CHAPTER VI the prophet’s birthday SiTAND with me on the Hill of the Citadel and take a look over Cairo. We are away up over the river | Nile, and far above the minarets of the mosques that rise out of the vast plain of houses below. We are at a height as great as the tops of the Pyramids, which stand out upon the yellow desert off to the left. The sun is blazing and there is a smoky haze over the Nile valley, but it is not dense enough to hide Cairo. The city lying beneath us is the largest on the African continent and one of the mightiest of the world. It now contains about eight hundred thousand inhabitants; and in size is rapidly approximating Heliopolis and Memphis in the height of their ancient glory.

Of all the Mohammedan cities of the globe, Cairo is growing the fastest. It is more than three times as big as Damascus and twenty times the size of Medina, where the Prophet Mohammed died. The town covers an area equal to fifty quarter-section farms; and its buildings are so close together that they form an almost continuous structure. The only trees to be seen are those in the French quarter, which lies on the outskirts.

The larger part of the city is of Arabian architecture. It is made up of flat-roofed, yellowish-white buildings so crowded along narrow streets that they can hardly be seen at this distance. Here and there, out of the field 4'