346 I CO A -FISHING. 



" Old Cairo is three miles from modern Cairo. The 

 desert sand stretches between them. As you approach 

 the old city, riding over the sand-hills, you will perceive 

 several miniature cities — small dense masses of houses, 

 presenting only a blank wall to the outside view, through 

 which a low arched door-way or heavily barred gate gives 

 admission to the lanes or streets of a densely populated 

 village. Imagine a hundred houses packed closely to- 

 gether, with no streets, but only passages, four to eight or 

 ten feet wide, winding around among them. Such are 

 these settlements of Egyptian Christians. Fully protected 

 against Bedouins by their lofty walls, they have but to 

 close the gates against an attack and go to sleep in their 

 houses. It was such a place as this before which I drew 

 rein, and we dismounted and entered. A bright-looking 

 little girl was the porteress, and led us in. We asked her 

 the way to the church of the Greeks. She would show 

 us : so we followed her up one alley and down another, 

 up a long flight of stone steps, up another longer, across 

 a marble pavement, up another and a fourth flight of 

 steps, and she then called aloud and left us in the room 

 alone. It was three stories from the ground, and while 

 we wondered where we were a young priest advanced, 

 and with a huge key opened a door before us, and we 

 found ourselves in the Church of St. George. It was a 

 strange and curious looking little chapel, hung around with 

 pictures that might have been of the fourteenth century, 

 so quaint and intensely horrible were they. Men with 

 giant heads and figures disproportioned stared on us 

 from the panels, but there was nothing to. interest us, and, 

 after a brief glance, I proceeded to make my inquiries. 



"A more stupid specimen of humanity one could hardly 

 find, and yet he was not so stupid looking. But it was in 



