of mind enough to again prostrate myself before it, as I saw others around me do, 
and slowly rising I gradually made my way to the door; not that by which my 
friend retired, though he beckoned to me. Once out I ran almost breathless through 
several crooked streets before I again met the officer. I soon learnt the monstrous 
sacrilege I had been guilty of, and the danger into which my curiosity thoughtlessly 
had led me. I found that this was the mosque in which the holy covering is prepared, 
and which is annually sent, accompanied by thirty or forty thousand pilgrims, to 
be placed over the tomb of the Prophet at Mecca. Had it been known that that 
sacred drapery had been polluted by the touch of an unbeliever—a dog of a Christian 
— and I had been caught, it is horrid to reflect upon what might have been my 
punishment for the unconscious sacrilege.” 
Roberts’s Journal. 
THE GHAWAZEES, OR DANCING-GIRLS OF CAIRO. 
These public dancers are often confounded with the Almelis, who are female singers. 
The Ghawazees are dancing girls who perform unveiled in the public streets to amuse 
the rabble; their dances have little elegance and less decorum. Their dress is 
similar to that worn by the middle classes in Egypt. They often perform in the 
court of a house, or in the street before the door, on occasions of festivity, such as 
a marriage or the birth of a child; but they are never admitted to a respectable 
hareem, for they are the most abandoned of courtesans. They are often extremely 
handsome, and among them are certainly to be found the finest women in Egypt. 
Many have slightly aquiline noses, the characteristic of a distinct race, which 
they assert themselves to be; and their origin is certainly involved in great obscurity, 
resembling in some points another mysterious people, the Gipsies. In many of the 
ancient tombs are representations of females in private entertainments, dancing to 
the sounds of instruments, similar to the modern Ghawazees; these records of their 
existence as a class, on tombs prior to the Exodus of the Israelites, leave us fairly 
to infer that they are descended from the same caste: for they still keep themselves 
distinct from other classes and abstain from marriages except with persons of their 
own tribe: they have a peculiar language, too, which they use to conceal their 
communications from strangers. 
By a decree of Mehemet Ali, the Ghawazees were lately banished from Cairo, 
and Lower Egypt, to Esneh, the first place on ascending the Nile where their per¬ 
formances are publicly allowed. 
Roberts's Journal. 
