SIX MONTHS’ BIRD COLLECTING IN EGYPT, 87 
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. 
