SIX months' bird collecting in egypt. 8y 



and that he must be hard up to sell his shares in the Suez 

 Canal. 



Grand Cairo is truly an Eastern city, despite stucco 

 houses and other inroads of modern innovation. Its streets, 

 dirty, narrow, and badly paved, are the worst thing about 

 it ; yet even these are redeemed by the antique wood carving 

 of the lattice windows. The lofty tapering minarets, and 

 the numerous Mosques, are unique in their way. I went 

 over the Mosques of the Citadel and Sultan Hassan, From 

 the ramparts of the former a noble view is obtained of the 

 city, of the distant Pyramids, of Boulac, and the shipping, and 

 of the silver river winding its course to Rhoda.* Here the 

 last of the betrayed Mamelucks, when his companions were 

 fallen and dead, made his despairing plunge into the gulf 

 below. 



It is the Sultan Hassan Mosque that is partially built of 

 the polished casing of the Great Pyramid. It has been long 

 falling into sad decay. Most of the Mosques are banded in 

 the most extraordinary way with red and white, not blocks 

 of granite and alabaster as any one would naturally suppose 

 from the paintings of Roberts and others ; but tawdry, 

 vulgar paint. This is very bad taste in embellishment, and 

 it extends to the houses and coffee shops, many of which 

 are bedaubed with most absurdly grotesque figures of .ships, 

 trees, lions, and all manner of nameless monsters. Such is 

 the art of painting among the modern Egyptians ; and to 

 make it worse, they will often erect a hideous thing like a 

 scaffold for tying coloured lamps to on fantasia days. It 

 was never my fortune to witness one of their illuminations, 

 but they need be very splendid to compensate for the 

 excessive ugliness of the scaffolding at all other times. 



The shops and bazaars present a glittering appearance 



** There are two islands called Rhoda, but this is "Nilometer" 

 Rhoda. 



