34 JOUHNET TO CENTRAL AFRICX.

CHAPTER III.

PICTURES OFCAIRO.

Entrance—The Ezbeklyeh—Saracenic Ilouses—Donkeys—The Bazaars—The Streets

—Processions—^Yiew from the Citadel—Mosque of Mohammed All—The Eoad to

Suez—The Island of Rhoda.

Our approach to and entrance into Cairo was the illuminated

frontispiece to the volume of my Eastern life. From the Nile

we had already seen the mosque of Sultan Hassan, the white

domes, and long, pencil-like minarets of the new mosque of Mohammed Ali, and the massive masonry of the Citadel^

crowning a projecting spur of the Mokattam Hills, which

touches the city on the eastern side. But when, mounted

on ambling donkeys, we followed the laden baggage-horses

through the streets of Boulak, and entered the broad, shaded

highway leading through gardens, grain-fields and groves of

palm and banana, to the gate of the Ezhehiyeh—the great

square of Cairo—the scene, which, at a distance, had been

dimmed and softened by the filmy screen of the Egyptian air, now became so gay, picturesque and animated, so full of life

and motion and color, that my dreams of the East were at

once displaced by the vivid reality. The donkey-riding multi-

tudes who passed continually to and fro, were wholly unlike