246 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



The town of Zagazig, on a branch of the sweet- 

 water canal which connects Ismaiha with the 

 Nile, is passed, and ere long Cairo is in sight, the 

 Citadel and Heliopolis claim your eyes, the 

 Mamelukes, Rameses, Pharaohs and Meneptah 

 take form out of the soft glowing light. 



The mellow magnificence of the full moon rising 

 in the evening sky threw a flood of soft light over 

 the city that lay below me, and bathed the 

 mosques, the domes, the minarets, the bazaars, 

 the temples of the mighty and the hovels of 

 the humble in a sheen of silken splendour. I 

 stood on the terrace of the great mosque of 

 Mohamed Ali at the Citadel, and gazed fascinated 

 at the wonder-city of Cairo, the northern sentinel 

 of Africa, where the East and the West meet 

 and a tongue of barbaric flame leaps up from the 

 South to kindle fresh fires of fantasy. Cairo, 

 city of celestial charms ! city of a thousand 

 minarets and a million worshippers, city steeped 

 in Eastern sin and Western vice ! city where the 

 camel collides with the taxi-cab, and the gorgeous 

 modernity of the Semiramis Hotel looks out on 

 the patriarchal beauty of the old, old Nile and 

 the eternal riddle of the questioning Sphinx ! 

 There is an indefinable something about Cairo 

 which grips the senses as in a vice and makes 

 imagination throb and quiver. The spirits of 

 all the Pharaohs and all the Mamelukes for ever 

 brood over the modern Heliopolis, and whether 

 it be an ancient fellah pressing you to buy a 

 scarab or a dragoman in resplendent raiment 

 escorting you to Shepheard's — one of the most 

 famous of all hostels — there is an undertone of 

 fairy talk in every pleading, a substratum of 



