of the sights which amused me most was a chicken-hatch-
ing oven. This useful establishment is at some distance from the
walls, and gives life to some millions of chickens annually. It
seems that the hens of Egypt are not given to sedentary occupa-
tions ; having been hatched themselves by machinery, they do
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS. [chap, ix
boquet, and a poetical gardener may make a flowery border do
duty as a sonnet: for,
" These are the lands where they talk m flowers,
And tell in a garland their loves and cares;
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers
On its leaf a mystic meaning bears "
A brilliant moon lighted our gallop back to Cairo : whose gates
were long since closed, but opened easily to a bribe.
In most cities we find a fringe of suburbs that prepares us for
the transition from busy streets to silent fields ; but at Damascus,
Jerusalem, and Cairo, the moment you issue from the gates you
are in the desert, and the hysena and the Arab prowl within
hearing of the citizen. In a lonely valley, about a mile from
Cairo, stand the tombs of the Mamelukes : these are mausolean
palaces of great beauty, and the richest Saracenic architecture ;
but they are now falling fast to decay, and only inhabited, or
rather haunted, by some outcast Arabs and troops of wild dogs.
They form a grand cemetery of their own, surrounded by the
desert.
The petrified forest is about five miles away. My friend R.
went there, and described it as a vast shelterless wilderness of
sand strewn with what seemed the chips of some gigantic car-
penter's shop. There are no roots—much less any appearance
of a standing tree. I have seen fragments of this petrified wood
in other parts of the desert, which seem to belong to the syca-
more and palm tree. They are found in the driest and most
shelterless places, and when living must have had a hard time
of it, exposed, like Niobe, to all the arrows of Apollo. Why,
however, they should have turned, like her, to stone, not even
the naturalists—those mythologists of phenomena—have satis-
factorily explained.
One of the sights which amused me most was a chicken-hatch-
ing oven. This useful establishment is at some distance from the
walls, and gives life to some millions of chickens annually. It
seems that the hens of Egypt are not given to sedentary occupa-
tions ; having been hatched themselves by machinery, they do