edge of a great plain, with heights rising close behind it, from which you can gaze upon it near enough to realize its grandeur, and yet far enough off to take in the whole panorama of the town. Very few capitals that I have ever seen fulfil these conditions. Paris, as seen from Montmartre, comes very near to my ideal. The view of London from Hampstead Heath would not be far from it, if that view could ever be visible through the smoke and fog. The spectacle of Moscow from the Kremlin, as I saw it in the pale sunset of a Russian winter day, has hitherto been the closest realization of my fancy I have ever looked upon. But the view of Cairo from the slopes of Mokattam, whereon stands the the Citadel of El-Kalah, surpasses them all in splendour. At your feet, as you pass from out the courtyard of the Mosque of Mohammed Ali, with its cloisters of alabaster pillars, lies the long broad line of Cairo. Over the vast expanse of flat stone roofs there towers a very forest of domes and minarets; beyond the city stretches a belt of palms and acacia-trees; beyond the trees the wide Nile stream, with its lagoons of flooded plains, shines brightly in the sunlight; and further on again, far as the eye can reach, there extend the desert sands, broken. only by the masses of the Pyramids.

VOL. II.

D

Hard by is the enclosure where the Mamelukes were massacred, and they show you still the crag from which the one survivor of the massacre leaped his horse down into the valley. Close at hand is the gorgeous Mosque which Mohammed Ali raised upon the spot where he carried out his dread purpose; and within a stone'sthrow is the well in which Joseph was left to die by his brethren, when they brought home to Jacob the coat of many colours. There are sceptics who dispute the story. Some men won't believe anything; but really, in these days of spiritualism, when so many demands are made upon your faith, I am quite prepared to accept the statement that this is the very original well in which Joseph was left for dead. There is, too, this merit about the view of Cairo from the Citadel, that on leaving it you come down at once into the true city. It is the stock remark about Constantinople that, if you wish to retain your impression of its magnificence, you should never see it except from a distance. A similar remark could not be applied to Cairo. The city may be dark and dirty within, but the darkness and dirtiness of its streets harmonize with the idea you form of it when you gaze upon it from without. You pass on and on through winding streets so tall, and withal so narrow,

that you can scarcely see the sky between the high stone-built houses, covered as their fronts are with any number of latticed wooden balconies, jutting out to meet each other. And overhead, wherever the street widens out at all, so as to let in the light, they have hung awnings of carpet stuff, or placed rough structures of planks across the street to shut out the sun; and the cold gloom of the streets conceals much, doubtless, of their shabbiness and squalor. On you pass, turning constantly from right to left, and so confused by the crowd of carriages, camels, donkeys, foot-folk, in which you are jostled to and fro, that you notice little of the shops or their inmates till you come out upon the Esbekieh, and find yourself in a quarter of broad streets, open piazzas, theatres, opera-houses, and palaces, all interwoven with groves of palm-trees. Then you go further across the plain, pass a straggling suburb filled with factories, railroads, canals, and wharves, and you are upon the banks of the Nile; and, looking back, you see the bare, sharpcut heights of Mokattam, standing out so bright and clear against the sky that they seem, though a mile or more away, to be within a stone's throw.

This, as I have said, is the route by which I would have my guests enter Cairo if I were manager in chief

of the Viceregal receptions. As it is, they quit the train in the heart of the manufacturing quarter; and it is only after they have wandered about for some time hither and thither that the beauty of Cairo is made manifest to their eyes.

THE MOOLED EL NEBBEH.

CAIRO, November 1.

୮

TO-DAY, according to the Moslem calendar, is the twelve hundred and ninety-eighth anniversary of the birth of Mahomet; and to-day, in consequence, the festival of the Mooled el Nebbeh-the birthday of the Prophet, to quote its popular name—was celebrated with such scant pomp and curtailed honour as is permitted in these degenerate times. I fancy somehow that, if the courteous purveyors who cater for the entertainment of the Viceroy's guests had had things quite their own way, the ceremony of the Doseh would not have been included in the list of spectacles to be witnessed by the invited. Young Egypt is not proud of the ancient customs of the country, and would hardly call the attention of its Frank visitors to the existence of religious rites as barbarous, if not as bloody, as those of Juggernaut. But, having heard that the ceremony would take place to-day as usual, and having requested permission to view it, I found my