42 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

and dropping on one knee, held to me for backsheesh. After these came a camel, with a tuft of ostrich feathers on his head and a hoy on his back, who pounded vigorously on two wooden drums with one hand, while he stretched the other down to me for backsheesh.- Luckily the little candidates for circumcision were too busily engaged with their milk bottles and sugarplums, to join in the universal cry.

I had little time to devote to the sights of Cairo, and was obliged to omit the excursions to the Petrified Forest, to Heliopolis and Old Cairo, until my return. Besides the city itself, which was always full of interest, I saw little else except the Citadel and the Island of Rhoda. We took the early morning for our ride to the former place, and were fortunate enough to find our view of the Nile-plain unobscured by the mists customary at this season. The morning light is most favorable to the landscape, which lies wholly to the westward. The shadows of the Citadel and the crests of the Mokattam Hills then lie broad and cool over the city, but do not touch its minarets, which glitter in the air like shafts of white and rosy flame.

The populace is up and stirring, and you can hear the cries of the donkeymen and water-carriers from under the sycamores and acacias that shade the road to Boulak. Over the rich palmgardens, the blue streak of the river and the plain beyond, you see the phantoms of two pyramids in the haze which still cuitains the Libyan Desert. Northward, beyond the parks and palaces of Shoobra, the Nile stretches his two great arms toward the sea, dotted, far into the distance, with sails that flash in the sun. From no other point, and at no other time, is Cairo so grand and beautiful.

Within the walls of the Citadel is the Bir Youssef — Jo-