412 NORTH-EAST AFEICA. 



boasts of the pyramids and similar structures of unequalled solidity, may also claim 

 to possess in its minarets edifices unrivalled for the elegance and delicacy of their 

 outline. 



The first city on the African continent in size and population, Cairo also takes 

 the foremost place for its scientific institutions and art treasures. Besides the 

 already described religious university of El-Azhar, and the hundreds of Arab 

 schools attached to the mosques, the city contains excellent European schools, nearly 

 all denominational — Catholic, Coptic, Melkite, Protestant, or Jewish. There are 

 also a school of medicine and pharmacy, a public library, lecture-halls, an observa- 

 tory, a valuable collection of maps and designs, unfortunately damaged when the 

 place was occupied by the British, a geographical society, and other learned corpora- 

 tions. 



BuLAQ, Helwan, Matarieh. 



But the glory of Cairo is its museum of antiquities, established in the suburb of 

 Bulaq on the very embankment here skirting the right side of the Nile. This 

 priceless collection, founded by Mariette, continued by Maspero, and already far too 

 rich for the original building, presents, so to say, a complete and admirably 

 illustrated course of Egyptian history and native art. Besides the thousand objects 

 found in all museums, such as statues, steles, mummies, amulets, jewellery, papyri, 

 it contains amongst other masterpieces the diorite statue of Khephren in a majestic 

 and placid attitude, the wooden statue of the unknown person whom the Arabs have 

 dubbed the Shiekh-el-Beled, or " Village Chief," the sphinxes of the Hyksos, which 

 so faithfully reproduce the type of those shepherd conquerors. 



In the court stands the tomb of Mariette, a black marble sarcophagus, standing 

 at the foot of which the visitor beholds the mysterious stream flowing slowly by. 

 Bulaq is the chief industrial centre of the capital. Here the Grpvernment possesses 

 a large printing-office, military workshops, a foundry, and manufactory of small 

 arms. The river traffic, which formerly had its docks and warehouses at Old Cairo, 

 has now established its chief depots at Bulaq, where the stream is constantly 

 covered with steamers, sailing vessels, and rowing boats. 



What remains of Fostât, or Old Cairo, stands rather more than half a mile from 

 the south-west suburb of Cairo, and is disposed along the right bank of a small 

 branch of the Nile. The ancient splendour of the city is still recalled by a mosque 

 surrounded by heaps of débris. This was the sanctuary erected by Amru in the 

 twenty-first year of the Hegira under the eyes of Mohammed's personal followers. 

 After those of the holy cities no other mosque is more venerated than this venerable 

 monument, which, however, has been frequently restored. Some of the 230 

 columns which supported the vaults of the galleries and sanctuary built round the 

 central court have given way beneath the weight of the nave. 



The island which separates Old Cairo from the main channel, and which is mostl}^ 

 under cultivation, takes the name of Jeziret-el-Randah. Here a nephew of Saladin 

 had founded the school of the " Baharites," or " Riverain People," who were the 

 first Mameluks in Egypt. At the southern extremity of Randah stands the famous 



