IN THE BAZAARS OF CAIRO each side of his donkey. He has no bridle, but guides the beast with a stick. A donkey-boy in bare feet, whose sole clothing consists of a blue cotton nightgown and a brown skullcap, runs behind poking up the donkey with a stick. Now he gives it a cut, and the donkey jerks its hinder part from one side to the other as it scallops the road in attempt¬ ing to get out of the way of the rod. Here is a drove of donkeys laden with bags for the market. They are not harnessed, and the bags are balanced upon their backs without ropes or saddles.

The ordinary donkey of Egypt is very cheap indeed, but the country has some of the finest asses and mules I have ever seen, and there are royal white jackasses ridden by wealthy Mohammedans which are worth from five hundred to a thousand dollars per beast. The best of these come from Mecca. They are pacers, fourteen hands high, and very swift. The pedigrees of some of them are nearly as long as those of Arabian horses. It is said that the Arabs who raise them will never sell a female of this breed.

But to return to the characters of the bazaar. They are of the oddest, and one must have an educated eye to know who they are. Take that man in a green turban, who is looked up to by his fellows. The dragoman tells us that he has a sure passport to Heaven, and that the green turban is a sign that he has made the pilgrimage to Mecca and thus earned the right to the colours of the Prophet.

Behind him comes a fine-featured, yellow-faced man in a blue gown wearing a turban of blue. We ask our guide who he may be and are told, with a sneer, that he is a Copt. He is one of the Christians of modern Egypt, descended from the fanatical band described by Charles Kingsley in his novel “Hypatia.” Like all his class he is 53