Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

When we leave Cairo we cannot take with us the light of these labyrinths; we cannot take their colors; but one traveller, last May, having found in an antiquity-shop an ancient perfume-burner, had the inspiration of bargaining with these Persians, seated cross-legged in their aromatic niches (said traveller on a white donkey outside), for small packages of sandal and aloes wood, of myrrh, of frankincense and ambergris, of benzoin, of dried rose leaves, and of other Oriental twigs and sticks, for the purpose of summing up, later, and in less congenial climes perhaps, the spicy atmosphere, at least, of the Cairo bazaars. What would be the effect of breathing always this fragrant air? Would it give a richer life, would it tinge the cheek with warmer hues? These merchants have complexions like cream-tinted tea-roses; their dark eyes are clear, and all their movements graceful; they are very tranquil, but not in the least sleepy; they look as if they could take part in subtle arguments, and pursue the finest chains of reasoning. Would an atmosphere perfumed by these Eastern woods clarify and rarefy our denser Occidental minds?

THE NILE

As every one who comes to Cairo goes up the Nile, the river is seldom thought of as it appears during its course past the Khedive's city. This simple vision of it is overshadowed by memories of Abydos, of Karnak and Thebes, and Philæ – the great temples on its banks which have impressed one so profoundly. Perhaps they have over-impressed; possibly the tension of continuous gazing has been kept up too long. In this case the victim, with his head in his hands, is ready to echo the (extremely true) exclamation of Dudley Warner, "There is nothing on earth so tiresome as a row of stone gods standing to receive the offerings of a Turveydrop of a king!" This was the mental condition of a lady who last winter, on a Nile boat, suddenly began to sew. "I have spent nine long days on this boat, staring from morning till night. One cannot stare at a river forever, even if it is the Nile! Give me my thimble."

One is not obliged to leave Cairo in order to see examples of the smaller silhouettes of the great river – the shadoofs or irrigating machines, the rows of palm-trees, the lateen yards clustered near a port, and always and forever the women coming down the bank to get water from the yellow tide. These processions of women are the most characteristic "Nile scene with figures" of the present day. I am not sure but that one of their jars, or the smaller gray kulleh (which by evaporation keeps the water deliciously cool), would evoke "Egypt" more quickly in the minds of most of us than even the portrait of Cleopatra herself on the back wall at Denderah. If one is staying in Cairo after the tremendous voyage is over, one wanders to the banks every now and then to gaze anew at the broad, monotonous stream. It comes from the last remaining unknown territory of our star, and this very year has seen that space grow smaller. Round about it stand to-day five or six of the civilized nations, who have formed a battue, and are driving in the game. The old river had a secret, one of the three secrets of the world; but though the North and South Poles still remain unmapped, the annual rise of its waters will be strange no longer when Lado is a second Birmingham. How will it seem when we can telephone to Sennaar (perhaps to that ambassador beloved by readers of the Easy Chair), or when there is early closing in Darfur?

At Cairo, when one rides or drives, one almost always crosses the Nile; but Cairo herself does not cross. Her more closely built quarters do not even come down to the shore. The Nile and Cairo are two distinct personalities; they are not one and indivisible, as the Nile and Thebes are one, the Nile and Philæ.

The river at Cairo has a dull appearance. Its only beauty comes from the towering snow-white sails of the dahabeeyahs and trading craft that crowd the stream. It is true that these have a great charm.

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE

In the old quarters this is Arabian. The beauty lies largely in the latticed balconies called mouchrabiyehs, which overhang the narrow roadways. These bay-windows sometimes stud the façades thickly, now large, now small, but always a fretwork of delicate wood-carving. Often from the bay projects a second and smaller oriel, also latticed. This is the place for the water jar, the current of air through the lattices keeping the water cool. An Arabian house has no windows on the ground-floor in its outer wall save small air-holes placed very high, but above are these mouchrabiyehs, which are made of bits of cedar elaborately carved in geometrical designs. The small size of the pieces is due to the climate, the heats of the long summer would warp larger surfaces of wood; but the delicacy and intricacy of the carving are a work of supererogation due to Arabian taste. From the mouchrabiyehs the inmates can see the passers-by, but the passers-by cannot see the inmates, an essential condition for the carefully guarded privacy of the family.

There is in Cairo a personage unconnected with the government who, among the native population, is almost as important as the Khedive himself; this is the Sheykh Ahmed Mohammed es Sadat, the only descendant in the direct line of the Prophet Mohammed now living. He has the right to many native titles, though he does not put them on his quiet little visiting-card, which bears only his name and a mysterious monogram in Arabic. By Europeans he is called simply the Sheykh (the word means chief) es Sadat. The ancestral dwelling of the sheykh shares in its master's distinction. It is pointed out, and, when permission can be obtained, visited. It is a typical specimen of Saracenic domestic architecture, and has always remained in the possession of the family, for whom it was first erected eight hundred years ago. There are in Cairo other Arabian houses as beautiful and as ancient as this. By diplomatic (and mercenary) arts I gained admittance to three, one of which has walls studded with jasper and mother-of-pearl. But these exquisite chambers, being half ruined, fill the mind with wicked temptations. One longs to lay hands upon the tiles, to bargain for an inscription or for a small oriel with the furtive occupants, who have no right to sell, the real owners being Arabs of ancient race, who would refuse to strip their walls, however crumbling, for unbelievers from contemptible, paltry lands beyond the sea. The house of the Sheykh es Sadat may not leave one tranquil, for it is tantalizingly picturesque, but at least it does not inspire larceny; the presence of many servitors prevents that. To reach this residence one leaves (gladly) the Boulevard Mohammed Ali, and takes a narrower thoroughfare, the Street of the Sycamores, which bends towards the south. This lane winds as it goes, following the course of the old canal, the Khaleeg, and one passes many of the public fountains, or sebeels, which are almost as numerous in Cairo as the mosques. A fountain in Arab signification does not mean a jet of water, but simply a place where water can be obtained. The sebeels are beautiful structures, often having marble walls, a dome, and the richest kind of ornament. The water is either dipped with a cup from the basin within, or drawn from the brass mouth-pieces placed outside. Nothing could represent better, I think, the difference between the East and the West than one of these elaborate fountains, covering, in a crowded quarter, the space which might have been occupied by two or three small houses, adorned with carved stone-work, slabs of porphyry, and long inscriptions in gilt, and an iron town pump, its erect slenderness taking up no space at all, and its excellent if unbeautiful handle standing straight out against the sky.

A narrow lane, leaving the Street of the Sycamores, burrows still more deeply into the heart of the quarter, and at last brings us to a porch which juts into the roadway, masking, as is usual in Cairo, the real doorway, which is within. Upon entering, one finds himself in a quadrilateral court, which is open to the sky. An old sycamore shades several latticed windows, among them one which contains three of the smaller oriels; this portion of the second story rests upon an antique marble column. On one side of the column is the low, rough archway leading to the porch; on the other, the high decorated marble entrance of the reception-hall. For in Arabian houses all the magnificence is kept for the interior. In the streets one sees only plain stone walls, which are often hidden under a stucco of mud, more or less peeled off, so that they look half ruined. In the old quarters of Cairo, among the private houses, one obtains, indeed (unless one has an invitation to enter), a general impression of ruin. At the back of the sheykh's court is the stairway to the hareem, the entrance masked by a gayly colored curtain. Across another side extends the private mosque, only half hidden by an ornamented grating. One can see the interior and the high pulpit decked with the green flag of the Prophet. The walls which encircle the court, and which are embellished here and there with Arabic inscriptions, are of differing heights, as they form parts of separate structures which have been erected at various periods through the eight centuries. The place is, in fact, an agglomeration of houses, and some of the older chambers are crumbling and roofless. The central court (which shows its age only in a picturesque trace or two) is adorned with at least twenty beautiful mouchrabiyehs, some large, some small, and no two on the same level. A charm of Saracenic architecture is that you can always make discoveries, nothing is stereotyped; of a dozen delicate rosettes standing side by side under a balcony, no two are carved in the same design.

In a room which stretches back to the garden – and which at the time of our visit was empty, save for a row of antique silver-gilt coffee-pots standing on the marble floor – there is a long, low window, like a band in the wall, formed of small carved lattices. The hand of Abbey only, I think, could reproduce the beauty of this casement; but instead of the charming seventeenth-century English girls whom he would wish to place there, realism would demand the hideous eunuchs, with their gold chains and scarf-pins; or else (and this would be better) the dignified old Arab in a white turban who sat cross-legged in the court with his long pipe, his half-closed eyes expressing his disdain for the American visitors. The courtesy of the master of the house, however, made up for his servitor's scorn. The sheykh is a tall man, somewhat too portly, with amiable dark eyes, and a gleam of humor in his face. One scans his features with interest, as if to catch some reflection of the Prophet; but the rays from an ancestor who walked the earth twelve hundred years ago are presumably faint. There is nothing modern in the sheykh's attire; his handsome flowing gown is of silk; he wears a turban, slippers, and an India shawl wound round his waist like a sash. When the air is cool, he shrouds him self in a large outer cloak of fine dark blue cloth, which is lined with white fur. Sometimes Signor Ahmed carries in his hand the Mohammedan rosary. This string of beads appears to be used as Madame de Staël used her "little stick," as the English called it (in Italy, more poetically, they named it "a twig of laurel"). Corrinne must always have this beside her plate at dinner to play with before she conversed, or rather declaimed. Her maid, in confidence, explained that it was necessary to madame "to stimulate her ideas." One often sees the rosary on duty when two Turks are conversing. After a while, their subjects failing them, they fall into silence. Then each draws out his string from a pocket, and they play with their beads for a moment or two, until, inspiration reviving, they begin talking again. One hopes that poor Ahmed Mohammed has not been driven to his string too often as mental support during dumb visits from Anglo-Saxon tourists, who can do nothing but stare at him. The sheykh's reception-hall is forty feet wide and sixty feet long. The ceiling, which has the Saracenic pendentives in the corners and under the beams, is of wood, gilded and painted and carved in the characteristic style which one vainly tries to describe. Travellers have likened it to an India shawl; to me it seemed to approach more nearly the wrong side of a Persian scarf, which shows the many-hued silken ravellings. The effect, as a whole, though extraordinarily rich, is yet subdued. The walls are encrusted with old blue tiles which mount to the top. At one end of the room there is a beautiful wall-fountain. And now comes the other side of the story. To enjoy all this beauty, you must not look down; for, alas! the marble floor is tightly covered with a modern French carpet; chairs and tables of the most ordinary modern designs have taken the place of the old divans; and these tables, furthermore, are ornamented with hideous bouquets of artificial flowers under glass. Finally, the tiles which have fallen from the lower part of the walls have not been replaced by others; a coarse fresco has been substituted. What would not one give to see the sheykh, who is himself a purely Oriental figure, seated in this splendid hall of his fathers as it once was, on one of the now superseded divans, the marbles of his floor uncovered save for his discarded Turkish rugs, the fountain sending forth its rose-water spray, perfume burning in the silver receivers, and no encumbering furniture save piles of brocaded cushions and a jar or two on the gilded shelf.

But we shall never see this. In 1889, 180,594 travellers crossed Egypt by way of the Suez Canal. In this item of statistics we have the reason.

THE PYRAMIDS

For those who have fair eyesight the pyramids of Gizeh are a part of Cairo; their gray triangles against the sky are visible from so many points that they soon become as familiar as a neighboring hill. In addition, they have been pictured to us so constantly in paintings, drawings, engravings, and photographs that one views them at first more with recognition than surprise. "There they are! How natural!" And this long familiarity makes one shrink from arranging phrases about them.

One thing, however, can be said: when we are in actual fact under them, when we can touch them, our easy acquaintance vanishes, and we suddenly perceive that we have never comprehended them in the least. The strange geometrical walls effect a spiritual change in us; they free us from ourselves for a moment, and unconsciously we look back across the past to which they belong, and into the future, of which they are a part much more than we are, as unmindful of our own little cares and occupations, and even our own small lives, as though we had never been chained to them. It is but a fleeting second, perhaps, that this mental emancipation lasts, but it is a second worth having!

One drives to the pyramids in an hour, over a macadamized road. The perennial stories about trouble with the Bedouins belong to the past. Soldiers and policemen guard the sands as they guard the Cairo streets, and the proffer of false antiquities is not more pressing, perhaps, than the demands of the beggars in town. These three pyramids of Gizeh are those we think of before we have visited Egypt. But there are others; including the small ones and those which are ruined, seventy have been counted in twenty-five miles from Cairo to Meydoom, and pyramids are to be seen in other parts of Egypt. The stories concerning Gizeh and the travellers who, from Herodotus down, have visited the colossal tombs, are innumerable. I do not know why the one about Lepsius should seem to me amusing. This learned man and his party, who were sent to Egypt by King Frederick William of Prussia in 1842, celebrated that king's birthday by singing in chorus the Prussian national anthem in the centre of Cheops. The Bedouins in attendance reported outside that they had "prayed all together a loud general prayer."

In connection with the pyramids, the English may be said to have devoted themselves principally to measurements. The genius of the French, which is ever that of expression, has invented the one great sentence about them. So far, the Americans have done nothing by which to distinguish themselves; but their time will come, perhaps. One fancies that Edison will have something to do with it. In the meanwhile modernity is already there. There is a hotel at the foot of Cheops, and one hardly knows whether to laugh or to cry when one sees lawn-tennis going on there daily.

But no matter what lies before us – even if they should pave the desert, and establish an English tramway (or a line of American horse-cars) to the Sphinx – these mighty masses cannot be belittled. There is something in the pyramids which overawes our boasted civilization. In their presence this seems trivial; it seems an impertinence.

THE COPTS

The most interesting of the Coptic churches are at Old Cairo, a mother suburb, where the first city was founded by the conquering Arabian army. Here, ensconced amid hill-like mounds of rubbish, concealed behind mud walls, hidden at the end of blind alleys, one finds the temples of these native Christians, who are the descendants of the converts of St. Mark. The exterior walls have no importance. In truth, one seldom sees them, for the churches are within other structures. Some of them form part of old fortified convents; one is reached by passing through the dwelling-rooms of an inhabited house; another is up-stairs in a Roman tower. You arrive somehow at a door. When this is opened, you find yourself in a church whose general aspect is rough, and whose aisles are adorned with dust and sometimes with dirt. But these temples have their treasures. Chief among them are the high choir screens of dark wood, elaborately carved in panels, and decorated with morsels of ivory which have grown yellow from age. The sculpture is not open-work; it does not go through the panel; it is done in relief. The designs are Saracenic, but these geometrical patterns are interrupted every now and then by Christian emblems and by the Coptic cross. The style of this wood-carving is unique; no other sculpture resembles it. If it does not quite attain beauty, it is at least very odd and rich. There are also carved doors representing Scriptural subjects, marble pulpits, singular bronze candlesticks, brass censers adorned with little bells, silver-gilt gospel-cases, embroidered vestments, silver marriage-diadems, ostrich eggs in metal cases, and old Byzantine paintings, often representing St. George, for St. George is the patron saint of the Copts.

These people esteem themselves to be the true descendants of the ancient Egyptians, as distinguished from the conquering race of Arabians who have now overrun their land. It is a comical idea, but they call upon us to note their close resemblance to the mummies. Early converts to Christianity, they have remained faithful to their belief amid the Mohammedan population all about them. It must be mentioned, however, that they had been pronounced heretics by the Council of Chalcedon before the Arabian conquest; for they had refused to worship the human nature of Christ, revering His divine nature alone. They are the guardians of the Christian legends of Egypt. In a crypt under one of their churches they show two niches. One, they say, was the sleeping-place of Joseph, and the other of the Virgin and Child, during the flight into Egypt. Near Heliopolis is an ancient tree, under whose branches the Holy Family are supposed to have rested when the sunshine was too hot for further travelling.

There are between four and five hundred thousand Copts in Egypt. It may be mentioned here that the Christians of the country, including all branches of the faith, number to-day about six hundred thousand, or one-tenth of the population. The Copts are the book-keepers and scribes; they are also the jewellers and embroiderers. Their ancient tongue has fallen into disuse, and is practically a dead language. They now use Arabic, like all the rest of the nation; but the speech survives in their church service, a part of which is still given in the old tongue, though it is said that even the priests themselves do not always understand what they are saying, having merely learned the sentences by heart, so that they can repeat them as a matter of form. Copts have been converted to Protestantism during these latter days by the American missionaries.

They are not, in appearance, an attractive people. Their convents and churches, at least in Cairo and its neighborhood, are so hidden away, inaccessible, and dirty that they are but slightly appreciated by the majority of travellers, who spend far more of their time among the mosques of Mohammed. But both the people and their ancient language are full of interest from an historical point of view. They form a field for research which will give some day rich results. A little has been done, and well done; but much still remains hidden. It has yet to be dug out by the learned. Then it must be translated by the middle-men into those agreeable little histories which, with agreeable little tunes, agreeable little stories, and agreeable little pictures, are the delight of the many.

KIEF

The large modern cafés of Cairo are imitations of the cafés of Paris. They are uninteresting, save that one sees under their awnings, or at the little tables within, the stambouline in all its glory and ugliness – that is, the heavy black frock-coat with stiff collar, which, with the fez or tarboosh, is the appointed costume for all persons who are employed by the government. The stranger, observing the large number of men of all ages in this attire, is led to the conclusion that the government must employ many thousands of persons in Cairo alone; but probably there is a permitted usage in connection with it, like that mysterious legend – "By especial appointment to the Queen" – which one sees so often in England inscribed over the doors of little shops in provincial High Streets, where the inns have names which to Americans are as fantastic as anything in "Tartarin;" the "White Horse;" the "Crab and Lobster;" the "Three Choughs;" and the "Five Alls."

The native cafés have much more local color than the homes of the stambouline. Outside are rows of high wooden settees, upon which the patrons of the establishment sit cross-legged, their slippers left on the ground below. One often sees a row of Arabs squatting here, holding no communication with each other, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, enjoying for the moment an absolute rest. This period of daily repose, called kief, is a necessity for Egyptians. It has its overweight, its excess, in the smoking of hasheesh, which is one of the curses of the land; but thousands of the people who never touch hasheesh would understand as little how to get through their day without this interregnum as without eating; in fact, eating is less important to them.

The Egyptian often takes his rest at the café. When the American sees Achmet and Ibrahim, who have attended to some of his errands for infinitesimal wages – men whose sole possessions are the old cotton gowns on their backs – when he sees them squatted in broad daylight at the café, smoking the long pipes and slowly drinking the Mocha coffee, it appears to him an inexplicable idleness, an incurable self-indulgence. It is idleness, no doubt, but associations should not be mixed with the subject. To the American the little cup of after-dinner coffee seems a luxury. He does not always stop to remember that Achmet's coffee is, very possibly, all the dinner he is to have; that it has been preceded by nothing since daylight but a small piece of Egyptian bread, and that it will be followed by nothing before bedtime but a mouthful of beans or a lettuce-stalk. The daily rest is by no means taken always at the café. Egyptians also take it at the baths, where, after the final douche, they spend half an hour in motionless ease. For those who have not the paras for the café or the bath, the mosques offer their shaded courts. When there is no time to seek another place, the men take their rest wherever they are. One often sees them lying asleep, or apparently asleep, in their booths at the bazaars. The very beggars draw their rags round them, cover their faces, and lie down close to a wall in the crowded lanes.

At the cafés, during another stage of the rest, games are played, the favorites being dominos, backgammon, and chess. Sometimes a story-teller entertains the circle. He narrates the deeds of Antar and legends of adventure; he also tells stories from the Bible, such as the tale of the flood, or of Daniel in the den of lions. Sometimes he recites, in Arabic, the poems of Omar Khayyam.

"I sent my soul through the invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell;
And by-and-by my soul returned to me,
And answered, 'I myself am heaven and hell!'"

This verse of the Persian poet might be taken as the motto of kief; for if the heaven or hell of each person is simply the condition of his own mind, then if he is able every day to reduce his mind, even for a half-hour only, to a happy tranquillity which has forgotten all its troubles, has he not gained that amount of paradise?

II

"I love the Arabian language for three reasons: because I am an Arab myself; because the Koran is in Arabic; because Arabic is the language of Paradise." This hadith, or saying, of Mohammed might be put upon the banner of the old university of Cairo, El Azhar; that is, the Splendid. El Azhar was founded in the tenth century, when Cairo itself was hardly more than a name. In its unmoved attachment to the beliefs of its founders, to their old enthusiasms, their methods and hates, El Azhar has opposed an inflexible front to the advance of European ideas, sending out year after year its hundreds of pupils to all parts of Egypt and to Nubia, to the Soudan and to Morocco, to Turkey, Arabia, and Syria, to India and Ceylon, and to the borders of Persia, believing that so long as it could keep the education of the young in its grasp the reign of the Prophet was secure. It is to-day the most important Mohammedan college in the world; for though it has no longer the twenty thousand students who crowded its courts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there is still an annual attendance of from seven to ten thousand; by some authorities the number is given as twelve thousand. The twelve thousand have no academic groves; they have not even one tree. There is nothing sequestered about El Azhar; it is near the bazaars in the old part of the town, where the houses are crowded together like wasps' nests. One sees nothing of it as one approaches save the minarets above, and in the narrow, crowded lane an outer portal. Here the visitor must show his permit and put on the mosque-shoes, for El Azhar was once a mosque, and is now mosque and university combined. After the shoes are on he steps over the low bar, and finds himself within the porch, which is a marvel as it stands, with its fretwork, carved stones, faded reds, and those old plaques of inscription which excite one's curiosity so desperately, and which no dragoman can ever translate, no matter in how many languages he can complacently ask, "You satisfi?" One soon learns something of the older tongue; hieroglyphics are not difficult; any one with eyes can discover after a while that the A of the ancient Egyptians is, often, a bird who bears a strong resemblance to a pigeon; that their L is a lion; and that the name of the builder of the Great Pyramid, for instance, is represented by a design which looks like two freshly hatched chickens, a football, and a horned lizard (speaking, of course, respectfully of them all). But one can never find out the meaning of the tantalizing characters, so many thousand years nearer our own day, which confront us, surrounded by arabesques, over old Cairo gateways, across the fronts of the street fountains, or inscribed in faded gilt on the crumbling walls of mosques. It is probable that they are Kufic, and one would hardly demand, I suppose, that an English guide should read black-letter? But who can be reasonable in the land of Aladdin's Lamp?

The porch leads to the large central court, which is open to the sky, the breeze, and the birds; and this last is not merely a possibility, for birds of all kinds are numerous in Egypt, and unmolested. On the pavement of this court, squatting in groups, are hundreds of the turbaned students, some studying aloud, some reading aloud (it is always aloud), some listening to a professor (who also squats), some eating their frugal meals, some mending their clothes, and some merely chatting. These groups are so many and so close together that often the visitor can only make the circuit of the place on its outskirts; he cannot cross. There is generally a carrier of drinking-water making his rounds amid the serried ranks. "For whoever is thirsty, here is water from God," he chants. One is almost afraid to put down the melodious phrase, for the street cries of Cairo have become as trite as the Ranz des Vaches of Switzerland. Still, some of them are so imaginative and quaint that they should be rescued from triteness and made classic. Here is one which is chanted by the seller of vegetables – the best beans, it should be explained, come from Embebeh, beyond Boulak – "Help, O Embebeh, help! The beans of Embebeh are better than almonds. Oh-h, how sweet are the little sons of the river!" (This last phrase makes poetical allusion to the soaking in Nile water, which is required before the beans can be cooked.) Certain famous baked beans nearer home also require preliminary soaking. Let us imagine a huckster calling out in Boston streets, as he pursues his way: "Help, O Beverly, help! The beans of Beverly are better than peaches. Oh-h, how sweet are the little sons of Cochituate!"

The central court of the Splendid is surrounded by colonnades, whose walls are now undergoing repairs; but the propping beams do not appear to disturb either the pupils or teachers. On the east side is the sanctuary, which is also a school-room, but a covered one; it is a large, low-ceilinged hall, covering an area of thirty-six hundred square yards; by day its light is dusky; by night it is illuminated by twelve hundred twinkling little lamps suspended from the ceiling by bronze chains. The roof is supported by three hundred and eighty antique columns of marble and granite placed in irregular ranges; there are so many of these pillars that to be among them is like standing in a grove. The pavement is smoothly covered with straw matting; and here also are assembled throngs of pupils – some studying, some reciting, some asleep. I paid many visits to El Azhar, moving about quietly with my venerable little dragoman, whom I had selected for an unusual accomplishment – silence. One day I came upon an arithmetic class; the professor, a thin, ardent-eyed man of forty, was squatted upon a beautiful Turkish rug at the base of a granite column; his class of boys, numbering thirty, were squatted in a half-circle facing him, their slates on the matting before them. The professor had a small black-board which he had propped up so that all could see it, and there on its surface I saw inscribed that enemy of my own youth, a sum in fractions – three-eighths of seven-ninths of twelve-twentieths of ten-thirty-fifths, and so on; evidently the terrible thing is as savage as ever! The professor grew excited; he harangued his pupils; he did the sum over and over, rubbing out and rewriting his ferocious conundrum with a bit of chalk. Slender Arabian hands tried the sum furtively on the little slates; but no one had accomplished the task when, afraid of being remarked, I at last turned away.

The outfit of a well-provided student at El Azhar consists of a rug, a low desk like a small portfolio-easel, a Koran, a slate, an inkstand, and an earthen dish. Instruction is free, and boys are admitted at the early age of eight years. The majority of the pupils do not remain after their twelfth or fourteenth year; a large number, however, pursue their studies much longer, and old students return from time to time to obtain further instruction, so that it is not uncommon to see a gray-bearded pupil studying by the side of a child who might be his grandson. To me it seemed that two-thirds of the students were men between thirty and forty years of age; but this may have been because one noticed them more, as collegians so mature are an unusual sight for American eyes.

All the pupils bow as they study, with a motion like that of the bowing porcelain mandarins. The custom is attributed to the necessity for bending the head whenever the name of Allah is encountered; as the first text-book is always the Koran, children have found it easier to bow at regular intervals with an even motion than to watch for the numerous repetitions of the name. The habit thus formed in childhood remains, and one often sees old merchants in the bazaars reading for their own entertainment, and bowing to and fro as they read. I have even beheld young men, smartly dressed in full European attire, who, lost in the interest of a newspaper, had forgotten themselves for the moment, and were bending to and fro unconsciously at the door of a French café. A nation that enjoys the rocking-chair ought to understand this. Some of the students of El Azhar have rooms outside, but many of them possess no other shelter than these two courts, where they sleep upon their rugs spread over the matting or pavement. Food can be brought in at pleasure, but those two Oriental time-consumers, pipes and coffee, are not allowed within the precincts. In one of the porches barbers are established; there is generally a row of students undergoing the process of head-shaving. The fierce, fanatical blind pupils, so often described in the past by travellers, are no longer there; the porter can show only their empty school-room. Blindness is prevalent in Egypt; no doubt the sunshine of the long summer has something to do with it, but another cause is the neglected condition of young children. There is no belief so firmly established in the minds of Egyptian mothers as the superstition that the child who is clean and well-dressed will inevitably attract the dreaded evil-eye, and suffer ever afterwards from the effects of the malign glance. I have seen women who evidently belonged to the upper ranks of the middle class – women dressed in silk, with gold ornaments, and a following servant – who were accompanied by a poor baby of two or three years of age, so dirty, so squalid and neglected, that any one unacquainted with the country would have supposed it to be the child of a beggar.

In addition to the bowing motion, instruction at El Azhar is aided by a mnemonic system, the rules of grammar, and other lessons also, being given in rhyme. I suppose our public schools are above devices of this sort; but there are some of us among the elders who still fly mentally, when the subject of English history comes up, to that useful poem beginning "First, William the Norman;" and I have heard of the rules for the use of "shall" and "will" being properly remembered only when set to the tune of "Scotland's burning!" Surely any tune – even "Man the Life-boat" – would become valuable if it could clear up the bogs of the subjunctive.

It must be mentioned that El Azhar did not invent its mnemonics; it has inherited them from the past. All the mediæval universities made use of the system.

The central court is surrounded on three sides by chambers, one of which belongs to each country and to each Egyptian province represented at the college. These sombre apartments are filled with oddly-shaped wardrobes, which are assigned to the students for their clothes. There is a legend connected with these rooms: At dusk a man whose heart is pure is sometimes permitted to see the elves who come at that hour to play games in the inner court under the columns; here they run races, they chase each other over the matting, they climb the pillars, and indulge in a thousand antics. The little creatures are said to live in the wardrobes, and each student occasionally places a few flowers within, to avert from himself the danger that comes from their too great love of tricks. There are other inhabitants of these rooms who also indulge in tricks. These are little animals which I took to be ferrets; twice I had a glimpse of a disappearing tail, like a dark flash, as I passed over a threshold. Probably they are kept as mouse-hunters, for pets are not allowed; if they were, it would be entertaining to note those which would be brought hither by homesick pupils from the Somali coast, or Yemen.

In beginning his education the first task for a boy is to commit the Koran to memory. As he learns a portion he is taught to read and to write those paragraphs; in this way he goes through the entire volume. Grammar comes next; at El Azhar the word includes logic, rhetoric, composition, versification, elocution, and other branches. Then follows law, secular and religious. But the law, like the logic, like all the instruction, is founded exclusively upon the Koran. As there is no inquiry into anything new, the precepts have naturally taken a fixed shape; the rules were long ago established, and they have never been altered; the student of 1890 receives the information given to the student of 1490, and no more. But it is this very fact which makes El Azhar interesting to the looker-on; it is a living relic, a survival in the nineteenth century of the university of the fourteenth and fifteenth. It is true that when we think of those great colleges of the past, the picture which rises in the mind is not one of turbaned, seated figures in flowing robes; it is rather of aggressively agile youths, with small braggadocio caps perched on their long locks, their slender waists outlined in the shortest of jackets, and their long legs incased in the tightest of party-colored hose. But this is because the great painters of the past have given immortality to these astonishing scholars of their own lands by putting them upon their canvases. They confined themselves to their own lands too, unfortunately for us; they did not set sail, with their colors and brushes, upon Homer's "misty deep." It would be interesting to see what Pinturicchio would have made of El Azhar; or how Gentile da Fabriano would have copied the crowded outer court.

The president of El Azhar occupies, in native estimation, a position of the highest authority. Napoleon, recognizing this power, requested the aid of his influence in inducing Cairo to surrender in 1798. The sheykh complied; and a month later the wonderful Frenchman, in full Oriental costume, visited the university in state, and listened to a recitation from the Koran.

Now that modern schools have been established by the government in addition to the excellent and energetic mission seminaries maintained by the English, the Americans, the Germans, and the French, one wonders whether this venerable Arabian college will modify its tenets or shrink to a shadow and disappear. There are hopeful souls who prophesy the former; but I do not agree with them. Let us aid the American schools by all the means in our power. But as for El Azhar, may it fade (as fade it must) with its ancient legends draped untouched about it.

All who visit Cairo see the Assiout ware – pottery made of red and black earth, and turned on a wheel; it comes from Assiout, two hundred and thirty miles up the Nile, and the simple forms of the vases and jugs, the rose-water stoups and narrow-necked perfume-throwers, are often very graceful. Assiout ware is offered for sale in the streets; but the itinerant venders are sent out by a dealer in the bazaars, and the fatality which makes it happen that the vender has two black stoups and one red jug when you wish for one black stoup and two red jugs sent us to headquarters. But the crowded booth did not contain our heart's desire, and as we still lingered, making ourselves, I dare say, too pressing for the Oriental ease of the proprietor, it was at last suggested that Mustapha might perhaps go to the store-room for more – ? (the interrogation-point meaning backsheesh). Seizing the opportunity, we asked permission to accompany the messenger. No one objecting – as the natives consider all strangers more or less mad – we were soon following our guide through a dusky passageway behind the shop, the darkness lit by the gleam of his white teeth as he turned, every now and then, to give us an encouraging smile and a wink of his one eye, over his shoulder. At length – still in the dark – we arrived at a stairway, and, ascending, found ourselves in a second-story court, which was roofed over with matting. This court was surrounded by chambers fitted with rough, sliding fronts: almost all of the fronts were at the moment thrown up, as a window is thrown up and held by its pulleys. In one of these rooms we found Assiout ware in all its varieties; but we made a slow choice. We were evidently in a lodging-house of native Cairo; all the chambers save this one store-room appeared to be occupied as bachelors' apartments. The two rooms nearest us belonged to El Azhar students, so Mustapha said: he could speak no English, but he imparted the information in Arabic to our dragoman. Seeing that we were more interested in the general scene than in his red jugs, Mustapha left the Assiout ware to its fate, and, lighting a cigarette, seated himself on the railing with a disengaged air, as much as to say: "Two more mad women! But it's nothing to me." One of the students was evidently an ascetic; his room contained piles of books and pamphlets, and almost nothing else; his one rug was spread out close to the front in order to get the light, and placed upon it we saw his open inkstand, his pens, and a page of freshly copied manuscript. When we asked where he was, Mustapha replied that he had gone down to the fountain to wash himself, so that he could say his prayers. The second chamber belonged to a student of another disposition; this extravagant young man had three rugs; clothes hung from pegs upon his walls, and he possessed an extra pair of lemon-colored slippers; in addition we saw cups and saucers upon a shelf. Only two books were visible, and these were put away in a corner; instead of books he had flowers; the whole place was adorned with them; pots containing plants in full bloom were standing on the floor round the walls of his largely exposed abode, and were also drawn up in two rows in the passageway outside, where he himself, sitting on a mat, was sewing. His blossoms were so gay that involuntarily we smiled. Whereupon he smiled too, and gave us a salam. Opposite the rooms of the students there was a large chamber, almost entirely filled with white bales, like small cotton bales; in a niche between these high piles, an old man, kneeling at the threshold, was washing something in a large earthen-ware tub of a pink tint. His body was bare from the waist upward, and, as he bent over his task, his short chest, with all the ribs clearly visible, his long brown back with the vertebræ of the spine standing out, and his lean, seesawing arms, looked skeleton-like, while his head, supported on a small wizened throat, was adorned with such an enormous bobbing turban, dark green in hue, that it resembled vegetation of some sort – a colossal cabbage. Directly behind him, also on the threshold, squatted a large gray baboon, whose countenance expressed a fixed misanthropy. Every now and then this creature, who was secured by a long, loose cord, ascended slowly to the top of the bales and came down on the other side, facing his master. He then looked deeply into the tub for several minutes, touched the water carefully with his small black hand, withdrew it, and inspected the palm, and then returned gravely, and by the same roundabout way over the bales, to resume his position at the doorsill, looking as if he could not understand the folly of such unnecessary and silly toil.

In another chamber a large, very black negro, dressed in pure white, was seated upon the floor, with his feet stretched out in front of him, his hands placed stiffly on his knees, his eyes staring straight before him. He was motionless; he seemed hardly to breathe.

"What is he doing?" I said to the dragoman.

"He? Oh, he berry good man; he pray."

In a chamber next to the negro two grave old Arabs were playing chess. They were perched upon one of those Cairo settees which look like square chicken-coops. One often sees these seats in the streets, placed for messengers and porters, and for some time I took them for actual chicken-coops, and wondered why they were always empty. Chickens might well have inhabited the one used by the chess-players, for the central court upon which all these chambers opened was covered with a layer of rubbish and dirt several inches thick, which contained many of their feathers. It was upon this same day that we made our search for the Khan of Kait Bey. No dragoman knows where it is. The best way, indeed, to see the old quarters is to select from a map the name of a street as remote as possible from the usual thoroughfares beloved by these tasselled guides, and then demand to be conducted thither.

We did this in connection with the Khan of Kait Bey. But when we had achieved the distinction of finding it, we discovered that it was impossible to see it. The winding street is so narrow, and so constantly crowded with two opposed streams of traffic, that your donkey cannot pause to give you a chance to inspect the portion which is close to your eyes, and there is no spot where you can get a view in perspective of the whole. So you pass up the lane, turn, and come down again; and, if conscientious, you repeat the process, obtaining for all your pains only a confused impression of horizontal plaques and panels, with ruined walls tottering above them, and squalid shops below. There is a fine arched gateway adorned with pendentives; that, on account of its size, you can see; it leads into the khan proper, where were once the chambers for the travelling merchants and the stalls for their beasts; but all this is now a ruin. One of the best authorities on Saracenic art has announced that this khan is adorned with more varieties of exquisite arabesques than any single building in Cairo. This may be true. But to appreciate the truth of the statement one needs wings or a ladder. The word ladder opens the subject of the two ways of looking at architecture – in detail or as a whole. The natural power of the eye has more to do with this than is acknowledged. If one can distinctly see, without effort and aid, a whole façade at a glance, with the general effect of its proportions, the style of its ornament, the lights and shadows, the outline of the top against the sky, one is more interested in this than in the small traceries, for instance, over one especial window. There are those of us who remember the English cathedrals by their great towers rising in the gray air, with the birds flying about them. There are others who, never having clearly seen this vision – for no opera-glass can give the whole – recall, for their share of the pleasure, the details of the carvings over the porches, or of the old tombs within. It is simply the far-sighted and the near-sighted view. Another authority, a master who has had many disciples, has (of late years, at least) devoted himself principally to the near-sighted view. In his maroon-colored Tracts on Venice he has given us a minute account of the features of the small faces of the capitals of the columns of the Doge's palace (all these ofs express the minuteness of it); but when we stand on the pavement below the palace – and naturally we cannot stand in mid-air – we find that it is impossible to follow him: I speak of the old capitals, some of which are still untouched. The solution lies in the ladder. And Ruskin, as regards his later writings, may be called the ladder critic. The poet Longfellow, arriving in Verona during one of his Italian journeys, learned that Ruskin was also there, and not finding him at the hotel, went out in search of his friend. After a while he came upon him at the Tombs of the Scaligers. Here high in the air, at the top of a long ladder, with a servant keeping watch below, was a small figure. It was Ruskin, who, nose to nose with them, was making a careful drawing of some of the delicate terminal ornaments of those splendid Gothic structures. One does not object to the careful drawings any more than to the descriptions of the little faces at Venice. They are good in their way. But one wishes to put upon record the suggestion that architectural beauty as viewed from a ladder, inch by inch, is not the only aspect of that beauty; nor is it, for a large number of us, the most important aspect. A man who is somewhat deaf, if talking about a symphony, will naturally dwell upon the strains which he has heard – that is, the louder portions; but he ought not therefore to assume that the softer notes are insignificant.