CAIRO TO KISUMU intelligent, and like most of them well dressed. The Copts are among the shrewdest of the business Egyptians, and with prosperity they have grown in wealth. They are money lenders and land speculators. Many of them have offices under the government, and not a few have amassed fortunes. Some of them are very religious and some can recite the Bible by heart. They differ from their neigh¬ bours in that they believe in having only one wife.

The crowd in these streets is by no means all men, however. There are women scattered through it, and such women! We look at them, and as their large soulful eyes, fringed with dark lashes, smile back at us, we wish that the veils would drop from their faces. The complex¬ ions which can be seen in the slit in the veils are of all colours from black to brunette, and from brown to the creamy white of the fairest Circassian. We are not par¬ ticularly pleased with their costume, but our dragoman tells us that they dress better at home. The better classes wear black bombazine garments made so full that they hide every outline of the figure. Some of them have their cloaks tied in at the waist so that they look like black bed ticks on legs. Here, as one raises her skirt, we see that she wears bloomers falling to her ankles, which make us think of the fourteen-yard breeches worn by the girls of Algiers. The poorer women wear gowns of blue cotton, a single garment and the veil making up a whole costume. Astride their shoulders or their hips some of them carry ba¬ bies, many of whom are as naked as when they were born.

Here is a lady with a eunuch, who, as black as your hat and as sombre as the Sphinx, guards the high-born dame lest she should flirt with that handsome young man from Tunis sitting cross-legged in the midst of his bottles of 54