know them.
"The wives of the high officials have adopted some of the fashions of Europe in the way of dress; they wear boots instead of slippers, and have their dresses cut in the Paris style, and they wear a great deal of jewellery mounted by Parisian jewellers. Their hats or bonnets are of European form; but they cling to the veil, and never go out-of-doors without it, though they often have it so thin that their features can be seen quite distinctly. We have seen some of them riding in their carriages, and if they had been friends of ours we think we should have recognized them through their thin veils.
"How much we wish we could understand the language of the country! Doctor Bronson says the peddlers on the streets have a curious way of calling out their wares, quite unlike that of the same class in other countries. For instance, the water-carrier has a goat-skin on his back filled with water, and as he goes along he rattles a couple of brass cups together, and cries out, 'Oh ye thirsty! oh ye thirsty!' A moment after he repeats the call, and says, 'God will reward me!' And sometimes he says, 'Blessed is the water of the Nile!' Those who drink the water he offers usually give him a small piece of money, but if they give nothing he makes no demand, and moves on repeating his cry.
"The seller of lemons shouts, 'God will make them light, oh lemons!' meaning that God will lighten the baskets containing the lemons. The orange peddler says, 'Sweet as honey, oh oranges!' And the seller of roasted melon-seeds says, 'Comforter of those in distress, oh melon-seeds!' Behind him comes a man selling flowers of the henna-plant, and his cry is, 'Odors of Paradise, oh flowers of henna!' The rose-merchant says, 'The rose is a thorn—it bloomed from the sweat of the Prophet!' We could make a long list of these street cries, but have given you enough to show what they are.
"Every few steps we meet women carrying jars of water on their heads. Many of the houses are supplied in this primitive way, and the employment of carrying water supports a great many people in this strange city of the East. Of late years pipes have been introduced, and an aqueduct brings water from[Pg 58]
[Pg 59] the Nile, so that the occupation of the bearer has been somewhat diminished. But the public fountain still exists, and the people gather there as they did in the days of the Bible. Every mosque has a fountain in the centre of its court-yard, not so much for supplying water for those who wish to carry it away as to furnish an opportunity for the faithful to wash their hands before saying their prayers. Some of these fountains are large, and protected from the sun by a marble canopy. But the public fountains at the street corners are generally quite exposed to the weather, and many of them are quite small.
"We walked slowly along the street during our first excursion, as there were many sights to attract our attention, and we did not wish to miss anything. Two or three times we narrowly escaped being run over by camels or donkeys. The camels move along in a very stately way, and do not turn out unless ordered to do so by their drivers. They have a wicked expression in their eyes, and seem quite willing to knock over a stranger who gets in their way. Sometimes the crowd of people was so dense that it was not easy to move among them; but everybody was good-natured, and there was no jostling or rudeness of any kind. There were a good many beggars sitting in little nooks where they were not in danger of being run over, and quite often we met blind men who were feeling their way along by means of long sticks. They called out something in Arabic, and the people made way for them, so that none of them were hurt.
"The portion of the Mooskee where you enter it from the new part of Cairo contains a good many European shops, so that you do not come at once into the old-fashioned Orient. But as you go along the scene changes; the shops of the merchants are open to the streets, and the shopmen sit there cross-legged, in full view of everybody, so that you do not have to turn out of the way to see what there is to buy.
"When you think of an Oriental shop you must not picture to yourself an establishment like those on Broadway or other great streets in New York, where dozens or hundreds of clerks are employed to wait on customers, and where the population of a small town might all be attended to at once. A shop in Cairo or any other city of the East is generally about six feet square, and often not so large, and it requires only one man to tend it, for the simple reason that he can reach everything without moving from his place, and there would be no room for any one else. Sometimes he has an assistant, but if so, he does nothing himself except sit still and talk to the customers, while the assistant does all the work of showing the goods. The front of the shop is open to the street, and the floor is about as high as an ordinary table, so that when the goods are spread on the floor the customer can examine them as he stands outside. We shall see more of these shops when we get to the bazaars.
"While we were standing near a shop we saw the owner shutting it up, which he did by folding some wooden doors, very much like the wooden window-shutters we have at home; then he fastened them with a great padlock, and started off with the key, which must have weighed a pound at least. While we wondered at the size of the lock and key, the Doctor called our attention to a man with a cluster of wooden sticks over his shoulder, and told us that the sticks were the keys of a house. What funny things they were! Each of them was nearly if not quite a foot long, and had a lot of wooden pegs near the end; the pegs fit into corresponding holes in a wooden bolt, in the same way that[Pg 61]
[Pg 62] the different wards of a key fit into a lock, but the whole thing is so simple that it does not require much skill for a burglar to get into a house. The keys are so large that they must be slung over the shoulder or fastened to the belt, since they cannot go into an ordinary pocket.
"The Doctor proposed that we should sit down in front of a café and drink some of the famous coffee of the East. Of course we were glad to do so, and our guide took us to a place in a side street where he said they made excellent coffee, and we could have some music along with it.
"We were quite as interested in the music as in the coffee, and thought of the old adage about killing two birds with one stone. We heard the music before we reached the place, and what odd music it was!
"'That is a regular band of music,' said the guide, 'such as the coffee-houses keep to attract customers, and the rich people hire to play for them when they give an entertainment. You see there are four pieces, and I'll explain what they are, beginning from the left.
"'The man on the left is playing on a nay, or flute, which is a reed about eighteen inches long, with a mouthpiece at one end. It has six holes for the fingers, and is blown in a peculiar way, so that a person not accustomed to the nay would be unable to make any sound with it at first.'
"Frank asked if there was any other kind of flute. The guide told him there were several, but this was the most common. The Doctor added that this form of instrument was very old, as it could be seen pictured on some of the monuments of ancient Egypt, and appeared to have been used exactly as it is to-day. Some forms of it were blown into sidewise, as
