GRAND CAIRO. 83 
mous sycamore fig-trees, larger than any of our chap. 
forest trees', secured almost the whole army 
from the rays of the sun. Troops in such a 
state of mihtary perfection, or better suited for 
active service, were never seen, not even in 
the famous parade of the chosen Ten-thousand 
belonging to Buonapartes legions, w^hich he was 
so vain of displaying, before the present war, 
in the front of the Thuilleries at Paris. Not an 
unhealthy soldier was to be seen. The English 
inured to the climate of India considered that of 
Egypt as temperate in its effects ; and the sepoys 
seemed as fond of the Nile as of the Gans:es. 
After General ^a/rc? had inspected, the line, the 
sepoys were marched to Cairo, where, having 
piled their arms before one of the principal 
mosques J they all joined the Moslems in their 
the walls, stating, that the building was constructed Ly the Caliph 
Al-Mamoun, in the year 211 of the Hegira, answering to the year 833 
of our sera. The same fact is attested by the observations of Le Pere^ 
as read to the French Institute at Cairo, January the 11th, 1799' 
{.Voy. Decade Egyptienne, tom.W. /». 278. au Ka\re, An viii de lit 
RSpuhliquc.) For the rest, the building has been recently so often 
described, that it was not thought necessary to give a particular 
account of it. 
(3) The Editor of Hasselquist's Travels has mistaken his measure of 
circumference for diaineter: — " This is a huge tree, the stem being often 
fifty feet thick." See Hasselquist's Trsivels, p. 259. Land. 1766. it 
cannot surely be intended that the sycamorC' trees oi Egypt were nearly 
nineteen yards in diameter.^ 
g2 
