Present-Day Egypt

FROM

CHAPTER I

IN FASCINATING CAIRO

ROM its founding in 969 by the Fatimite califs, as an offshoot of the tented settlement of Fostat, to the present rule of Abbas Pasha, seventh khedive, or viceroy, of the dynasty of Mehemet Ali, Cairo-capital of Egypt, metropolis of the African continent, and chief seat of Mohammedan teaching-has a romantic history. Scene of famous exploits of great personages, from Saladin to Napoleon, of sanguinary conflicts between Christianity and Islamism, and the memorable massacre of the Mamelukes; cradle of religions and cults; home of the "Arabian Nights" tales; the place where lasting principles of philosophy and science were conceived, and where Bible scenes were laid, Cairo has become the meeting-ground of winter idlers from every clime.

The visit to Egypt has become almost as essential to Americans-and fully half of the eight thousand winter visitors are from the United States

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as the pilgrimage of good Mohammedans to Mecca. The Mohammedans' religion takes them but once to the sacred city of the prophet, but pleasure draws those favored by fortune to the Nile capital time after time. Cairo is more than interesting: it is fascinating. The antiquarian, the student, and the savant have always been at home there; and the invalid-real or imaginary-seeking a climate, finds in and about the khedival city the superlative of air and temperature.

Artists never weary of reproducing Cairo's picturesque scenes and vivid colorings. The ether of the skies, the splendor of the setting sun, the Turneresque afterglow, and the delicate browns of the desert, can be best suggested in water-colors, for, like Venice, Egypt demands a master hand in oils.

The traveler of impressionable nature yields to the fascination of Cairo's quaint Eastern life, as perfect as if met far beyond the Orient's threshold, and doubly satisfying, because found within a halfhour of the creature comforts of hotels conspicuously modern. To walk the streets of an Oriental capital wherein history has been made, between meals, as it were, and delve by day in museums and mosques perpetuating a mysterious past, and dine de rigueur in the evening, with the best music of Europe at hand, explains a charm that Cairo has for mortals liking to witness Eastern life provided they are not compelled to become a part of it. If Egypt disappoints, the indecisive idler can in four or five days be back in Paris or on the Riviera.

Every turning in the old quarters of the Mohammedan city has its story. The remnant of a fortified gateway, a dilapidated mosque, a Cufic text, each has its history, perhaps carrying one back to the days when Saladin went forth from El-Kahira to meet Richard and his crusaders on the plain of Acre; or the mind's eye sees the good Harun-alRashid, freshly arrived from Bagdad, stealthily pursuing his midnight rambles. A hundred associations such as these are wrapped about the crumbling ruins of medieval Cairo, to this day rich with exquisite achievements of Saracenic art. Huge monuments of the earliest history of the world fringe the horizon as one looks from the ramparts of the citadel, teaching us how the years of Cairo are but as days in the sight of the Sphinx and the Pyramids. To the left is desolate Memphis, earliest city of the world; face about, and you behold the edge of the land of Goshen; two or three miles down the Nile, near the Embabeh end of the railway-bridge, Napoleon and his army, just a century ago, won the battle of the Pyramids over the Mameluke horde; and in a modern structure in the near foreground, the Egyptian Museum, rest the bodies of Seti and the great Rameses, while within a few paces of the spot from which you are viewing this matchless panorama sleeps the Roumelian warrior who by daring and bloodshed founded the dynasty now ruling Egypt. All this, and more, may be seen in an hour, if the blare of bugles, reverberated by the Mokattam Hills, does not inform you that the British soldier has decided it is