xv HOME LIFE AND TRAVELS 373 



there in the museum at Boulak we can look upon the 

 face of the man who knew Moses. There lie Seti I. 

 and Rameses II., and when gazing on their mummified 

 faces we can recognise perfectly the characteristic 

 features of the two men. 



But apart from the extraordinary interest attaching 

 to ancient Egyptian history, we have in the modern 

 history of that country a study which, in its way, is no 

 less instructive. When visiting, as I did, the Technical 

 College, the Law Courts, the Barrage, the Hospitals, 

 the Lunatic Asylums, the Schools, and observing, 

 moreover, the general order and perfect policing of 

 the country, and then remembering that a change from 

 a practical barbarism to its present civilised state has 

 been effected within the last thirty years by a body of 

 thirty-six Englishmen under the supreme direction 

 of Lord Cromer, a man may well be proud to belong to 

 a nation that can produce such results. Nor is there 

 any place where the contrast between the old Moslem 

 civilisation and that of the present time is more vividly 

 seen than in Cairo. On the one hand you may visit 

 the Mosque El Azhar (the Mahommedan University), 

 where you find the Arab teachers with their students 

 at their feet repeating the Koran by heart, as they have 

 done for seven hundred years, and where you may be 

 spat upon as a cursed interloper, whilst round the 

 corner you may visit the Khedive's Technical School, 

 with its engineering, physical, and chemical depart- 

 ments all at work and the pupils in uniform as you 

 find them in the Ecole Centrale in Paris. 



The Nile voyage in Cook's steamers has been so 

 frequently described that it is unnecessary for me to 

 dwell upon it. All I will say is that with such 

 pleasant companions and friends as we met it is the 

 most delightful of tours. 



